This series (introduced here) is about exploring solutions to disinformation. We face a difficult challenge. It requires multiple, coherent plans mutually reinforcing each other in a virtuous cycle. We can “flatten the curve” of misinformation, but first we need to understand our options.
The first post focused on media literacy. You can check it out here.
The second looked at the role of fact-checking. You can check that out here.
This month, I’m thinking about how we bring people back from extreme conspiracy thinking.
* Because the content is a bit longer than usual, your email provider may cut you off somewhere down below. Get the full post by clicking on the title above.
Conspiracy theories are tearing families apart
As documented by multiple media outlets, throughout 2020 more and more people began to genuinely believe that Trump was battling a secret global elite of pedophiles and child torturers. They came to believe in QAnon. And it tore families apart.
Is there any hope of bringing them back? The answer is yes, but it won’t be easy.
For this post we’re taking a slightly unusual turn. When you saw a series on solutions to disinformation you mightn’t have thought there’d be a post called “Empathic Intervention”. But there should be one. We’re taking a whole-of-society approach in this series, and the actions of loved ones can help hinder the growth of disinformation. Equally, we can unwittingly foster its growth if we’re not careful in how we communicate with people who are going down the conspiracy rabbit hole.
For this post we are going to focus once again on individual human solutions. Like the post on media literacy, we’re expecting a lot from people here. I will have another post looking at how society more broadly tackles deep-rooted issues like deradicalisation and political polarisation, but this post is more intimate. Here, we’re trying to answer the question: what do you do if your friend or family member is lost to a conspiracy?
To find out, we first have to understand how and why people get sucked in in the first place.
The rabbit hole
In January 2021, The New York Times profiled Valerie Gilbert, a QAnon believer. To understand her mindset, see how her experience of the movement fit in with her life:
"What attracts Ms. Gilbert and many other people to QAnon isn’t just the content of the conspiracy theory itself. It’s the community and sense of mission it provides. New QAnon believers are invited to chat rooms and group texts, and their posts are showered with likes and retweets. They make friends, and are told that they are not lonely Facebook addicts squinting at zoomed-in paparazzi photos, but patriots gathering “intel” for a righteous revolution. This social element also means that QAnon followers aren’t likely to be persuaded out of their beliefs with logic and reason alone."
The article illustrates how Gilbert’s Facebook page evolved from 2016, when her posts were about environmental and social issues, to the full-blown promotion of baseless conspiracies. She calls herself “The Meme Queen” and a “digital soldier”. In the space of a few years, Gilbert changed radically.
For her, "QAnon was always less about Q and more about the crowdsourced search for truth. She loves assembling her own reality in real time, patching together shards of information and connecting them to the core narrative... When she solves a new piece of the puzzle, she posts it to Facebook, where her QAnon friends post heart emojis and congratulate her."
Everyone’s trip down the rabbit hole is unique. Everyone will have their own circumstances, perspectives, or indeed trauma, that allows them to see this as their mission for the world. For Gilbert, the conspiracy tapped into her "longstanding suspicion of elites".
Let’s acknowledge that it’s completely normal for people to believe in conspiracies. And some conspiracies are actually true. Both Watergate and the child sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church were conspiracies of silence. The people who uncovered those issues and brought them to light showed the value of pursuing research on a topic, even when there is huge resistance.
We must also acknowledge the complex issues that are involved in this. If you’re feeling isolated or depressed (as many are during the pandemic), a compelling movement offers community and comradeship. If you have a deep suspicion of institutions (a completely acceptable opinion if you feel let down by your politicians, church leaders, etc), a mission-driven movement offers a way to take back control. You can help people!
So it’s critical that we are cautious when encountering these kinds of arguments. Battling them from a position of logic and reason is not necessarily going to help. Understanding the individual’s perspective, the group dynamics, and the larger forces at work, might.
