Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Holding inconsistent beliefs is widely considered irrational, yet inconsistencies appear pervasive. How do such inconsistencies arise, and when are they remediated? Recent work indicates that inconsistent beliefs can arise and persist when they are not mutually accessible in memory. However, several theories propose that political inconsistencies result from different mechanisms, making them resistant to consistency checking and remediation. Across two preregistered studies (Ns = 1,026; 3,211), we compared the role of accessibility in political versus general knowledge inconsistencies. Participants responded to sets of three interrelated questions designed to elicit inconsistent responses. We found that political beliefs generated inconsistencies at rates similar to trivia beliefs (15-20%). However, upon reviewing their inconsistent responses, participants were significantly less likely to revise political beliefs. Moreover, manipulating accessibility reduced inconsistencies for trivia, but not politics. These results suggest that while accessibility plays an important role in consistency, additional mechanisms govern political inconsistencies.