Conspiracy Thinking Myopia as a Cope

Rebecca Brown’s book He Came to Set the Captives Free is a self-proclaimed exposé that describes her experiences working with victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse. Written in the nineties she was considered an expert on the subject.

The psychology of conspiracy has long been intertwined with the human need to make sense of an often chaotic and uncertain world. At its core, conspiracy theories are a way of constructing order out of chaos, of providing simple answers to complex questions. They offer the illusion of control in a world that feels out of control, and they provide moral clarity—good versus evil, us versus them—that is often too tempting to resist. But the consequences of this comfort, this luxury of conspiracy, can be far-reaching and destructive. And when placed within a historical context, we can see how these psychological mechanisms have manifested in devastating ways, shaping our societies, guiding our fears, and ultimately fostering systems that blind us to the real dangers.

To understand the psychology of conspiracy, it’s important to grasp the underlying human need for certainty and simplification. Human beings have evolved to seek patterns in their environments; it is an evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors navigate danger and identify threats. However, in a modern world filled with complexity, unpredictability, and power imbalances, the mind’s natural tendency to simplify events into binary oppositions—good versus evil, black versus white—becomes problematic. Conspiracy theories thrive on these binary oppositions, offering a sense of order when real-world complexities are too overwhelming to process.

This need for simplicity and certainty is often coupled with the discomfort of uncertainty or ambiguous truths. The discomfort of not knowing what’s really happening—of not being able to connect the dots—is what makes conspiracy theories so appealing. They provide a storyline, a narrative, that tells us exactly what’s wrong with the world, who the enemy is, and how we can fix it. It’s a comfortable certainty that erases the chaos of real-world complexities.

Take the Salem witch trials, for instance. In 1692, the community of Salem, like many other places during that time, was steeped in fear and uncertainty. Life was unpredictable, and death often arrived suddenly—whether through disease, famine, or the wars between European powers. The small village, already troubled by social and political strife, became gripped by fear. Children, young and impressionable, were suddenly the focus of a moral panic about witches. The community needed a clear enemy to blame for the sickness and tragedy that plagued them. Conspiracies about witchcraft offered a luxury of comfort: they provided a simple story about hidden forces of evil, personified by local women who were blamed for the suffering of the community.

The psychology at play here was not dissimilar to modern conspiracy thinking. The witches were seen as an invisible, all-powerful threat—but in reality, the trials were rooted in much more complex societal problems: fear of the unknown, gender inequality, and economic strain. The comfort of believing in an external enemy—witches, in this case—allowed the community to ignore the real societal breakdowns they were experiencing. In this sense, the luxury of conspiracy allowed for moral certainty and a sense of order where there was none, but at a grave cost. Twenty innocent people were executed, and dozens more were imprisoned or ruined by false accusations.

Fast forward to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s, and we see the same psychological dynamics at play. In the wake of societal shifts—such as women’s rights movements, growing sexual liberation, and the rising awareness of child abuse—there was a need to explain the discomfort and fear that came with these changes. Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) became the perfect scapegoat. In a society already anxious about changing norms, the luxury of conspiracy offered an easy answer: Satanic cults were secretly controlling society, abducting children, and performing unspeakable rituals. This narrative was comforting in its simplicity. It gave people a clear enemy to blame for the suffering and disorder they witnessed.

Psychologically, this allowed the public to engage in moral certainty without ever addressing the real social issues that were at the heart of the panic—issues such as institutional abuse, the misunderstanding of child trauma, and the failures of the legal and medical systems to properly care for children. By focusing on Satanic cults, the real perpetrators—those who were abusing their positions of trust in families, churches, and communities—remained in the shadows. The luxury of conspiracy, once again, offered the comfort of a simple answer that didn’t require confronting the much harder truths about the complicated and uncomfortable realities of human power, trust, and institutionalized abuse.

The Satanic Panic, much like the Salem witch trials, was rooted in fear of the unknown, fear of the invisible, and fear of losing control. But more importantly, it was a fear that shifted blame onto an external enemy rather than confronting the real dangers—which were not Satanic cults but abusers hiding behind trusted institutions. The real consequences were the lives destroyed by false accusations, and the real harm was that the real perpetrators were allowed to remain unaccountable.

The luxury of conspiracy thinking—whether in the form of witch hunts, Satanic cults, or shadowy elites controlling society—is ultimately a defense mechanism, a psychological cope that lets people feel as if they understand the world. But it comes with a high cost. By accepting simple, binary explanations for complex social problems, we are distracted from the deeper issues at hand: the systemic abuse of power, the manipulation of the vulnerable, and the failure to address root causes of societal breakdown. The real monsters are not hidden in the shadows, but are often right in front of us, living and thriving within our trusted institutions.

Today, QAnon presents us with the same dynamics. At its core, it claims to be a movement for justice—to save children from global elites, but in its pursuit of moral clarity and simple answers, it obscures the real abuse of power. Just like the Satanic Panic, QAnon creates a fantasy enemy—the elites, the globalists, the Satan-worshiping pedophiles—instead of focusing on the real abuse that happens in plain sight. The luxury of conspiracy offers an easy fix: defeat the external enemy, and everything will be set right. But in doing so, it distracts from the real systems of power that allow exploitation to continue.

The real cost of conspiracy thinking is that it provides comfort in a simplified narrative, but it keeps us blind to the truth. The real harm doesn’t lie in shadowy elites or Satanic cults—it lies in the broken systems that fail to hold those with power accountable for their actions. And the real consequence of comfort in the luxury of conspiracy is that while we chase after myths, we fail to confront the real monsters in our midst.

In the end, the psychology of conspiracy is about the need for certainty in a world that is anything but certain. But the consequences of this need—when we choose to simplify the complexity of real-world problems—are not just tragic; they are dangerous. Because when we choose to believe in conspiracies rather than real-world solutions, we allow the real perpetrators to continue their work, unseen, unpunished, and unchecked. And until we choose to confront the real abuses of power, we will remain trapped in the luxury of conspiracy, never addressing the systems that enable harm to thrive.