Question: Which of the following best describes the adaptive conspiracism hypothesis as explained by van Prooijen and van Vugt? So many things happen to us in any given day, that some of those will be bound to seem unlikely or coincidental. We then ascribe meaning to that coincidence that isn't really there. The number of conspiracies that are known by a population will inevitably be much smaller than the number of conspiracies that nobody knows about. Therefore, in any society there are more conspiracies than people realize. When we encounter a conspiracy theory that turns out to be true, we need to adapt our worldview so that it includes the new information that we have encountered. This is a difficult process. Early humans who had the tendency towards conspiracy thinking had an evolutionary advantage over others, since they detected hidden threats and secret enemies more often.