Best of both world(view)s: Endorsement of contradictory beliefs predict conservative ideology

While there are implicit assumptions that ideology is embedded in a particular information processing style, the evidence base is not so solid - some findings suggest that left-leaning individuals are more inclined towards more analytical, open-minded thinking, while others show no relations between information processing style and ideological positioning. One of the reasons for the inconclusive nature of this relationship might be that potentially important aspects of the information processing style are overlooked. For example, the rigid, dogmatic nature of conservative beliefs might be in particular reflected in the endorsement of contradictory beliefs (i.e. doublethink), since beliefs are indiscriminately adopted and then propagated, as long as they are endorsed by relevant authorities. To examine the ideological correlates of doublethink, we conducted a study with a total of N = 655 participants, who filled out alongside doublethink, measures of authoritarianism (both neutral and right-wing leaning), political orientation (social and economic), social dominance orientation, dangerous world and competitive jungle beliefs, political cynicism and dogmatism. The results firstly show that doublethink is most strongly related to dangerous world beliefs (r = .44, p < .001) and authoritarianism (rs ranging from .34 for general authoritarianism to .40 for right-wing authoritarianism; all ps < .001). It was also moderately related to political cynicism (r = .30, p < .001) and weakly to dogmatism (r = .18, p < .001). Finally, it also showed significant relations to competitive jungle beliefs (r = .22, p < .001) and social dominance orientation (r = .13 and r = .16, ps < .001). Not only that, but doublethink had an additional contribution (ΔF ranging from 0.38 to 56.59; ps ranging from p = .556 to p < .001), on top of both social and economic political orientation, for all ideological variables except social dominance orientation (percent of additional explained variance varied from 2% for dogmatism to 13% for dangerous world beliefs). Thus, endorsement of contradictory beliefs seems to be a footprint of a certain set of ideological beliefs - doublethink seems to be most closely related to authoritarianism and the dangerous world beliefs that are often considered to be a precursor of the authoritarian worldview. Our findings thus highlight the need to examine how doublethink contributes to the formation of a conservative worldview and all the ways it manifests in it - for example in different standards or expectations for more privileged versus minority groups.