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Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories
Open accessAbstract
Belief in conspiracy theories has been associated with a range of negative health, civic, and social outcomes, requiring reliable methods of reducing such belief. Thinking dispositions have been highlighted as one possible factor associated with belief in conspiracy theories, but actual relationships have only been infrequently studied. In Study 1, we examined associations between belief in conspiracy theories and a range of measures of thinking dispositions in a British sample (N=990). Results indicated that a stronger belief in conspiracy theories was significantly associated with lower analytic thinking and open-mindedness and greater intuitive thinking. In Studies 2-4, we examined the causational role played by analytic thinking in relation to conspiracist ideation. In Study 2 (N=112), we showed that a verbal fluency task that elicited analytic thinking reduced belief in conspiracy theories. In Study 3 (N=189), we found that an alternative method of eliciting analytic thinking, which related to cognitive disfluency, was effective at reducing conspiracist ideation in a student sample. In Study 4, we replicated the results of Study 3 among a general population sample (N=140) in relation to generic conspiracist ideation and belief in conspiracy theories about the July 7, 2005, bombings in London. Our results highlight the potential utility of supporting attempts to promote analytic thinking as a means of countering the widespread acceptance of conspiracy theories.
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“Conspiracy belief is correlated with lower levels of analytic thinking (Swami, Voracek, Stieger, Tran, & Furnham, 2014)”
From The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories (2017) · cites this paper as Swami, Voracek, Stieger, Tran, & Furnham, 2014
In the citing paper
“Recent research has linked individual differences in analytic thinking with skepticism about various epistemically suspect information, such as fake news (Pennycook & Rand, 2019;2020), religious and paranormal beliefs (Pennycook et al., 2016;Shenhav et al., 2012), conspiracy theories (Swami et al., 2014), and pseudo-profound bullshit (Pennycook et al., 2015;Pennycook & Rand, 2020).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Swami et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“This result extends prior research that associated analytic thinking with higher scrutiny towards other post-truth phenomena, such as fake news (Pennycook & Rand, 2019, 2020) and conspiracy theories (Swami et al., 2014).”
From The detection of political deepfakes (2022) · cites this paper as Swami et al., 2014
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Metadata
- Authors
- Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., & Furnham, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Westminster (GB)
- University of Vienna (AT)
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Swami, Viren
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-12
- Volume
- 133
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 572-585
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1965444852
- Cited by
- 726
- References
- 105
- Citations by year
- 2026: 49 · 2025: 77 · 2024: 81 · 2023: 71 · 2022: 122 · 2021: 100 · 2020: 94 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 37 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 15
- FWCI
- 55.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- nbn-resolving.de
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- WestminsterResearch (University of Westminster) (acceptedVersion)
- KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- conspiracy theories, analytical thinking, conspiracist ideation, intuitive thinking, open-mindedness, verbal fluency
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Culture, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Personality, Thinking, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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