“I contain multitudes”: Exploring individual differences in proneness to doublethink

Abstract

Despite a large body of work on consistency as a basic psychological need, people often simultaneously endorse contradictory beliefs. If they do, we say they are prone to doublethink. Across two studies (Study 1 – N = 240; Study 2 – N = 149), we develop a scale to assess this tendency and explore its predictivity of conspiratorial beliefs. We show that it is possible to capture individual differences in proneness to doublethink, and that this tendency meaningfully relates to both thinking styles and conspiratorial beliefs. Furthermore, doublethink contributes to prediction of conspiratorial beliefs, over and above measures of thinking styles, while a frequently used measure of self-assessed preference for consistency does not. We conclude by proposing two ways to consider doublethink: either as a high entropy thinking style that easily encompasses contradictory beliefs or as a lack of ability to spot inconsistencies. In Study 3 (N=234), we will contrast these two conceptualizations, by relating doublethink a. to the ability to spot inconsistencies in neutral material and b. to different measures of thinking styles, while controlling for working memory capacity.