For anyone who has fallen down this path, it’s highly likely that psychological needs are being met. That’s the focus of an article by Joe Pierre in Psychology Today. In uncertain times, he argues, conspiracies provide solutions, ways of thinking about the world, that are easier to cognitively accept than the more difficult, messy reality. For us humans, it can be uncomfortable to accept that only so much is under our control. Conspiracies reassure us that the world is not chaotic and orderless. It can be hard for us to understand how a virus can sweep around the world causing devastation, with no one in control. Confronting the fact that there was no one who created or willed this into existence, we humans have to reckon with our own mortality. There is no teleology here.
As we have seen with Gilbert, more than anything, a conspiracy movement provides connection. As Pierre puts it,
“Without replacing QAnon with something else that satisfies one's psychological needs in a similar way, escape may be unlikely. Of course, leaving QAnon would allow believers to reclaim significant time and energy that might be better channeled into healthier real-life relationships, work, and recreational pastimes. But for many, the very lack of such sources of meaning might have led them to seek out QAnon in the first place, such that there would be little guarantee of finding them anew.”
To sum up: a loss of faith in institutions, an uncertain and ever-changing world, a lack of social connection and community, the need for a higher mission, a desire to be unique and different, isolation or depression; all of these could be individual or combined factors explaining why someone has fallen down the rabbit hole.
There is another factor in all this and that is of course the role of social platforms. The algorithms.
As documented in the Rabbit Hole podcast from The New York Times, it’s pretty easy to slip into conspiracist thinking if you’ve watched even one YouTube video that touches on such themes. In 2017, Zeynep Tufekci gave a TED talk titled, "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads". She was one of the earliest voices sounding the alarm that the recommendation engines of the big social platforms, designed for constant engagement and therefore advertising revenue, were dangerous.
One of the reasons why we’ve seen growth in conspiracy movements is simply this: it’s very easy to get sucked in when you are recommended, or pushed, to join groups or watch videos that endorse these false beliefs. Once you’re in, it’s quick and easy to build that sense of community, which in turn makes it very difficult to leave.
Would QAnon have been possible without social platforms? It’s impossible to say with certainty, but it’s unlikely that we’d have seen it gain such momentum so quickly. Consider this: a poll at the end of 2020 found that 17% of Americans thought the QAnon conspiracy was true. Perhaps even more frighteningly, 37% said they didn’t know. It’s impossible to say how much of that can be attributable to social platforms, but they are clearly a major contributing factor.
Aside from this, the internet offers us the power to do our own research, which is a key phrase used by anti-vaccine activists, QAnon supporters, 9/11 truthers, and so on. If you’re looking for evidence of something, you can find it online. It may be spurious, one-sided, inaccurate, but if you want to believe it you can find it.
Maybe there’s a lesson for all of us from that: rather than searching for proof of why our theories are right, maybe we should look for evidence that our theories are wrong, and see if they hold up to scrutiny.
But not everyone is going to be as mindful as that. So how do we actually make progress in helping loved ones come out of this rabbit hole? It’s easy to get it wrong. And even by following all the best practices, there’s only so much you can do. Much of it will have to come from the person themselves. But because it’s easy to get it wrong - and drive a deeper wedge between you - let’s start by looking at what not to do.
What does not work
In 2020, CNN's Donie O'Sullivan went to a Trump rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, and spoke with MAGA supporters about their information habits and what they see on their Facebook newsfeed. In opening this dialogue with people on the ground, Donie uncovered a critical learning for us all. When he asked a Trump supporter why he doesn’t try to follow pages that he disagrees with to enrich his political understanding, the man replies: “No, because they call me stupid, ignorant. Why would I follow people that throw rocks at me constantly because they don’t agree with me? I’ve got tens of thousands of people that do.”
A growing number of people have been scouring the web looking for the right strategies to talk with loved ones who have fallen down the rabbit hole. We are still in the early stages of learning to deal with the revolution in communications that has been the internet, so this is evolving. We need more research and experimentation as to what tactics work.
But common sense indicates that this is a human problem and each case will be unique. And as with any human, bullying them into a corner or subjecting them to a diatribe on how they are wrong won’t end well, as the example from Donie illustrates.
So avoid confrontation. Don’t engage in a war of words. Try not to ridicule their beliefs. Don’t dismiss them outright. Depending on where they are in their journey, some fact-checking might help, but it could also drive you further apart. Be wary of constantly debunking your friend. Asking questions instead might be a better tactic.
