In this study, we combined the perspectives of psychology and political science to study partisan conspiracy beliefs and to examine the predictors of belief in both true and false nonpartisan conspiracies. From political science, we explored the recently investigated variable of antiestablishment attitudes as well as two political attitudes unexplored in research on conspiratorial thinking: utopianism and government credulity. From psychology, we examined variables that have been consistent predictors in previous research on conspiracy belief: actively open-minded thinking, paranormal beliefs, and the Dark Triad. Actively open-minded thinking was a potent predictor of adaptive epistemic outcomes. We also included a scale derived and adapted from previous work on conspiratorial mentality that was designed to measure the broad-based conspiratorial thinking trait that we posit underlies most specific conspiracy beliefs: the Hidden Causal Forces scale. We found that the path model that best explained the observed correlations depends strongly on whether the conspiracy is partisan or nonpartisan and, in the case of nonpartisan conspiracies, whether the model seeks to explain implausible false conspiracy beliefs, true conspiracy beliefs, or the ability to discriminate between true and false conspiracies.

The thinking disposition of actively open-minded thinking (AOT) has long been known to correlate with liberal ideology. In this study, we demonstrate that AOT is not just a proxy for a liberal worldview. We find that it is AOT-and not liberal ideology-that is more optimally associated with adaptive epistemic attitudes. In a study of 682 subjects, we found that AOT and liberal ideology moderately correlated but, nonetheless, AOT dissociated from liberalism in several respects. Political liberalism was positively associated with several aspects of left-wing authoritarianism, but AOT scores were significantly negatively correlated. Variables associated with non-adaptive psychological states and beliefs (e.g., belief in the paranormal, the Dark Triad, paranoia) were negatively correlated with AOT scores, but uncorrelated with liberal ideology. Political liberalism was positively correlated with the ability to discriminate between mature conspiratorial beliefs that actually occurred and those which did not, but AOT scores displayed a significantly higher correlation. AOT seems to associate exclusively with the parts of political liberalism that lead to positive epistemic consequences and to dissociate from any aspects of liberal ideology that lead to unwarranted belief and non-adaptive action.

The public will rightly not value a science that is more concerned with demographic population matching than with ideas. Taking further steps in the direction of identity politics will reduce public confidence in psychology’s conclusions and reduce trust and respect. If psychology embraces demographic quotas, there will be self-selection out of the discipline, and that self-selection will harm our science.

The recent intense interest in conspiratorial thinking is fuelled by the perception that belief in conspiracies is highly irrational. However, there have been few studies that have examined the associations of conspiracy belief with a comprehensive battery of rational thinking tasks that tap both epistemic and instrumental rationality. The Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking (CART) provides an opportunity to do just that because one of the subtests on the CART assesses the tendency to believe false conspiracies. That subtest is in the part of the CART that measures the presence of contaminated mindware—stored declarative knowledge that embodies poorly justified beliefs. Converging analyses (N = 747) using the 18 subtests and four thinking dispositions measured on the CART indicated that three variables were key predictors of conspiratorial thinking: superstitious thinking, actively open-minded thinking, and probabilistic reasoning. Theoretical consideration of these best predictors, and of the variables that predict the endorsement of true conspiracies, led us to rethink the classification of conspiracy belief as contaminated mindware and move instead towards a conception of conspiratorial thinking as a cognitive style.

Word recognition is a component of the total reading process, and it is therefore natural to attempt to determine the importance of word recognition as a component of reading. A related question concerns whether the ability to recognize words rapidly and accurately determines individual differences in reading fluency. Finally, if a relation were found between word recognition ability and reading fluency, interest would then center on the psychological processes responsible for the relationship (phonetic recoding, orthographic knowledge, etc.). This chapter focuses on these questions.

