I voted 'no, harmless' as it's closest to my belief but I think none really fit well.

IMO:

• Conspiracy theories, examined as a set of propositions, are generally unlikely to be true, are supported by dubious logic, shoddy & motivated reasoning, etc

• However, this describes many beliefs beyond conspiracies also. Almost all humans are not 'good at reasoning' in an objective sense, almost all of the time:

  • Lots of people are religious

  • Lots of people are superstitious

  • Lots of otherwise 'logical' people have weird unjustifiable beliefs relating to themselves (e.g. pessimistic/doom biases, self esteem things, anxiety =~ unjustifiable poorly reasoned belief in danger/risk)

  • Overall I don't think I've yet met anyone (myself included) who doesn't believe at least some dumb stuff for dumb reasons :-)

• This is all basically fine and normal. If an attribute describes 99.9%+ of people over human history and we've gotten this far, you can't really call it a disorder, a huge problem, etc

  • There's even some research on this IIRC that people just more or less have a varying set point of contrarian-ness/receptiveness to heterodox ideas and it's beneficial to have some 'weirdos' around overall :-)

• Over and above this, some people do go off the deep end and rewrite their lives around a focus on particular conspiracy theories, isolate from friends over it, or take drastic actions etc (e.g. QAnon type stuff). I wouldn't want to speculate confidently but I'd assume those kinds of extreme behaviours are likely reflective of an underlying disorder.

This is an interesting topic. But the options here are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive, and there’s no single option I agree with. Actually the main problem is that the question assumes a binary. It’s like asking “is consuming pizza an eating disorder?” Well usually not, but it could be, it depends. It sounds like the sort of question someone might ask if they have an axe to grind against pizza.

But this poll inspires me to think about the problem of conspiracy theories more carefully at the epistemic level.. For example, here are a questions to try to get a better handle on things:

Are there widely held mainstream beliefs that are clearly false? Are those “conspiracy theories”?

What defines a conspiracy theory, in objective terms independent of arbitrarily accepted truth? It seems to me that conspiracy requires a level of paranoia and and an unrealistic concept of the ability of a group to organize and deceive. Nonetheless it is very clear that there is lots of deception floating around simply because of the massive divergence of mainstream narratives in existence today.

So what percentage of so-called “conspiracy theories” eventually turn out to be true or might be true? I’m not sure

Overall I’d say that most of the things labeled “conspiracy theories” are generally not true, but the label is for sure used in some cases to create a stigma, suppress an actual truth and stop people from digging deeper.

So sure, buying all conspiracy theories uncritically is probably a mental health issue. But rejecting all conspiracy theories outright, while probably the safer route, also cedes too much control to those who do the labeling.

My thoughts on this:

1. The mental trait of "proneness to conspiracy thinking/theorising", should be distinguished from a conspiracy belief itself.
2. This mental trait should be seen as a spectrum, and it's possible to be too far the other way - i.e. too naive about conspiracies (as your "closed-minded" option implies). Low-level conspiracies (colleagues conspiring to block a promotion of someone who might threaten their position) are a good test for this - are you more prone to consider the possibility of collusion, or to dismiss evidence too easily?
3. Within this mental trait, there's a mentally healthy range, a grey area, and an area well beyond that range where people would be diagnosed with other mental disorders. But this area is probably more clearly defined by stable/unstable mental states rather than whether a belief is extreme/untrue.

4. Belief in established conspiracy theories (e.g. QAnon, anti-vax, 9/11 truth, blood libel) is confounded by the believer's politics or background. Imagine the kid of hardcore anti-vaxxers who just accepts what her parents say. In this case, it's unlikely that this kid has an underlying mental trait that makes her more likely to believe in conspiracy theories - it's just the default.
5. Conversely, people with this mental trait in abundance (e.g. with paranoid delusions) sometimes go crazy about a "true conspiracy" that their family and nurses are conspiring to keep them in hospital/sedated. Their reaction and mental state is incredibly unstable, and they'll have the "wild, connections everywhere!" mindset.