Avoid publicly debating these issues on places like Facebook. This can entrench the person further into their newfound community, who can see the debate and use it as leverage in their push to drive your friend into the movement. If possible, having these conversations in person is best. (Hard during a pandemic, of course.)
What does work
Advice from people who’ve dealt with this focuses on the importance of empathy: try to be understanding of the person. Understand the path that led them to this conspiracy. Listen without judgement. Build trust. Be careful about telling them they are simply wrong. Find common ground. Have meaningful conversations.
Just listen to Jitarth Jadeja, a former QAnon supporter who has since left the movement: “It has to start with empathy and understanding, which is non-judgemental, and allowing them to keep their dignity.”
We need a lot more people to become skilled at empathic intervention so that we stop the spread of disinformation in our communities. I’ve been reflecting on all the advice out there to provide you with a basic guide. Nothing can be prescriptive here, but there are solid principles within. It involves the following steps:
Understanding where they are on their journey.
Preparing well: considering whether you should intervene and how.
Maintaining connection and productive dialogue.
Being patient.
Looking after yourself.
1: Understanding where they are on their journey
The first and most important step is truly understanding where your loved one is. How far down the rabbit hole are they? That’s why I’ve spent so much time on that already. If you’re seeing a problem develop with someone, you need to fully appreciate all that might be going on there. Are they isolated and spending a lot of time on YouTube? Have they lost their job? Do they suffer from a lack of mission in their life, which a group could be exploiting as one of their psychological needs?
Research from Dr. Bradley Franks and his colleagues suggest there are five stages in going down the rabbit hole:
At Stage 1, the person feels “unease with the way the world is, or a sense of being different or not fitting in”. Stage 2 is when someone believes there is more to reality than meets the eye. Stage 3 sees a growth in skepticism about official versions of events. Stage 4 is the big jump: this is where the person believes all mainstream narratives are illusions. Finally, at Stage 5, the person believes that all reality is itself an illusion. This is where supernatural explanations like reptiles controlling the planet come in.
Joe Pierre simplifies this into two: Fence-Sitters and True Believers. The Fence-Sitter has healthy scepticism and is looking for answers. They may already be open to the idea of conspiracies. If your loved one is here, you have a better chance of having a meaningful discussion with them. It gets harder to reach a positive outcome when they reach the True Believer phase. At this stage their identity, sense of self, and community has probably become wrapped up in the conspiracy movement. It’s harder to bring them back.
But even if your loved one has become a True Believer, and even if you become estranged, that is not the end. You don’t need to give up on them forever. The following steps will help.
2: Preparing well: considering whether you should intervene and how
I’m not advocating that every person you know who believes in a conspiracy requires an empathic intervention from you. There may be people with whom you just haven’t built up the time or trust yet to allow that to happen successfully. And even if you have, you still have to decide yourself whether you are better placed to back off for now. Timing can be critical. But nevertheless, even if you do decide now is not the right time, I suggest you get prepared anyway. You can never know when the time and space might open up for you both to address these issues, and you’ll need to have all the tools at your disposal then, when they are most open. In fact, that is likely to be the best time to intervene, not through a forced time and date set by you in the first place.
You need to think carefully about if and when to intervene. Don’t just dive in without some pre-planning. Because of their deep belief in this conspiracy, they will be cognitively armed to deal with a lazy, ill-thought out intervention. Doing so in this way will drive them further into the arms of the cult.
The manner and form of your intervention is also something to carefully consider. Don’t publicly shame them on Facebook if they share a conspiracy video. Consider a text or call if you really think they should know some extra information immediately. A chat in person is always best if it can wait until you see them. But remember to do this with dignity. Give them respect. The next step shows to do so.
3: Maintaining connection and productive dialogue
This is the most important step. Even if there are times when it’s really hard, try to maintain the relationship. Listen and try to understand them. This doesn’t mean you have to sit there silently while they deliver long speeches. There are a number of things you can consider when in conversation with the person.
