9/11 was planned by the US Government, Princess Diana was murdered by the royal family, Obama was born in Kenya, the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, Elvis is still alive and in witness protection, JFK’s assassination was an inside job and global warming is a fraud.

These are a few of the many inexhaustible conspiracy theories and surprisingly over 50% of Americans believe in at least one theory according to the Psychology Today article “The surprising power of conspiracy theories” by Sander van der Linden Ph.D.

We consider ourselves logical, to be otherwise is shameful, however our infatuation with conspiracy theories suggests otherwise. Consider the fact that 97% of leading climate scientists conclude that global warming is real, according to The Consensus Project. And yet, people still believe that global warming is a hoax.

How is it that people can doubt its existence while hurricanes Irene, Sandy, and Matthew have mutilated our coasts? When California is still facing a drought with 2011 to 2014 being the driest in California history? When forest fires and pine beetle infestations in Colorado have scarred the landscape as a result of increased temperatures? When, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one in six species around the world faces extinction as a result of climate change?

These are only a few examples of the effects of climate change, yet the results are terrifying. Many agree that the effects of global warming are not an apocalypse that is to happen way down the road—climate change is happening now. The world we emerge into as adults will be very different by the time we retire.

But Linden Ph.D. found in his study of 316 people that after watching a two minute clip about how climate change may be a global conspiracy they were significantly more convinced about the conspiracy, enough to dismiss the facts.

Which leaves us wondering: why?

The answer lies within our own minds in what psychologists refer to as a fundamental attribution error. Also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, this is the tendency to overestimate other people’s actions as being intentional rather than simply random. We as humans love to believe that everything has a purpose or that there is a grand plan.

So it becomes easier to attribute events to a diabolical, global order of bald men sitting in swivel chairs stroking white cats, than to accept the fact that random things happen.

And while the belief of this global order may not appear to be harmful, conspiracy theories pose a significant threat to how prosocial individuals are. Pro-social is behavior that benefits other people or society as a whole, such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering.

When an individual believes that global warming is a conspiracy made up by a group in order to manipulate the population, they are less inclined to engage with scientists, politicians, and other people who work to save our environment. The lasting result is that these environmental activists do not get the necessary help, funding, and power to defend our earth against the environmental disaster that we have caused.

The global warming conspiracy theory causes humans, animals, and earth itself to be put in further danger.

The same result of fundamental attribution errors can be found in other fields. Daniel Jolley and Karen M. Douglas describe in their research article “The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions” how parents exposed to and/or following anti-vaccine conspiracy theories were suspicious of the vaccines and faced “feelings of powerlessness, disillusionment and mistrust in authorities.” The overall result was that they were less likely to vaccinate their children, thus putting not just their child but all the people the child interacts with in danger of the disease the vaccine was meant to prevent.

In this case, these parents also teach their children to distrust the authorities. The children grow up thinking that the government isn’t to be trusted, corporations are evil and global orders intend to rule the world.

These children fall prey to the conspiracy-mindset due to another psychological factor called the conjunction fallacy, in which people will often believe two singular events are more likely than a general one.

This fallacy makes it easier for people to believe that vaccines cause autism and global warming is a hoax rather than just vaccines cause autism or global warming is a hoax. It’s the same reason why on a test when the options are a, b, or both, students often select both, although the laws of probability state that the conjunction of two events is always less likely than the events being separate.

So those who believe in one conspiracy are more likely to believe in another as well, and thus prosocial behavior further decreases.

While society may scoff and joke about conspiracy theories, treating them like a ghost story around a campfire, we should all look a little closer and not believe everything we hear. Sometimes a random event is just that.