Consider too that not all deniers and conspiracy theorists are applying preoperational thinking. Some politicians are simply lying. They play to the crowd to get its support. Moreover, many conspiracy theorists are disrupters who seek to create chaos and to undermine and blur fact and fiction. Add to those the small numbers of scientists who challenge the existential threat of climate change with questionable evidence. Most of their "data" flies in the face of overwhelming scientific data on the dangers of climate change. There are even deniers who reject the danger of rising temperatures with the claim of "evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm."
These data distortions also apply to the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines. Millions of vaccines were administered worldwide that halted the runaway death rates from the pandemic.
Despite these caveats, it is clear that the behavior of many deniers and conspiracy theorists is so strikingly similar to characteristics of preoperational thinking--particularly the tenaciousness of their beliefs in the face of massive contrary evidence--that the similarities cannot be denied. Only further research will determine the extent of the phenomenon and its nuances.
Not everyone reacts to stress with regression; millions of people who suffer from stress are not deniers or conspiracy theorists. What accounts for these individual differences? Research on resilient children points to a mix of biological and psychological factors to explain why some children subjected to abusive parenting and other traumas develop normally while others react with a variety of pathologies. A supportive relationship has been shown to help some children transcend trauma. But biological factors may also play a part. A recent report, Wired to Doubt, issued by the NIH Center for Biotechnology Information cited a biological factor to explain the differences between trust and mistrust of information: "Doubt and distrust reside in that region of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for suppressing unwanted representations." But the observation that deniers and conspiracy theorists exhibiting secondary preoperational thinking on some issue demonstrate more advanced thinking on other issues suggests greater complexity than a single biological factor.
If stress is driving people to regress then one strategy to effectively address the problem is obvious. 21st-century America"--the richest and most technologically advanced country in the history of the world"--also lacks basic securities for far too many of its citizens. Unless the U.S. uses its wealth to create a compassionate society with safety nets and support systems that guarantee the basics for surviving and thriving, the pull to preoperational cognition will grow.
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