No evidence that priming analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories: A Registered Report of high-powered direct replications of Study 2 and Study 4 from Swami, Voracek, Stieger, Tran, and Furnham (2014)*

Analytic thinking is reliably associated with lower belief in conspiracy theories. However, evidence for whether increasing analytic thinking can reduce belief in conspiracies is sparse. As an exception to this, Swami et al. (2014) showed that priming analytical thinking through a verbal fluency task (i.e., scrambled sentence task) or a processing fluency manipulation (i.e., difficult-to-read fonts) reduced belief in conspiracy theories. To probe the robustness of these effects, in this Registered Report, we present two highly powered (i.e., 95%) direct replications of two of the original studies (i.e., Studies 2 and 4). We found no evidence that priming analytic thinking through the scrambled sentence task (N = 302), nor the difficult-to-read fonts (N = 488) elicited more analytic thinking, nor reduced belief in conspiracy theories. This work highlights the need for further research to identify effective ways of inducing analytic thinking in order to gauge its potential causal impact on belief in conspiracies.

Automated summary

Analytic thinking is negatively correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, but evidence for reducing belief in conspiracies through increasing analytic thinking is scarce. This study aimed to replicate two previous studies and found no evidence that specific tasks could increase analytic thinking or reduce belief in conspiracy theories. Further research is needed to identify effective methods for inducing analytic thinking and assess its potential impact on belief in conspiracies.