Summary: Researchers report that teleological thinking — a powerful cognitive bias that attributes final causes or an overriding purpose to natural events — is linked to two seemingly unrelated belief systems: creationism and conspiracy theories.
Source: Cell Press
Teleological Thinking Connects Creationism and Conspiracy Beliefs
It’s common to hear people say “everything happens for a reason” or call an event “meant to be.” New research published in Current Biology on August 20 finds that this mode of thought — known as teleological thinking — is closely associated with two distinct belief systems: creationism, which holds that life was created purposefully by a supernatural agent, and conspiracism, the tendency to explain events through secret and malevolent conspiracies.
“We discovered a previously unrecognized thread linking creationism and conspiracy thinking,” says Sebastian Dieguez of the University of Fribourg. “Although these belief systems appear very different at first, both are tied to a common cognitive bias: teleological thinking, which attributes final causes and overriding purpose to natural events and entities.”
A teleological thinker might accept statements such as “the sun rises in order to give us light” or “bees exist to ensure pollination.” This reasoning conflicts with scientific explanations, particularly evolutionary theory, and has long been criticized by thinkers like Voltaire. Despite such criticisms, teleological intuitions are remarkably persistent in human cognition, and the new research shows they relate not only to creationist views but also to conspiratorial thinking about social and historical events.
Study Design and Findings
Earlier work by Dieguez and colleagues indicated that conspiracism is not simply the result of rejecting randomness or complexity in the world. Instead, conspiratorial thinking may stem from assuming that events are actively and purposefully fabricated by hidden agents. Noticing this resemblance to creationist explanations, the researchers hypothesized that conspiracism and creationism would both correlate with teleological thinking and with each other.
To test this, the team conducted multiple surveys. In an initial study, more than 150 university students in Switzerland completed questionnaires measuring teleological beliefs, acceptance of conspiracy statements, analytical thinking, esoteric and magical beliefs, and perception of randomness. Results showed a modest but significant correlation between the tendency to attribute purpose to natural facts and conspiratorial beliefs.
Expanding the investigation, the researchers analyzed a large-scale survey from France and found a strong association between creationist and conspiracist beliefs. Finally, an online study with over 700 participants confirmed the links between teleological thinking, creationism, and conspiracism. Importantly, these associations were partly independent from other factors such as religion, politics, age, education level, gender, analytical thinking ability, agency detection, and perception of randomness.
Implications for Education and Public Policy
The authors argue these findings have practical implications for science education and public communication. By highlighting the shared teleological bias underlying both creationist and conspiratorial beliefs, educators and communicators may better identify and address a core reasoning flaw in misinformation. “Conspiracism can be seen as a form of creationism applied to the social world,” Dieguez explains. “Recognizing this may clarify puzzling features of our ‘post-truth’ environment.”
Understanding the cognitive roots of conspiratorial thinking could also inform policies aimed at discouraging socially harmful and dangerous beliefs. The researchers are currently evaluating efforts to teach children and adolescents about the nature of conspiracy theories and other misinformation. They emphasize the need for a detailed framework that disentangles the multiple factors contributing to a conspiracist mindset—an understanding relevant to issues such as climate denial and vaccine hesitancy.
Additionally, the research suggests a possible reason certain misinformation spreads rapidly on social platforms: content framed in teleological terms may be easier to process and therefore more likely to be shared. The authors note this hypothesis could be tested on larger, platform-scale datasets.
About the Research
The study, “Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleological bias,” reports evidence from three correlational studies totaling more than 2,000 participants. Across these samples, teleological thinking — the tendency to attribute purpose and final causes to natural entities and events — was associated with both creationist and conspiracist beliefs. These links persisted even after accounting for religion, political orientation, education, age, analytical thinking, agency detection, and perception of randomness.
Abstract: Teleological thinking has long been recognized as a barrier to accepting evolution, but its relation to other beliefs had been understudied. The authors show that conspiracism—the tendency to explain socio-historical events via secret malicious conspiracies—is also linked with teleological bias. As a resilient default of early cognition, teleological thinking contributes to both creationist and conspiracist beliefs, which both posit the hidden involvement of purposeful causes to account for complex worldly events.
Citation and Publication
Source: Cell Press. Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com. Original research: “Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleological bias” by Pascal Wagner-Egger, Sylvain Delouvée, Nicolas Gauvrit, and Sebastian Dieguez in Current Biology. Published August 3, 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.072