Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research showed that individual tendency to believe in conspiracy theories is related to numerous social, personality, and cognitive variables. Moreover, such a tendency may reflect a broader trait for epistemic irrationality, which drives other pseudo- scientific and paranormal beliefs. However, the relationship between conspiracy belief and reasoning ability (fluid intelligence; Gf) was not sufficiently studied to date, even though Gf level strongly influence the way in which individuals think and reason. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found the robust link between conspiracy belief and other irrational beliefs. All those irrational beliefs were also substantially related to the close- minded cognitive style. However, even though Gf significantly predicted other irrational beliefs, it explained less than 2% of variance in conspiracy belief. This result suggests that effective reasoning cannot prevent even highly intelligent people from endorsing conspiracy theories.