There has been considerable interest in how conspiratorial thinking is related to measures of rationality. The earliest scales measuring individual differences conspiratorial thinking were constructed under the assumption that such beliefs were clearly and obviously irrational. Our earlier research with the Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking (CART) included a subtest to assess the tendency to endorse conspiracy beliefs. The endorsement of conspiracy beliefs was predicted by superstitious thinking, actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and probabilistic reasoning. Based on further investigation of the nature of conspiratorial thinking, we found that the AOT was not only a significant predictor of belief in false conspiracies, but also belief in true conspiracies, and the ability to discriminate true from false conspiracies. Contested beliefs, an additional broad class of beliefs that refer to specific contemporary conspiracy beliefs that are not inevitably false, were not related to AOT relative to ideology. Based on this work, I will discuss how our thinking about conspiratorial beliefs has evolved from a type of contaminated mindware to conspiratorial thinking as a cognitive style. In addition, the consistent and increasingly explanatory role of AOT in this work will be discussed. Early research with the AOT demonstrated that it was a strong predictor of performance on heuristics and biases tasks, and the current research further elucidate the properties of the AOT in domains that require discrimination of epistemic attitudes. Throughout these studies, the AOT Scale has been a consistent predictor of not only identifying when these types of beliefs are maladaptive, but also a measure that signals discrimination of unhealthy epistemic attitudes and beliefs.

References

Stanovich, K. E., & Toplak, M. E. (2026). Actively open-minded thinking and liberal ideology:  Associations and dissociations, Thinking & Reasoning, 32, 1-26. DOI:10.1080/13546783.2025.2520186

Stanovich, K. E., & Toplak, M. E. (2025). Reorienting the study of conspiratorial thinking in  psychology: From contaminated mindware to belief in hidden causal forces. Applied  Cognitive Psychology, 39(5), e70116. DOI: 10.1002/acp.70116.

Stanovich, K. E. & Toplak, M. E. (2025). Conspiracy beliefs in the context of a comprehensive  rationality assessment. Thinking & Reasoning, 31(1), 7-29. DOI: 10.1080/13546783.2024.2368026

Stanovich, K. E. & Toplak, M.E. (2023) Actively open-minded thinking and its  measurement. Journal of Intelligence. 2023; 11(2):27. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/11/2/27