NLP Language Patterns: Challenging Conspiracy Thinking

© Richard Bolstad

Magical Thinking and NLP

John Grinder says he co-developed NLP largely as a “bullshit detection system”. This article clusters some of the ideas that might help us return to that intention. Unfortunately, sometimes, as we will see, NLP is used as a bullshit generating system.

Firstly, there are several beliefs which are widely accepted in modern culture and yet which are contradicted by Psychology Research and stand in opposition to the core ideas of NLP. While we teach the opposite beliefs during NLP training, within a year more than half the people will not only have reincorporated these popular beliefs into their worldview, but will be convinced that NLP confirmed these beliefs, and will explain to me that NLP “proved this truth that I always suspected”.

On the NLP training itself, we directly teach people to challenge these assumptions, but the assumptions are extremely resilient. These unhelpful popular beliefs are not merely a challenge to NLP assimilation: they are also related to vulnerability to conspiracy theories, and they are also related to willingness to consider pseudoscientific beliefs as true. Unfortunately, since NLP (as widely used) and pseudoscience overlap, this means we will have more challenges with these beliefs in our NLP student community than most university classes have.

Regression to the Mean

The concept of regression to the mean comes from genetics and was popularized by Sir Francis Galton during the late 19th century with the publication of “Regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature”. Galton observed that extreme characteristics (e.g., height) in parents are not passed on completely to their offspring. Rather, the characteristics in the offspring regress towards a mediocre point (a point which has since been identified as the mean). The phenomenon has been used to refer metaphorically to a similar shift in research results after any radical new discovery, to the normalization of any sport team’s results after any sudden high achievement etc. In this case I am suggesting that after the “wow” experience of NLP training, where people often adopt a radical new set of beliefs and priorities, there is a gradual shift back towards “normal” models of the world after they return to their everyday life. 

Here’s an example. Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) coined the NLP presupposition “The Map Is Not The Territory”. As this idea regresses to the mean, it becomes interpreted as “Any map is OK, because it’s all an illusion.” One thing Korzybski would never have agreed with is the idea that all maps are equally valid, or equally useful. He is pointing out that a map can be assessed by its usefulness. Useful maps, he says, reveal their closer correlation to the actual territory by the way that using them enable us to act successfully in that territory. Similarly, NLP was never designed to simply accept all maps as equally valid: it was designed to identify which maps are most useful for achieving particular outcomes.

Korzybski himself states it much more clearly. He says (1994, p. 750) “If we consider an actual territory (a) say, Paris, Dresden, Warsaw, and build up a map (b) in which the order of these cities would be represented as Dresden, Paris, Warsaw; to travel by such a map would be misguiding, wasteful of effort …. In case of emergencies, it might be seriously harmful …. We could say that such a map was ‘not true’ … or that the map had a structure not similar to the territory …. We should notice that: A) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory. B) Two similar structures have similar ‘logical’ characteristics …. C) A map is not the territory.”” Please note that Korzybski is not claiming that all maps are equally false! The opposite is true. Some maps are more accurately related to the territory than others, and the whole aim of NLP was to investigate which maps were more useful in which contexts. This fundamental source of the core NLP presupposition (The map is not the territory) is often completely misunderstood in NLP literature.

Ontological Confusion

Michelene Chi (Arizona State University) proposed that these common beliefs that NLP concepts “regress to” are a result of “ontological confusion” (confusion about what is real) and later research (Lobato et alia, 2014) showed that this confusion is a core cognitive predictor of conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific beliefs and paranormal beliefs. Chi explains that all “entities” are usefully categorized as belonging to certain classes such as Matter, Processes and Mental States. Confusion happens when we confuse, for example:

1. an event (which has a cause, a beginning, and an end: for example “a goal achievement”) and a mental state (which is either experienced or not experienced, and is “about” some event/s, for example “happiness”): for example saying “My goal is to be happy.”
2. a mental state (which is either true or not true, such as “happiness”) and a material form such as a liquid (which can accumulate and be released, be hidden or revealed): for example saying “I need to release my suppressed sadness, and fill up with happiness.”

People who have not fully learned these ontological categories have great difficulty retaining understandings that depend on these distinctions of course. Chi explains that students have difficulty learning certain scientific concepts in physics and biology because of “a mismatch or incompatibility between the categorical representations that students bring to an instructional context, and the ontological category to which the science concepts truly belong”. Thus, for example, they conceive of “energy” (which is what she would call a “constraint based interaction”) as a material substance which can be present or not present, can be moved from one place to another etc. and then conceive of that energy as having a value (good or bad) as if it was a mental state. As in this example, the most common ontological confusion is to think about the world in the cognitive style that Jean Piaget (1930) would call “concrete operational” (where everything is understood as material: past events can be experienced as physical “traumas” and “confidence” can seem like a substance that you can “get more of”).