The first is trying to help them understand how information online works. This might be particularly useful if your loved one is older. They grew up before the internet, and maybe don’t understand the machinations of algorithms, recommendation systems, and possibly even things like how easy it is to create things online and make them go viral. Approach respectfully, as always, but there may be a way to provide some education if they are open to that about the shaky foundations of that strange YouTube theory they’ve seen.
Another core tactic is to find common ground. A lot of disinformation and conspiracy thinking is built on a tiny kernel of truth. Focus on that and acknowledge its truth. Allow them to see how you are working with them towards a common understanding. You might, for example, acknowledge that real conspiracies do exist. Watergate, sex abuse in the Catholic Church - these were real conspiracies and it was hard for those people who were uncovering the scandals to stick to their reporting in the face of constant pressure. But that doesn’t mean every conspiracy is true either. If for example they believe in an anti-vaccine theory but not the flat earth conspiracy, you might focus on the latter for a little bit. Why do people believe this when there’s so much evidence to the contrary?
That last point leads to another key tool. The Socratic method. Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived around 400 BC. His key tool for persuasion was asking questions. He didn’t just ask any old question though. It was a carefully thought out, open question. A closed question leads to yes or no answers. For example, is it dark at night? An open question can yield so much more because it forces the conspiracist to talk their way through their thinking. Doing so, spliced through with smart questions, can lead people to question their own understanding.
The real power of the Socratic method is that it allows the person to own this discovery themselves. They feel they are uncovering the truth, but it requires skilled expertise of the method. You should think in advance about how the conversation will go, and what kinds of questions you could ask. If QAnon, you could ask about why dates for The Storm keep getting shifted. Or why there’s been no whistleblowers about this supposed vast pedophile ring. Or ask if there’s any counter-evidence to the theory. Or ask about how the government and media could have the wherewithal to collectively orchestrate this. They will surely agree that both institutions seem incapable of managing such an Herculean task.
But be careful. A good question about how, for example, a superspreader in the movement gains financially and otherwise from its growth could be immediately seen as a negative question, with your bias showing right from the start. A big part of this is the kind of tone you use, and your body language. It will all feed in to whether the other person feels like they can trust you. If you are genuinely there for love and to help, it should come through. But even then things can still go wrong. So I repeat: practice this. Consider rehearsing with a friend.
Another style that could help is called motivational interviewing. Again, Joe Pierre offers useful advice. He compares how the addiction of a conspiracy can be likened to the addiction of video games:
“In addiction therapy, quantifying motivation for behavioral change is a core concept, with specific interventions matched to each stage of motivation. When that motivation is lacking in the so-called ‘pre-contemplation’ stage, often the best intervention is to simply maintain contact, express concern, and let people know you’re there for them if they need you. That’s a great strategy for the friends and family of QAnon conspiracy theory believers who aren’t looking for help.”
Therapists, he goes on, are on the lookout for examples of the addict suggesting that their compulsive behaviour is leading to problems in their life. At that moment, they might say something like, “Other people don’t appreciate how important QAnon is to you and that’s starting to negatively affect your life.” This non-confrontational statement allows the person to trust the therapist and truly bring them in to the conversation. The idea behind motivational interviewing is not to change someone’s mind, but helping them find their own motivation to change. Similar to the Socratic method, thinking ahead about good questions to ask that are non-threatening and come from a place of respect and empathy will be critical here. Dr. Arnaud Gagneur has successfully been using this technique to help those who are vaccine hesitant see that vaccinating their children has more benefits than risks.
Yet another tactic you could try is showing the person examples of other people who have left the movement. Google Jitarth Jadeja or Ashley Vanderbilt to hear their stories about leaving QAnon. Or share the story of Heather Simpson, who was an extreme anti-vaccine activist who is now pro-vaccine. Powerful individual stories like these can show how the movement is actually a dangerous cult, and that there is a better life outside of it. As Simpson wrote:
"Ultimately, what finally changed my mind was having people reach out, listen to my fears, and talk to me. The thousands of mean comments didn’t change my mind. In fact, those comments made me think I was even more in the right. If I had enemies, after all, then I must be doing something right. Those awful comments had the opposite effect of the pro-vaccine person’s intentions. But when friends calmly and patiently explained the science to me, showing they cared more about me than about changing my mind, my mind started to open up to the fact that I could be wrong. I started reading books instead of Facebook posts."
