Abstract
The tendency to believe in conspiracy theories (implying secret and malevolent plots by scheming groups or individuals), incites growing decennial interest among psychological researchers (exploring the associated personality traits, worldviews and cognitive styles of people). The link between the conspiratorial beliefs and the cognitive styles remains of particular interest to scholars, requiring integrated theoretical considerations. This perspective article will focus on the relationship between the propensity to (dis)trust conspiracy theories and three cognitive styles: analytic thinking, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning. Analytic thinking (inclination toward slow and deliberate processing of information in a conscious effort to mitigate biases and reach objective understanding of facts), is a well-studied concept in the context of conspiratorial beliefs, while the negative mutual relationship seems well-evidenced. On the other hand, the evidence on the link with the critical thinking (readiness to consider, reason, appraise, review, and interpret facts to update existing beliefs) has only started to emerge in the last years. Finally, scientific reasoning (ability to apply principles of scientific inquiry to formulate, test, revise and update knowledge in accordance with new evidence), is the least studied of the three cognitive styles in relation to conspiracy theories. The present article will: (a) revise the (lack of) scientific consensus on the definitional and conceptual aspects (by providing theoretical framework); (b) summarize the state of the art on the subject (by providing overview of empirical evidence); (c) discuss directions for future research (especially in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic). An integrated perspective on the relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and cognitive styles of people, may serve to inspire future behavioral interventions.
Highlights
One of the powerful academic portrayals of a world filled with conspiracies, depicts an inhospitable environment, dominated by “a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life” (Hofstadter, 1964, p. 29)
Psychological researchers have intensified their effort to understand the complexities of these radically opposing perceptions, and in doing so have amassed an impressive body of knowledge on personality traits, cognitive styles and worldviews that are frequently associated with beliefs in conspiracy theories
Cognitive and educational psychologists together with philosophers have mainly focused on postulating conceptual frameworks of cognition and rationality (Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010; Díaz et al, 2021), while social and political psychologists have mainly directed their effort toward experimental investigations of the conspiratorial beliefs
Summary
One of the powerful academic portrayals of a world filled with conspiracies, depicts an inhospitable environment, dominated by “a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life” (Hofstadter, 1964, p. 29). Scientific reasoning in particular, encompasses a specialized subset of advanced cognitive abilities, metacognitive strategies and thinking dispositions that permeate the field of science, and include (but may not be limited to) the following operations: exploration of a problem (i.e., identification of main variables and their mutual relationships via inductive and deductive reasoning), generation of hypotheses (i.e., concept formation, formulation of premises and expected outcomes), hypothesis testing (i.e., isolation, controlling and manipulation of variables via experimentation), and evaluation of consequences (Dunbar and Fugelsang, 2005; Han, 2013). Its relationship with conspiratorial beliefs remains scarcely explored (as explained )
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