With big and baffling problems, however, the brain runs into mathematical tangles. When the brain tries to assess really large data sets — or a really confounding dilemmas — it can find millions of patterns, real and perceived.

That’s where the psychological principle of confirmation bias comes into play. To reduce options to a manageable cognitive level, we tend to only register information that confirms what we already know and believe. The concept of proportionality is often involved, too. That idea refers our psychological tendency to believe large events have large causes.

Back to the recent study: Political scientists Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood crunched the numbers from several national surveys over a six-year period. They found that those susceptible to believing in conspiracy theories don’t necessarily tend toward political conservatism, as the stereotype suggests.

Instead, Americans who believe in conspiracy theories are simply those who tend toward non-traditional thinking in general — and that’s about half the electorate. According to the study abstract: “[The] likelihood of supporting conspiracy theories is strongly predicted by a willingness to believe in other unseen, intentional forces….”