Why mind viruses are real

Yes, comparing other people’s beliefs to viruses can be cheap and gratuitous, but the idea of “mind viruses” has real scientific merit.

Are there any such things as mind viruses? And if you were infected by one, how could you tell? Viruses of the mind seem to be all the rage these days. In his 2020 bestseller Parasitic Mind, evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad identifies “the tyranny of political correctness” and other “infectious ideas” that are harming our societies. A year later, from a different ideological angle, the philosopher

Andy Norman

published Mental Immunity, a guide to boosting your mental immune system against infectious “mind parasites.” And in his popular science book Foolproof (2022), psychologist Sander Van der Linden advocates “mental inoculation” against misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories. In various ways, each of these books suggests that beliefs act like infectious parasites spreading from one brain to the next. 

Perhaps because of the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, we have all become more attuned to the possibility of tiny pathogens invading our bodies and propagating at our expense. In fact, while we were still in the throes of the pandemic, the WHO itself coined the portmanteau term “infodemic” to refer to outbreaks of disinformation and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. But the idea itself is much older than that. More than thirty years ago, the biologist

Richard Dawkins

wrote about “viruses of the mind” (focusing mostly on religion), in line with his earlier idea of selfish “memes,” a phrase coined in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. And as far back as the late 19th century, sociologists like Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon argued that cultural ideas and behaviours spread through society much like infectious diseases, through imitation and repetition. 

Still, many academics remain dubious. The whole register of disease metaphors (virus, infection, parasite, contagion), they argue, is tendentious and misleading. At best, it just redescribes something we have known all along: namely, that cultural ideas are transmitted from one person to the next. More worryingly, the metaphor suggests that humans are just hapless, gullible victims of whatever infectious ideas they come across. This is not just wrong, they argue, but can also lead to social panics. At worst, by pathologising beliefs, we can end up demonising those who hold them. 

There is definitely something to these worries. Both the Left and Right seem to be equally enamoured with talk about mind viruses, but of course, each side tends to diagnose them among the opposite camp. There is a universal temptation to resort to cheap medical or psychiatric labels for ideas we dislike, which we should resist. To give just one example: during the 2016 US election, each of the two major American political tribes branded the other as suffering from a psychiatric condition: “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “Clinton Derangement Syndrome,” respectively. A concept like “mind virus” can be weaponised in similar ways. Elon Musk’s recent vow to “destroy the woke mind virus” that “infected” his estranged daughter arguably falls into that category.

Still, the idea of viruses of the mind is hard to eradicate, no matter what ideological side you’re on—and we believe this is for good reason. Beliefs can be seen as viruses in three different senses, each of which builds on the others. The richest and most fertile meaning, as we’ll see, is the third: the Darwinian notion that some beliefs have evolved through largely blind selection, independent of our human intentions, to further their own propagation. And recent research (full disclosure: some of which done by us) shows that we should take that notion seriously. But let’s start with the first one. 

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1. Some beliefs spread like viruses.