Chi has a Chinese American background, and reading her explanation I am reminded of the difference between the concept of the Four Elements in western Greek philosophy (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) and the Five Phases in Chinese philosophy (Fire 火, Earth土, Metal 金, Water 水, Wood 木). Relational concepts such as yin-yang (陰陽) are often mistranslated into western texts as if they were material qualities of things, and the idea that something can be “yin” in relation to one event/object but yang in relation to another is hard for westerners to conceive. The challenge is made more difficult by the fact that we frequently and casually use metaphors from one ontological category to refer to experiences in another (e.g. “It was a dark time in history”).

Lobato et alia showed that when people consistently confuse these ontological categories, they will also be more likely to hold conspiracy theories, believe in pseudoscientific ideas, and believe in the paranormal. This ontological confusion is far more predictive than previously hypothesised cognitive causes of conspiracy theory vulnerability, such as overenthusiastically identifying patterns in random data.

Note that cognitive theories are only some of the theories developed to explain conspiracy theory vulnerability. Other theories include emotional theories (those with conspiracy theories have been shown to have lower self-esteem and higher individual narcissism or need to believe they are special) and sociological theories (people in disadvantaged groups get a sense of control by believing that they know what is happening behind the scenes) – both types of theory are discussed by Cichocka et. Alia 2016, and Richard Hofstadter’s theory of Paranoid Personality disorder is a well-known study of the former. These other theories suggest that to reduce conspiracy theories we need to create a more inclusive society and ensure people feel individually validated. A fourth type of theory are political theories that focus on the promotion of conspiracy ideas on social media and elsewhere by political actors such as the Russian Internet Research Agency (Glavset) and the Neo-Nazi and Far Right groups studied by Aaron Winter (2014).

The Metamodel and Ontological Clarity

John Grinder and Richard Bandler developed the “metamodel” to show how a therapist such as Virginia Satir challenged the unhelpful ontology of their clients, unpacking the deletions, generalisations and distortions by which their clients shifted from sensory experience of the world to the categories implicit in the surface structures of their speech. ”I viewed the Meta Model as a bullshit detector…. The initial avowed goal was the extraction of patterning from the geniuses of late 20th century agents of change in order to create choice for individuals and small groups seeking liberation from their self-imposed limitations. But the track I was running behind this activity was a challenge to the processes by which ideologies were promoted in the world and the congruity (or lack thereof) of the people promoting these ideologies.” (John Grinder in Grinder and Pucelik, 2012, p.185).  

The metamodel consists of a series of questions directed at the cognitive distortions people use to make sense of their experience. Here are the original examples:

1. Presupposition (Assuming things in the sentence without checking they’re true) eg “If you weren’t so silly, you’d be happy now.” – assumes  I’m silly. Metamodel question: “How specifically do you know…?” eg “… I’m silly?” 

2. Mind Reading (Claiming to  know someone’s internal state or thoughts without checking) ​eg “I can tell she doesn’t like me”. Metamodel question: “How, specifically, do you know?” “What did you see or hear?”

3. Lost Performative (Labelling something good/bad, right/wrong without saying whose filter-map of the world you’re using) ​eg “It’s wrong to swear”. Metamodel question:  “According to whom?”

4. Cause-Effect (Claiming that something outside a person caused their own internal state/ actions)​eg “He makes me so angry!”. Metamodel question: “How, specifically?” “How does what he/she/it does force you to…?”

5. Complex Equivalent (Claiming one thing is the same as or “means” another.) eg “He never hugs me, so he doesn’t like me.”. Metamodel question: “How  specifically does … mean …?” “Has there ever been a time when…  [you didn’t hug someone you liked] ?”  

6. Universal Quantifier (Claiming something is always/never so or involves all/every/nothing/no-one/ everyone etc.) eg “He never listens to me” “I always lose.”. Metamodel question: Repeat the key word questioningly “Never?”  “Always?” “Everyone?”

7. Modal operator: (Modal operators of necessity: the words should, shouldn’t, must, must not, have to, need to, can’t, it’s necessary to etc. Modal operators of possibility/impossibility: the words can, can’t, will, won’t, it’s impossible to, it’s possible to, may, may not)    eg “I can’t tell him” “I must go now”. Metamodel question: “What would happen if you didn’t?” and “What would happen if you did?”

8. Nominalisation (talking about events that happened (verbs) as if they were “things”) eg “Our communication is hopeless” -sounds like “communication” is a thing.   eg “Anxiety has been my main problem” -sounds like “anxiety” is a thing. Metamodel question: “Who is [doing what] to whom/what?” eg “How are you communicating what to whom?”eg “How do you get anxious?”

9. Unspecified Verbs (Describing what someone did so vaguely that you can’t tell what specifically happened) eg “She hurt me a lot”. Metamodel question: eg “How specifically?”