And Simpson offers this advice: “When you ask an anti-vaxxer questions, be ready to listen. Listen to them as a whole person with a unique mind and unique life experiences different from your own. Try to find the root of why they are anti-vax. It is easy to name call and jump to defensiveness, but that will just make the gap bigger and stronger. Gentleness and addressing their real, actual root concerns, are what is going to make change possible.”
4: Being patient
This is hard. If it’s not going well, just stop. You could make it worse by proceeding, and end up in a damaging argument. That won’t serve any useful purpose for you or your loved one. It will drive them further into the arms of the disinformers.
Unfortunately, you can’t expect immediate results. You’ll need to give it some time, and it may take a few different conversations. A lot of listening. Some good questions. More listening. One conversation might not change their stance, but it could open the path for them to see an alternative. That alone is success.
But even still, despite your best efforts, you might find that this is too hard. It’s ok to stop. In extreme cases, you might need to walk away. You can’t force this person to change and you’ll have to read the situation yourself to see how much damage is being caused by continuing the relationship.
It can be dispiriting. As Albert Samaha wrote of his own mother, “My entire vocation as an investigative reporter was predicated on being able to reveal truths, and yet I could not even rustle up the evidence to convince my own mother that our 45th president was not, in fact, the hero she believed him to be.”
You could see if other professionals can help. You could ask psychologists for advice to go deeper than this post allows. A company called Antidote is building resources around how to resist psychological manipulation. It was founded by Diane Benscoter, who as a teenager joined The Unification Church - the religious cult whose members are commonly known as “Moonies”. Her TED talk has over one million views. In it, she explains how she joined the movement when it participated in a peace walk in the 1970s. From there she got sucked in. Another lesson for us here: anyone can get enraptured by a cult and find it difficult to escape. Maintaining that outside connection could be the key chance for someone to reclaim their freedom. Maybe a company like Antidote can help you understand how you can make an impact on your loved one over the long term.
5: Looking after yourself
Going through all this is pretty traumatic for you. It’s important that you find ways to unplug from the nightmare of seeing your father or aunt go down the rabbit hole. You’ll burn out otherwise, and you’ll render yourself even less likely to intervene positively for your loved one.
There are support groups out there to help. The subreddit QAnonCasualties was set up in July 2019 and has over 140,000 members. Every day, people go there to share their stories and tease out solutions to difficult conversations.
Support groups can take different forms. Check out the aforementioned Antidote. One example I’ve recently encountered is from Kevin Smith and Amanda Stanfill, who created a Facebook support group called CLAMBAKE. They are not psychologists or community marketing specialists. They are just regular Americans who wanted to help people as they go through this. To protect the privacy and safety of the group, I won’t share the link here, but both Kevin and Amanda gave me some insights about the value of such a support network.
Kevin spoke about how they have tried to inculcate empathic values towards the person who is down the rabbit hole but also, and this is the group’s main focus, toward their loved ones. As Amanda reflected, “There’s immediate outpouring of empathy for people who come [to the group]”. Amanda also spoke about people who lurk in the group and rarely post, but find huge comfort in seeing other people like them going through the same thing.
Kevin and Amanda suggest that if you’re looking to create your own similar group, three rules can be helpful. The first is confidentiality. Another is not to give advice unless the other person asks for it. The final rule is to listen - really work to understand the other person’s perspective. These rules, they say, help promote the sense of a safe space for all the members of the group.
The pair also promoted a campaign for members to go on a 72 hour fast from social media. Re-establishing real world relationships with your loved one can go a long way to bring them back from the rabbit hole. Even if you can’t do it with your loved one, doing it yourself can help you recover from the feeling of being burnt out from coping with all this. As Kevin said, “You’re never going to be able to debunk your way through to a loved one because they reject all mainstream media. The way that actually ever reaches people and really maybe the only way, is connection, a lot of times in person, with somebody that they had an existing relationship with before and ideally based around nostalgia.” Getting away from phones and notifications, talking about old times and rebuilding relationships - all this offers a chance for renewal.
