Why do people believe in Conspiracy theories ?

While going through all the news about Coronavirus, one thing that stood out to me was all the conspiracy theories. There are a ton of conspiracy theories around COVID-19, China's role, Bill Gates! etc. This tendency of conspiracy thinking can be traced back to one of the many cognitive biases that we have.

This is "Proportionality Bias" which is basically shorthand for "Something big should have a proportionately big cause". For our reptilian minds, Princess Diana's accident happened because the driver was drunk seems weird. The whole thing was a planned assassination by the "Govt" seems more plausible. Similar kind of explanation for COVID-19. It has disrupted the whole world in such a high magnitude, that we just are not able to accept the fact that this probably was just a ton of bad luck.

Finally, closing argument should be that awareness of such biases is probably the only way we can protect ourselves from falling in the trap. The more you know, the more informed decision you will make.

References:

1. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/account-for-proportionality-bias-big-63232/

2. John Oliver on Conspiracy theories "Last Week Tonight"