10. Simple Deletions (Missing part of the sentence -especially who or what was involved) eg “I don’t understand.” eg “I feel angry.”. Metamodel question: “Who/what specifically?”  eg “What specifically don’t you understand?” 

11. Lack of Referential Index (Not saying specifically who did the process in the sentence) eg “They say this is true” eg “People bug me”. Metamodel question: “Who/what specifically?”  

12. Comparative Deletion (Saying something is more, less, most, least, bigger, smaller etc but not saying what it’s compared to)  eg “I’m too shy.” “She’s nicer.”. Metamodel question:  “Compared to what/whom?”

New Metamodel Patterns From Michael Hall

Michael Hall says he updated the metamodel in 1997 after being encouraged to do so by Richard Bandler. He identified 9 new patterns from the work of Alfred Korzybski and others. (http://acnlp.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-meta-model-extended.html)

Over-Under defined Terms. Often these are invented terms for things that do not exist in measurable real world events. Dr Zach Bush is a medical doctor who advocates that we “embrace the SARS-CoV2 virus as nature’s rebalancing”. He says “Is Zach against vaccines? No, Zach is fully for an intelligent, microbiome-informed new model for childhood immunity and vaccination. That’s what I want people to sign on to.” (https://planetwaves.net/zach-bush-interview-on-the-highwire/). The challenge is that there is really no such thing as “an intelligent, microbiome-informed new model for childhood immunity and vaccination” except in Dr Zach Bush’s mind. The term does not refer to a specific set of behaviours that involve anything that could be called “vaccination”. The metamodel question might be “What can you point to that is a sensory based example of this term?”

Delusional Verbal Splits. These are non-systemic ways of thinking, often presented as attempts to get to some pure “essence” uncontaminated by the rest of the system. An example of a system is body-mind, meaning that any claim that one of these can exist without the other is useful for discussion but unhelpful ontologically. In talking about the need to accept death from Covid-19 as a part of life, Dr Zach Bush explains “We have created sterility around the death moment, which is ultimately our reason we’re here. We are here for a transformative experience where we find out we are not biologic, we are spiritual beings, we are light beings. We are spiritual beings trapped in a biologic shell for a moment.” (https://planetwaves.net/zach-bush-interview-on-the-highwire/). This sounds very inspiring because it suggests that we have a pure “true nature” which is separate from our body. The disadvantage of this is that there is no evidence for the state of human being separate from the material world. Maybe it exists somewhere: we need to understand that it does not exist in our everyday measurable experiences. The metamodel question might be “Where does X occur without Y also needing to be considered?”

Either/Or phrases. These are the logical fallacies called “false dichotomies” (https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06357-4). Alex Berenson, in his November 2020 book “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 3. Masks” argues “I wish masks worked. If they did they’d be a cheap easy way to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2…. But they don’t.” The metamodel question might be “In what way are both choices true?” or “What is at other places along the continuum from X to Y?”

Multiordinality. Words that have multiple layered meanings, from the abstract to the specific. “We are going to purge this country of every single incumbent politician who does not support freedom,” explains Harrison McLean, a 24-year-old Australian IT programmer who is actually a member of the male only “Western chauvinist” neo-Fascist organization Proud Boys (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests). The metamodel question might be “X in what time and place specifically?” or a question applying the term to itself like “Can you have X in relation to X itself?” (e.g. “Can you have freedom to choose freedom?”).

Static or Single Words. Words that have absolute meanings, so that it seems a truism to agree with them. “Whatever will be will be.” Zach Bush explains “We need to reorient ourselves to life.” (https://planetwaves.net/zach-bush-interview-on-the-highwire/). The metamodel question might be “Specifically which X?” or “Give me a specific example where that would be a useful idea.”

Pseudo-Words or Non-referencing Words. These are words that have no separate meaning but label an event as being not approved of. “The Great Reset”, initially a term quoted from the 2020 Davos Summit, is an example (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57532368). The metamodel question might be “What does this mean in sensory terms, other than that you don’t like it?”

Identification. “X is [just/only] Y” for example “He is just an idiot!” “This action is simple brainwashing.” The metamodel question might be “In what ways are X and Y similar and in what ways are they separate?”

Personalizing. The person explains an external situation by referencing their internal experience. “I’m under constant attack.” “The world is out to get me.” The metamodel question might be “How do you know this is about you and not just something happening externally?”

Metaphor. Metaphor is a normal way of describing situations, and it is important to identify the limits of the metaphorical isomorphism. For example anti-vaccination passport activists used the metaphor of the Nazi Jewish holocaust to explain why they felt persecuted by the vaccine passports: “Are the vaccine passports going to be yellow, shaped like a star, and sewn on our clothes?” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/03/30/vaccine-passport-comparison-to-holocaust-symbols-stirs-debate/). The metamodel question might be “In what way is this situation not like that one?”