ABSTRACTThere has been considerable conceptual and empirical progress on the measurement of rational thinking in adult samples. Studies in developmental samples have demonstrated that many of these domains and paradigms can also be assessed in children and youth, especially in adolescent samples. Here, we present an efficient rationality assessment battery for adolescents and youth—the Assessment of Rational Thinking for Youth (ART‐Y). The ART‐Y consists of five subtests: Probabilistic and Statistical Thinking, Scientific Thinking, Avoidance of Framing, Knowledge Calibration, and Rational Temporal Discounting. Two supplementary measures of thinking dispositions are included in the ART‐Y: Actively Open‐Minded Thinking (AOT) and Deliberative Thinking. The ART‐Y battery was examined in a sample of 143 adolescents (mean age = 15.4 years). The five rational thinking subtests displayed intercorrelations largely consistent with those obtained in the adult literature. Age, cognitive ability, problem solving, probabilistic numeracy, and thinking dispositions predicted variance differently across the five subtests of the ART‐Y, but again largely consistent with the adult literature. These measures, along with the ART‐Y subtests, were examined as predictors of two real‐world skills: financial literacy and academic achievement. Scientific thinking, knowledge calibration, and rational temporal discounting were significant unique predictors of financial literacy when statistically controlling for cognitive ability. Scientific thinking predicted academic achievement when statistically controlling for cognitive ability.

Myside bias occurs when people evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior opinions and attitudes. Myside bias is displayed by people in all demographic groups, and it is exhibited even by expert reasoners, the highly educated, and the highly intelligent. Surprisingly, however, the degree of myside bias shown is not predictable from individual difference variables that we would expect to be associated with it. For example, it is not attenuated by cognitive sophistication, as measured by cognitive ability or thinking dispositions. Another way in which myside bias is an outlier bias is that, in most circumstances, it shows very little domain generality and appears to be very content dependent. Individuals who display high myside bias on one issue do not necessarily show high myside bias on another, unrelated issue. Because of these unusual characteristics, myside bias needs a different type of model – a content-based model, such as those deriving from memetic theory.

Actively open-minded thinking (AOT) is measured by items that tap the willingness to consider alternative opinions, sensitivity to evidence contradictory to current beliefs, the willingness to postpone closure, and reflective thought. AOT scales are strong predictors of performance on heuristics and biases tasks and of the avoidance of reasoning traps such as superstitious thinking and belief in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, AOT is most commonly measured with questionnaires rather than performance indicators. Questionnaire contamination becomes even more of a danger as the AOT concept is expanded into new areas such as the study of fake news, misinformation, ideology, and civic attitudes. We review our 25-year history of studying the AOT concept and developing our own AOT scale. We present a 13-item scale that both is brief and accommodates many previous criticisms and refinements. We include a discussion of why AOT scales are such good predictors of performance on heuristics and biases tasks. We conclude that it is because such scales tap important processes of cognitive decoupling and decontextualization that modernity increasingly requires. We conclude by discussing the paradox that although AOT scales are potent predictors of performance on most rational thinking tasks, they do not predict the avoidance of myside thinking, even though it is virtually the quintessence of the AOT concept.

No doubt older work in the dual-process tradition overemphasized the importance and frequency of the override function, and the working model in this target article provides a useful corrective. The attempt to motivate the model using the so-called exclusivity assumption is unnecessary, because no recent dual-process model in the reasoning literature has rested strongly on this assumption.

The bias blind spot is a meta-bias in which people think that psychological biases are much more prevalent in others than in themselves. Such a blindspot appears to be operating in the thinking of the social scientists who study partisan differences. They overwhelmingly feel that their political opponents display irrationality and other epistemically problematic psychological traits. In this chapter, I review the evidence indicating that no such difference in rational thinking tendencies has been proven.

Cross-cultural studies from a large number of societies provide examples of practical intelligence manifested as practical know-how. A particular form of practical know-how that figures prominently in research on practical intelligence is tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is practical knowledge that usually is not openly expressed or taught directly. Although practical intelligence is related to performance in a variety of domains, studies in which both practical intelligence, primarily various measures of tacit knowledge, and IQ have been measured demonstrate that practical intelligence is distinct from fluid and crystallized intelligence. Sternberg has been the most forceful proponent of the concept of practical intelligence as one of three, distinct form of intelligence. Horn and Masunaga provide an account of the merging of a theory of intelligence with a theory of expertise. The increasingly influential alternative is embodied or grounded cognition.