Thinking caps and tin foil hats: Relations between intellectual humility and conspiracy beliefs in competitive quizzers and non-quizzers

Despite their poor evidential basis, conspiracy beliefs (CBs) have become increasingly common and have harmful effects. The current studies explore several characteristics that may predict conspiracy endorsement. Specifically, we predicted intellectual humility (IH), the ability to recognize and act on the fallibility of one’s own knowledge, would have a significant inverserelation with CBs. We included other cognitive variables (dogmatism, cognitive flexibility, need for cognition) that research has shown are related to IH and CBs.Study 1 participants (n = 246, Mage = 36.13 years), recruited from an online survey platform, were assessed on IH, the three cognitive variables, and CBs. Both IH and need for cognition had a significant inverse relation with CBs. In Study 2, we recruited a sample of competitive quizzers (n = 233, Mage = 46.36 years), a group that values correctly evaluating knowledge. We predicted quizzers would have high IH and low conspiracy endorsement. These hypotheses were supported. When the samples were compared, quizzers had significantly lower CB scores (M = 1.90) compared to Study 1 participants (M = 2.90). These studies provide evidence that IH can be an omnibus correlate of CBs and offer a potential pathway to mitigate the harmful effects of conspiracies.