Logical Fallacies

The metamodel is not the only set of tools we have for unpacking delusional thinking. Our rational thinking patterns are often distorted by logical fallacies such as the following, and even recognising these false patterns helps us stay sane. Here I have re-categorised these logical fallacies as “Sleight of Mouth” patterns, using a reframing model from Robert Dilts, and I have offered suggested metamodel questions for each.

Robert Dilts explained the origin of this list of patterns thus: “In order to make a teaching point during a seminar, Bandler, who is renowned for his command of language, established a humorous but “paranoid” belief system, and challenged the group to persuade him to change it. Despite their best efforts, the group members were unable to make the slightest progress in influencing the seemingly impenetrable belief system Bandler had established (a system based upon what I was later to label “thought viruses”). It was in listening to the various verbal reframings that Bandler created spontaneously that I was able to recognise some of the structures he was using. Even though Bandler was applying these patterns “negatively” to make his point, I realised that these were the same structures used by people like Lincoln, Gandhi, Jesus, and others, to promote positive and powerful social change.” (Dilts, 1999, p x).

To understand my categorization of Logical Fallacies into 4 types, it can help to remember that any proposition has premises, or terms that it begins by accepting (what NLP calls presuppositions) and some form of claim of logical connection (what NLP calls cause-effect or complex equivalent: “If this is true, then this will be true”). To rationally challenge a proposition,we could challenge the validity of either of these two components. Fake challenges, however, contain logical fallacies:

• A. Faulty Premises. The basic premises or terminology in the challenge may themselves be non-factual (False Presuppositions or Ambiguities).
• B. Faulty Connections. The claimed connection between the terms in the challenge may be faulty (Reality strategy, Redefinition).
• C. Misrepresented Connections. There may be an attempt to misrepresent the original premises and connection by generalization, deletion or distortion (Change frame size, Counterexample, Consequences, Chunking up, Metaphor)
• D. Distractions. While accepting the original premises and the original connection, there may be an attempt to shift attention from the proposition altogether, by claiming that something else is more important to discuss (Apply to self, Metaframe, Model of the World, Hierarchy of Criteria, Another Outcome).

Such fake challenges can be extremely useful in helping a person let go of a belief that has been unhelpful (such as that “My difficulties at school means I am dumb”), because they hack into the same cognitive biases that generated the equally faulty belief itself. But they are not logical challenges, and if we want our clients to be able to think logically, to live in the real world, we need to teach them to detect the cognitive biases and challenge these logical fallacies, using the metamodel.

A. FAULTY PREMISES

Presupposition

Loaded question: Do you still blame me for everything you’re upset about?”
How do you know that I blame you for things you’re upset about?
Question begging fallacy: “The Bible says God exists, and it is true, so God exists.”
How do you know that the Bible is true?. What if they are both false?

Ambiguity

Ambiguity: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Sexual relations how specifically? Which sexual relations specifically?

B. FAULTY CONNECTIONS

Reality Strategy

Burden of Proof: “Well I say there’ve been many deaths from vaccination. Prove I’m wrong.”
If I make an absurd claim, for example that fairies exist, do you have to prove it wrong?
Argument from ignorance fallacy: “We can’t prove that extra-terrestrials don’t exist, so they do.”
If we can’t prove something false, is it always true?

Redefine

Affirming the consequent: “If men were natural rulers they’d be in charge. They are, so it’s natural.”
Is men being natural rulers the only cause that could lead to men being in charge?
Non sequitur fallacy: “I ate ice-cream then caught a cold, so ice-creams cause colds.”
Does everyone who eats ice-cream always catch a cold?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: “I thought of my friend and then she phoned, so I made her phone me.”
Is everything that happens after something caused by that previous thing?
Correlation fallacy: “We see rising vaccination and rising autism rates. Vaccines cause autism.”
In what other way could vaccination rise and autism also rise?
Is there never a time when two things change at the same time but are unrelated?

C. MISREPRESENTED CONNECTIONS

Change Frame Size/Generalization

Reductio ad absurdum fallacy: “If evolution is true then frogs can turn into princes.”
How specifically does evolution cause frogs to turn into princes?
Slippery slope fallacy: “If we legalise gay marriage we’ll end up legalising bestiality.”
How specifically does gay marriage cause us to legalise bestiality?
Composition/Division; “If it works in New York, it will work anywhere in America.”
How specifically do you know that what works in New York works anywhere in America?
Hasty generalization fallacy: “X is a leftist and supports climate action, so climate action is leftist.”
Has there ever been someone who is a leftist and doesn’t support climate change?
Straw man fallacy: “People can lie while looking left or right, so the NLP eye movements are fake.”
How does the NLP eye movement idea mean that all lying involves looking in one direction?

Counterexample

Inflation of conflict fallacy: “Since some virologists oppose masks, it’s not certain they work.”
So if there is a single exception does it mean that the general pattern doesn’t exist?
So if one scientist believes in fairies does it mean that their existence is equally possible?
Red herring fallacy: “We never know all geology facts so we never can be sure of climate change.”
How does not knowing all geology facts mean that we can’t know this specific fact?

