People resist randomness and prefer intentional explanations for important events.

Evidence

Three mental processes create the predisposition to see powerful hidden forces controlling events. First, we look for intentionality in events. People are averse to regarding anything of social and political importance as random, accidental, or unintended. It is an intolerably “absurdist image of the world to think that a series of coincidences changes the course of history.” In this respect, however convoluted its reasoning and evidence (or absence of evidence), conspiracism is simple, formulaic: the proposition that things are the deliberate work of powerful people is a constant. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 115

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Add-on conspiracies reveal tribalism, not sense-making, as the motive — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 241; Suggestion was an unexplained mechanism that supposedly explained everything about crowds — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 86; People resist randomness and seek deliberate agents behind major events — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 115