Prevention is better than cure
Conspiracies and cults have a terrible impact on the life of the individual and all their loved ones. Rather than waiting for the problem to get worse, we need to consider multiple solutions to get ahead of the problem. Much like I’m arguing for disinformation, we need an array of ideas all working in tandem and mutually reinforcing each other to make that progress. How can we keep conspiracies from taking root in the first place?
One method to inoculate people is through media literacy, as already discussed in the first post of this series. Another is thinking about the role of content curation and moderation on social platforms, as well as critiquing their recommendation engines, which we know can lead people quickly down the rabbit hole like never before. These will be topics for future posts in this series. There is also a role for empathic intervention, particularly if the person is in the Fence-Sitter stage, as opposed to the True Believer.
And yet, there will probably always be people who find their psychological needs being met by conspiracies. Emotional vulnerability has always existed and will continue to exist. Ensuring less isolation, tackling depression, providing people with the meaningful housing spaces and economic room to foster their community naturally - these are all going to be powerful ways to prevent conspiracies from taking root in the first place. These are political, economic and social questions. I hope our politics, economy and society can rise to the challenge.
The strengths of empathic intervention in tackling disinformation
We know that empirical evidence and fact-checking doesn’t always change people’s minds. So the role of a loved one here is more powerful than any other intervention. If they are in a position of trust. If they have the skills to listen and understand, without judgement. If they can ask the right questions at the right time in the right tone.
Interventions from family and friends can help rob disinformation of attention. We can stunt the growth of disinformation campaigns by proactively tackling the conspiracy movement that underlies it, and ensuring that your mother or brother doesn’t become lost to a cult.
We can combine the skills required for empathic intervention with media literacy initiatives so that they mutually reinforce each other.
The weaknesses of empathic intervention in tackling disinformation
Like media literacy, this tactic is difficult to scale. It will take time for millions of people to learn the right techniques. And it may require funding from governments or philanthropists to help us get there.
We are reliant here on deep understanding of psychology, and yet we are still learning about the impact of social media and disinformation. This is always evolving. In the meantime, new conspiracies are being hatched every day.
It’s very easy for people who aren’t fully equipped with the skills in, for example, the Socratic method or motivational interviewing, to get it badly wrong, or for people to try to convince with facts and fail.
We’re relying a lot here on the people who are ultimately victims - the loved ones. It’s a big burden to bear, and it shouldn’t all fall to them.
What’s next
It’s important to continually listen for the voices of those who get out of conspiracies. We started this post with a New York Times profile of Valerie Gilbert, who was lost deeply to QAnon. We can end with a more hopeful profile, also from The New York Times. In this article, Lenka Perron explains how QAnon gave her agency in the world. “Q managed to make us feel special, that we were being given very critical information that basically was going to save all that is good in the world and the United States,” she said. “We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club.””
Perron offers wise insights for us all: “Mr. Trump may be gone from government, but Ms. Perron believes that the ground is still fertile for conspiracy theories because many of the underlying conditions are the same: widespread distrust of authority, anger at powerful figures in politics and in the news media, and growing income inequality. Unless there are major changes, Ms. Perron said, the craving will continue.”
The problem will persist. We can’t expect everyone to become a trained psychologist overnight, but we need a broad societal increase in skills for empathic intervention. Because the most powerful chance of bringing these people back will be through the actions of loved ones.
As we help people climb out of rabbit holes, we need access to quality information. Even if the QAnon supporter might reject it, a better and more responsible media culture would bring benefits to all of us who care about squashing disinformation. That’s the subject of the next post in this series.
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Other solutions I’ll be considering in upcoming months are technology, research and partnerships, regulation, business models, experiments in new digital public squares, and deradicalisation.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. What have I missed here in relation to empathy and conspiracies? Are there other solutions not mentioned above that you think should be part of this? Do you have any research or reading material you’d like to share?
Thanks for taking part.