Consequences

Fallacy of the false dilemma: “Since the Bible is true, then evolution is false. It’s either-or.”
In what way are both things true? Has anyone ever thought that both are true?
No true Scotsman fallacy: “No true Christian supports evolution so X is not a Christian.”
Has there ever been a Christian who supported it/ Who defines a true Christian in this case?
Gambler’s fallacy: “It hasn’t worked the last 2 times, so third time lucky!”
How does the future know what you did before? How does what happened last time affect this one?
Ad hoc fallacy: “I would show you my psychic powers but your scepticism disrupts them.”
How specifically does what you expect affect the result in this case?

Chunk up

Denying the antecedent: “Global warming causes heat. It’s not hot now so there’s no warming.”
So how does one event now mean the general trend is not happening?
Sharpshooter fallacy: “Measles outbreaks happen despite vaccination so vaccines don’t work.”
So how does one small event mean that the general effect disappears?

Metaphor

Stacking the deck / 10 Leaky Buckets/False Analogy: “There are stories of vaccine failure, stories of autism, and stories of pharmacological corruption. Something must be wrong.”
How do several incorrect anecdotes add up to researched evidence that is correct?

D. DISTRACTIONS

Apply to self

Tu quoque / Whataboutism: “You say it’s wrong to insult people, but what about the time you insulted me?”
Is the only way to decide whether it is wrong to look at my behaviour?
Are you saying that if I behaved the way I recommend, it would make my claim correct?
Circular logic fallacy: “The Bible, being God’s word, says Jesus is lord, so he is.”
So X leads to Y leads to Z. What if they are all false?

Meta-frame

Ad hominem fallacy (esp. Follow the Money): “You just think that because you are a shill for Monsanto.”
Is it possible to think that without having heard of Monsanto?

Model of the World

Appeal to authority fallacy: Zach Bush is a medical doctor and he says vaccines don’t work.”
Does being a medical doctor mean that what you say is always correct?
Guilt by association fallacy / Poisoning the Well / Godwin’s Law: “Hitler believed in gun control so it’s wrong.”
Has there ever been a time Hitler did something and it was actually OK?
If Hitler liked dogs does that prove liking dogs is wrong?

Hierarchy of Criteria / Another Outcome

Appeal to emotion fallacy: “No-one can tell me what is true for my own child, who I love!”
I get that you feel strongly, but how is that helping us identify what is logically right?
Appeal to nature fallacy: “GMOs are unnatural so unsafe, herbal remedies are natural so safe.”
I get that natural is important to you, but how is it better in this specific situation?
Appeal to popularity, tradition etc.: “It’s Japan’s tradition to hunt whales, so it’s OK.”
I get that tradition is important to you, but how is it better in this specific situation?
Middle Ground: “OK, maybe vaccines don’t cause all autism; let’s agree they cause some.”
I get that agreement is important to you, but how does it help us find what is actually true?
Fallacy fallacy: “You used a logical fallacy, so your conclusion cannot be true.”
I get that my using logical fallacies is important to you, but how does it affect whether this is true?

(https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/01/27/the-rules-of-logic-part-3-logical-fallacies/)

Conspiracy Theory And Its Sources

The most dramatic clusters of logical fallacies that we see in the world are what are called “conspiracy theories”. These are very scary ideas about the way others are controlling the world, and they often even link into extreme ancient fears of demons who drink human blood and steal children. On the level of denominalising Conspiracy Theories, and metamodelling the paranoid process, the easiest metaphorical comparison is with other similar psychological symptoms, especially phobias. Phobias are also by definition “persistent, excessive and irrational fears”. When someone presents with one we don’t examine their fear of elevators respectfully so as to help find some shared truth, in case they are innovators with a new model of the world that may be useful. We ask them (I hope) whether they want to change their fear response, and proceed if they do. But what if they sent us a warning video about the dangers of elevators, hoping to involve us in their belief system. They don’t acknowledge their fear as fear: they see this as a rational warning. In this case I think it is sensible to refuse to discuss the matter. Nothing requires us to discuss every idea, and there is nothing wrong with determining which ideas are beyond our willingness to discuss them. It is not uncommon for people with phobias to refuse to discuss their phobia, but to demand that action be taken against the thing they are phobic of, by the way, insisting in the removal of all flowers from their area so that bees do not come near them etc. Conspiracy Theories are just irrational fears with universal quantifiers added. There is nothing disrespectful about using the term phobias, no matter how many people with what we might call phobias say they do not consider their fear irrational.