David McRaney explores this topic vastly, and from what I can recall, the explanation has nothing to do with mental illness and everything to do with social belonging, i.e.: no one will abandon a conspiracy theory because it has been proven wrong by facts; they may leave it behind if their group of reference moves out of it, or if they find a new group of reference.

This is why these beliefs appear irrational and fact resistant.

These ideas are often not the result of stupidity or ignorance but are tied to how the human brain processes information and maintains social cohesion. They are affected by cognitive bias, motivated reasoning, preference for narrative over factfulness, etc. It is exactly how the mind is supposed to work because we’re social animals.

Of course my set of beliefs is perfectly rational and fact supported, unlike the beliefs of those people, who clearly suffer from a mental disorder.

I think the question is a little flawed, and the answer is "none of these." I remember studying conspiracy theories in college, and from what I remember, conspiracy theories are less of a "mental disorder" and more of a "disorganized thought pattern." This might sound like a really strange distinction to make, but I think it's an important one. Conspiracy theories are less like a mental disorder and more like a sort of mental pitfall, a short-circuiting of the brain, a form of weaponized heuristic-building.

If I remember the academic definition I learned, most conspiracy theories have three aspects: one, they believe there is a conspiracy (obviously) and that the conspirators are strong enough to carry it out (and usually influence what people know about the conspiracy). Two, conspiracy theories see the world in pure good versus evil, with anyone not acting to further the aims of Good therefore working either directly or indirectly for the forces of evil. Three, they have a flawed, skewed relationship to evidence - rather than using the evidence to form a belief, evidence is instead used to bolster a belief, with no regard to how strong or even how real that evidence is.

None of these aspects involve The Truth whatsoever, because The Truth is irrelevant to whether or not something is a conspiracy theory. CIA infiltrating left-wing political movements is a conspiracy theory despite it being true. JFK assassination theories are conspiracy theories regardless of whether or not they're false. The Truth doesn't come into play other than by accident. The closest it gets is something that could be true being used to justify a belief, regardless of how true it actually is.

Conspiracy theories are not in and of themselves a "mental disorder." It is the brain working as normal, building and using its preexisting notions and mental heuristics to build a "gut feeling" and then bolstering that gut feeling wth any evidence it can find to verify it. It's like a sort of cargo cult of epistemology. It doesn't reach the level of "mental disorder" because it's something literally all of us can fall into under the right circumstances. Some people with mental disorders can fall into them easier, and people raised under certain circumstances for sure, but the main aspects of conspiratorial thought have become intrinsic to our modern political landscape (Good Versus Evil, quick heuristics replacing deep understanding, the abdication of power by the powerless to the powerful to work on their behalf). All of this sets aside the social aspects of conspiracy theories, which would add even more wrinkles to the thing.

Can be a symptom but is not itself a disorder. Schizophrenia can cause delusions but so can misinformation. The fault can be hardware, software, or input and broken clocks are right twice every day.

How about "no, because conspiracy theories are often but not always false, and believing in false things is often but not always a result of impaired reasoning, and impaired reasoning is often but not always a symptom of some mental disorders, rather than being the disorder itself"

Saying "believing in conspiracy theories is a type of mental disorder" is a bit like saying "guns are a type of military requirement, getting shot is a potential result of using a gun, dying in combat is often from getting shot, casualties of war are often deaths in combat, therefore casualties of war are a type of military equipment".

Like sure they're heavily connected, but saying they're the same is mixing up meanings of words.

@TheAllMemeingEye that indirectness is exactly what I was going for with "Yes, but it's a symptom of other disorders, not it's own thing." What about that answer didn't feel right?

Edit: I assume it's some combo of:

• Impaired reasoning isn't a mental disorder

• Needs more hedging about the root cause, because many causes can lead to similar end states.

@DanHomerick I definitely wouldn't count that as a yes, specifically due to all the layers of separation, but others may disagree

@TheAllMemeingEye thanks makes sense. Thanks for voting, and following up!

@DanHomerick I'm with @TheAllMemeingEye, I don't think it makes sense to call this "yes", because "can be a symptom of a disorder" is importantly different from "is always a symptom of a disorder". One might very well believe in conspiracy theories due to poor information or bad reasoning. Sometimes people are wrong--even very wrong!--for mundane reasons.