The young woman was waving a sign declaring that Donald Trump won the election. A reporter approached her and asked for evidence, reminding the protestor that more than fifty cases claiming fraud were dismissed by the courts. Her answer: "Nobody believes that Biden won. All over the Internet, they're saying the election was stolen." The reporter was a persistent fellow. "How do you think it was stolen?" he asked. The woman didn't miss a beat: "The Trump ballots were robbed and the machines were rigged," she said, adding, as if to prove her point, "Everyone knows that."
I had heard election deniers and conspiracy theorists express these opinions numerous times. But this particular response gave me an ah-ha moment. The words jumped out of my head: "Piaget's preoperational thinking."
As a psychologist, I've studied and written about Jean Piaget, the great Swiss psychologist, who demonstrated that children pass through stages in which their thinking processes mature and develop until they reach adulthood. According to him, in the "pre-operational stage," typical of 2-to 7-year-olds, children don't yet understand or use logic. Pre-operational thinking distorts and misinterprets reality. When these children are presented with tasks they will focus on one prominent feature leading to false conclusions. Piaget called this centration.
To demonstrate centration he asked pre-operational stage children to compare two rows of objects. One row contained six objects that were spread further apart than a row of nine objects. In focusing on the length that is most visually prominent the preoperational child believes there are more objects in the row of six. The children's inability to trace a process backward to include other data leads to rigidity and inflexibility in the conclusions they draw. In another task, children are presented with wooden beads of which 18 are brown and 2 are white. When asked if there are more wooden than brown beads preoperational children dominated by the immediate sensory experience will say there are more brown beads. In another dramatic example, when these children observe the transfer of water from a low wide glass to a tall narrow one and are asked if there is more or the same amount of water in the tall narrow container they will say more. Again they are influenced by the immediate perception of the greater height of the water in the tall narrow container.
But wait a minute. Piaget was talking about children. What do his ideas have to do with an adult protestor who is convinced that Trump won the 2020 election? Or a climate denier who believes the warming of the planet to dangerous levels is a hoax.
At first, I resisted the notion that I was observing child-like thinking of an early stage of cognitive development. But as I recalled other responses from deniers and conspiracy theorists I could not shake the conclusion that many of their beliefs showed a remarkable similarity to preoperational thinking. In addition to focusing exclusively on one aspect of experience, as the children's examples show, preoperational cognition defines reality by feelings and beliefs rather than facts or evidence. For the preoperational child--like the bead-counters and the water measurers--if I feel or believe something is true then it's true.
Consider adult vaccine deniers. For many who already have a distrust of science, hearing about occasional adverse reactions or even a few deaths makes them believe vaccination is dangerous and to be avoided. That belief is not tempered by the data that shows millions upon millions of safe administrations that saved countless lives and brought the pre-vaccine sickness and death rates down dramatically. For vaccine deniers--like pre-operational children--"If I believe it, it must be true." In another instance, the display of a snowball or the experience of a frost or snowstorm over-rides the vast evidence of global warming. For those prone to preoperational thinking the expression of denial or conspiracy by an admired or worshiped hero can serve as powerful irrefutable reinforcement and "proof."
Now consider our woman protestor. When told that the courts concluded that Biden won the election, she ignores this fact, widely reported in the media, and declares that "nobody believes that Biden won," thus ignoring logic and reality. She also focuses on one particular feature--"All over the Internet they're saying that the election was stolen "--thus leading to a false conclusion. And she dismisses the reporter's evidence and facts because facts don't count in preoperational thinking.
The protestor"--and so many like her"--also believes in conspiracies, with no evidence whatsoever. Just hearing about a conspiracy that fits and reinforces their ideology "--from pedophiles in pizza basements to Jewish lasers igniting wildfires, and microchips planted in COVID vaccines to track citizens"--makes it a fact. A fact that in preoperational thinking does not have to be examined within a broader context of information.
Features of preoperational children at play are also mirrored in the behavior of deniers and conspiracy theorists. Preoperational children enjoy play and socialization with other children. Also, play, called "the work of childhood" by developmental psychologists, is important for promoting cognitive development. But children at this stage can't take the view of another person and that imposes limitations. Parents and teachers are well aware that preoperational children are not likely to play cooperatively. When they are told they must share their toys with playmates they might nod agreement but will often refuse to share when it is another child's turn and will insist "the toy is mine." They are also likely to violate the rules of a game and make up their own rules. Their main concern is winning and they often insist that they won when they lost. Strikingly, these behaviors are similar to the behavior of deniers and conspiracy theorists who insist they won elections that they clearly lost"-- and refuse to concede.
Another feature of preoperational cognition that is exhibited in the thinking and behavior of deniers and conspiracy theorists is revealed in the drawings by preoperational-stage children.
The draw-a-person test is a standard clinical psychology tool. Drawings often reveal a propensity for anxiety, depression, aggression, and a host of other psychological issues. In the late 1960s, when I administered psychological diagnostic tests at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. I had the privilege of attending seminars led by famed psychologist Karen Machover who developed the Draw a Person Test. Her amazing insights were often corroborated by other clinical data in case conferences.
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