Real conspiracies do of course exist, where one or more people attempt to subvert social interactions for their own benefit. Some of the most popular conspiracy theories emerged in the late 1960s, at a time when the USA military was engaging in a war in South East Asia and making several claims about that war that were almost immediately shown to be false to fact (that they began serious intervention after an attack on American ships at the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, for example). Interestingly, some of the earliest of these modern conspiracy theories (such as that the CIA planned the assassination of J.F. Kennedy) were promoted by the “left wing”. Conspiracy Theories are characterised, like much psychotic ideation, by their universality. With this criterion, we don’t have to check whether shape-changing lizards are involved to define it as conspiracy theory. The notion that all the nurses and doctors in all the ICUs across the world are sending in false information to support a bid for world control is intrinsically illogical, and does not require careful parsing for metamodel patterns (see above for these). 

The notion that if hundreds of medical doctors are voicing an idea it cannot be a conspiracy theory is sadly not true. Even in 2016, 12 million Americans believed that the country is run by shape-changing alien lizards, a theory promoted by former sports presenter David Icke. That 12 million include hundreds of doctors (I know two medical practitioners who are practicing in New Zealand, are certified NLP Practitioners, and believe this). No amount of medical training is guaranteed to screen out future psychosis. David Icke believes that the British Royal Family are key shape changing lizard rulers, that the Nazi holocaust never happened, that the 911 attack was planned by the USA government, that he is the son of God, that climate change is a hoax, and (previously) that the world was set to end in 1997 (https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-david-icke-the-conspiracy-theorist-who-claims-he-is-the-son-of-god-11982406). This level of conspiracy theory would be considered psychotic by most people, and yet Icke has become central in the Covid-19 conspiracy movement, and his videos are embraced by people with various professional trainings.

First, let’s acknowledge that the NLP community is fertile ground for such conspiracy theories, for various reasons. Charlotte Ward and David Voas first coined the term “conspirituality” in 2011, to describe the merger of conspiracy theories and New Age spirituality. They argued that these conspiritualist movements are united by a “politico-spiritual philosophy,” which posits that a group of elites has covert control of society and then calls for a “‘paradigm shift in consciousness” that harnesses cosmic forces to emancipate society from the grip of those elites. To the extent that NLP is a “new age” friendly field, it is likely to fill with conspirituality. Secondly, “In a study that included 9654 US adults, 48% of those who had a high school education or less believed there was some truth to the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was planned but only 15% among those with some postgraduate training endorsed this idea.” (Schaeffer, K.A.) By encouraging professionally untrained people to quickly get “certification” as NLP Master Practitioners, NLP could be said to be encouraging the Dunning-Kruger effect, the cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. The initial study showing this effect was done by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 2011. 

Who promotes conspiracy theories online? The key sources are fairly easy to identify. A Cornell University study that analysed over 38 million news articles about the pandemic and confirmed that, “the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around COVID.”(Evanega et alia, 2020). In 2019, accounts removed by Twitter and suspected of being controlled by Russia’s Internet Research Agency sent a high volume of tweets tagged with #QAnon and the movement slogan #WWG1WGA, short for Where We Go One, We Go All. The conspiracy theory that 5G technology has negative health impacts predates the pandemic. “In January 2019 the Russian government’s English-language channel RT featured a correspondent warning that 5G “might kill you” .” This was picked up by conspiracy sites over the next week and became a significant part of the early covid-19 conspiracy theory movement (Evanega et alia, 2020). In short, conspiracy theories are centrally initiated by political actors, rather than by ‘the person in the street”.

NLP and Conspiracy Theories

Over the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, we watched as conspiracy theories became popular in the NLP community, sometimes actually contributing to the death of NLP students who bought into them. Perhaps the most disturbing of the many NLP claims about the pandemic to be posted online, to give a sense of this, is the claim that “Masks, gloves, etc do little or nothing to help you stay safe. The best way to protect yourself is to work with your unconscious to set a shield that protects your nervous system from getting the virus.” This is medically unsafe and scientifically incorrect. It prompted this statement from the NLP Leadership Summit:

NLP and protection against COVID-19 (From https://nlpleadershipsummit.org/nlp-and-protection-against-covid-19/)

In the current (June 2020) Covid 19 pandemic, it has come to our attention that some people identifying themselves as NLP providers have made claims that their psychological methods are the best protection against getting the virus.
We, in the NLP Leadership Summit, are unequivocally opposed to making such claims. No NLP methods have been researched to show effectiveness against contracting the virus. We suggest caution about any individual making such claims.
NLP methods have been shown to be beneficial to psychological health and in dealing with fear and stress. Stress has been proven to weaken immune functioning, therefore stress reduction is a useful addition to other measures we take to stay safe and healthy.
We suggest you remain informed and follow the latest research results as the scientific community learns day by day.
We encourage choosing actions that are considerate of the health and wellbeing of others, in addition to one’s self.

Research That Never Happened

Sometimes, of course, the mismatch between reality and our theories is not merely a result of deletion, distortion, and generalisation, but a result of simply replacing the facts with falsehoods. When I first wrote my book Transforming Communication, in 1993, I reported several research studies related to goal-setting and success. The book was used as a text in various University programs, both in New Zealand and overseas. Unfortunately some of those research studies turned out to be fake. One clue is that I did not have a link to the original research articles and was simply referencing  other personal development books.

Here’s how the story goes: “In 1953, researchers surveyed Yale’s graduating seniors class to determine how many of them had specific, written goals for their future. The answer: only 3%. Twenty years later, researchers polled the surviving members of the Class of 1953 – and found that the 3% with goals had accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the class combined!” Wow. That is way cool. It is quoted in Tony Robbins’ book “Unlimited Power”

Lawrence Tabak of Fast Company Consultant Debunking Unit investigated the research and Robbins Research International (RRI) told him Tony Robbins got the facts from motivational speaker Brian Tracy (who does also quote the research), who in turn directed him to motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. Zig Ziglar’s Dallas office suggested that Mr Ziglar had probably gotten the research from Tony Robbins. Silas Spengler, secretary of the Yale Class of 1953 told Tabak that he never wrote down any personal goals, nor did he and his classmates ever participate in a research study on personal goals.

“Finally Tabak contacted Yale University itself, and Yale University Research Associate Beverly Waters explained despite articles citing the study in publications as diverse as Dental Economics and Success magazines there is no evidence that such a study had ever been conducted. “We are quite confident that the ‘study’ did not take place. We suspect it is a myth.” Brian Tracy, in Solana Beach California, responded to Ms Waters’s findings by explaining: “Heard this story originally from Zig Ziglar. If it’s not true it should be.”

Except, if it’s not true, you shouldn’t be publishing claims about it. I took it out of the next edition of my own book. Let’s face it: somewhere along the way, someone actually fabricated this story and directly lied. That someone was probably one of these prominent motivational speakers. When Brian Tracy says “If it’s not true, it should be true” he is admitting that sometimes our desire to believe something overwhelms our need to be consistent with the reality we know about.

Why people Believe Weird Stuff

It’s not just within the NLP field that such completely fabricated stories gain traction. As an example, consider the wonderful story told in Ken Keyes’ book “The Hundredth Monkey” (1982), and shared in many other books and even a movie or two. The story originates in Lyall Watson’s book “Lifetide” (1979). In 1953-1967, primatologists began providing Japanese macaque monkeys on islands in Miyazaki Prefecture, Kyushu with sweet potatoes to stop them raiding local farms for food. One monkey on Koshima island learned to wash dirt off the sweet potatoes (kumara, as we call them in New Zealand), and several other monkeys in its troop copied that monkey. Watson then explains “One has to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened. So I am forced to improvise the details…. An unspecified number of monkeys on Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea. Let us say, for arguments sake, that the number was ninety-nine and that at 11.00am on a Tuesday, one further concert was added to the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the hundredth monkey apparently carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of critical mass…. The habit seems to have jumped natural barriers and to have appeared spontaneously on other islands.” (Watson, 1979, p 2-8). Wow, cool!

Actually though, we don’t have to “improvise the details”, because we have the research from the primatologists. Scientists don’t “improvise the details” and ignore the research! Primatologist Masao Kawai (1965) wrote an actual scientific report. 36 out of the 49 monkeys on the island of Koshima copied the behaviour of sweet potato washing. The younger ones were more able to learn it – the oldest monkeys never learned. The monkeys also learned to wash wheat, to gesture for primatologists to feed them, and to wash themselves in the ocean. Monkeys on 3 other islands (one per island) learned to wash sweet potatoes at random times over the 14 years, but no other monkeys on their islands copied them. The subject of interest to Kawai and his fellow primatologists was how the monkeys on Koshima learned. To restate, there was no “hundredth monkey moment” when suddenly all monkeys knew how to do the task, and there was no evidence of sudden transfer of skills from one island to others. All the observed behaviours are within the normal range of learned behaviours.

It is such a cool idea that the 3% of us with goals can earn more money than the 97% without goals, just by visualising success, or that ideas are transmitted across the world by magic once a certain critical mass is attained. And hey, these ideas may sometimes be part of the story. But when something sounds too good to be true, we are well advised to check it out.

Michael Shermer looks at this whole issue in his book “Why People Believe Weird Things”. He points out that being smart does not ensure us against believing stupid stuff, and in particular that being knowledgeable in one field does not stop us believing stupid stuff in another field. There are some age correlations, but they vary from subject to subject. Children are more likely than adults to believe that wishing things makes them happen (actually the hope that this could be true gets less and less appealing as subjects get older), but on the other hand older people are more likely to believe in their own power of premonition than younger people, a fact which may well be explained by the error of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the effect that increases paranoia, so that when people are looking for a secret plot against them, they inevitably accumulate evidence for it.

Science, as discussed in previous articles I have written, is a method for continuously evaluating our perceptions, and finding theories that actually work because they match reality. Let me give you a well-known example of why science is important. This is called the birthday paradox. Imagine you are in a training group with 23 people. What are the chances that two people in that group have an identical birthday? Wouldn’t you be amazed if two did? I mean that would surely be proof of some amazing synchronicity. Well, actually the chances are better than 50%. There are 365 days in a year, and most people think that the chances are about one in a twenty, because they only count connections to themselves and they realise that there are 22 others compared to 365 possible choices. Science Buddies (2012) explain “But when all 23 birthdays are compared against each other, it makes for much more than 22 comparisons. How much more? Well, the first person has 22 comparisons to make, but the second person was already compared to the first person, so there are only 21 comparisons to make. The third person then has 20 comparisons, the fourth person has 19 and so on. If you add up all possible comparisons (22 + 21 + 20 + 19 + … +1) the sum is 253 comparisons, or combinations. Consequently, each group of 23 people involves 253 comparisons, or 253 chances for matching birthdays.”

The thing is, our brain isn’t really designed for stuff like this – it’s designed for quick intuitive ideas about how to avoid being eaten. Our guesses are weighted by preset prejudices that have worked in an evolutionary sense, but are not logical. Cognitive  can be grouped into three main categories:

A. Biases due to the way attention and memory work in the brain.

• Anchoring (what it reminds you of from past experiences)
• Availability (what is easiest to believe, use)
• Confirmation bias (believing/ finding evidence for what already makes sense to you)
• Dunning Kruger effect (not knowing what you don’t know)
• Backfire (when a belief is challenged you seek even more proof for it)
• Barnum effect (thinking you hear real details in what were vague statements)
• Framing effect (influenced by context such as glamour of presentation)
• Placebo/Nocebo effect (feeling better/worse because you expected to)

B. Biases resulting from trying to understand and live with other human beings.

• Curse of knowledge (assuming others know what you mean)
• Self-serving bias (assuming you created your successes but not your failures)
• Groupthink/In-group bias (if everyone thinks this, it must make sense)
• Halo effect (liking someone makes you not notice their incorrect logic)
• Reluctance/Mismatching (doing the opposite of what someone recommends)
• Bystander effect (assuming someone else will fix things)
• Spotlight effect (thinking everyone pays attention to you, notices you)

C. Biases due to the model of the world that our ancestors developed from A and B.

• Sunk cost fallacy (I’ve spent so much time/money here, I might as well keep going)
• Declinism (remembering the past as better than it was)
• Optimism/Pessimism bias (influenced by personal expectation things will fail or succeed)
• Just world (meaning) hypothesis (believing things must be “fair” or have “meaning”)

But science and mathematics are tools that take us beyond these guesses. And used carefully, NLP can assist that process. When it doesn’t it, itself, contributes to conspiracy theories, to craziness, to unhelpful models of the world.

Appendices:

Detecting Narcissistic Personality Disorder in Yourself

• I long for attention and admiration for my special abilities and achievements
• People tell me I have difficulty understanding the feelings and needs of others
• I am often preoccupied with thoughts of success, power, and status
• I often tell others about my relationships with high status people
• My achievements and talents are extraordinary and unique
• I tend not to notice the achievements of others
• I feel upset when the people around me achieve success
• I have trouble receiving criticism, even when rationally it seems somewhat true
• I am unique, but only other special people can see that
• Others are often envious or jealous of me
• I am entitled to favourable treatment because I am unique

The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Core 15 items, from Brotherton et alia, 2013).

1. The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or well-known public figures, and keeps this a secret
2. The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement
3. The government uses people as patsies to hide its involvement in criminal activity
4. The power held by heads of state is second to that of small unknown groups who really control world politics
5. A small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major world decisions, such as going to war
6. Certain significant events have been the result of the activity of a small group who secretly manipulate world events
7. Secret organizations communicate with extraterrestrials, but keep this fact from the public
8. Evidence of alien contact is being concealed from the public
9. Some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact
10. The spread of certain viruses and/or diseases is the result of the deliberate, concealed efforts of some organization
11. Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge
12. Experiments involving new drugs or technologies are routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent
13. Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate, or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public
14. New and advanced technology which would harm current industry is being suppressed
15. A lot of important information is deliberately concealed from the public out of self-interest

Sleight of Mouth

Cognitive Biases: Helpful and Unhelpful

Other Articles on Conspiracy Theory

• Discussing Conspiracy Theories with Friends and Family [April 2022] Richard Bolstad
• Conspiracy Therapy (All Therapy is Conspiracy Therapy) [April 2022] Richard Bolstad
• Conspirituality – An Overview of Conspiracy Theories [April 2022] Richard Bolstad
• My own history of Involvement in Conspiracy Theories [May 2022] Richard Bolstad

Bibliography:

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