Ambiguity tolerance and conspiracy beliefs: Absolutism matters beyond right-wing authoritarianism in two Japanese studies
Across two Japanese studies, this paper demonstrates that absolutism—a cognitive style favoring binary categorization—is a consistent and unique predictor of conspiracy beliefs, whereas discomfort with ambiguity and a need for complexity are not, even after controlling for right-wing authoritarianism and other covariates.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the landscape of human belief, some ideas are simple, while others are tangled webs of hidden motives and secret plots. When people encounter a confusing event—a sudden economic crash, a mysterious illness, or a political scandal—they often feel a deep need to make sense of it. Psychologists call this the desire for certainty. For decades, researchers have wondered if people who struggle to handle uncertainty are the ones most likely to embrace conspiracy theories. The logic seemed sound: if the world feels too messy and unpredictable, perhaps a story about a secret group pulling the strings feels safer because it offers a clear, if terrifying, explanation. However, the scientific evidence for this link has been messy itself, with some studies finding a connection and others finding none. This inconsistency suggests that "tolerance for uncertainty" might not be a single, simple feeling, but rather a mix of different mental habits that need to be untangled.
A team of researchers in Japan recently set out to untangle these habits. They focused on a specific psychological tool called the Multidimensional Attitude toward Ambiguity Scale, which breaks down how people handle the unknown into three distinct parts. The first part is an emotional reaction: feeling anxious or disturbed when things are unclear. The second is a motivational drive: a genuine love for complex, new, and complicated situations. The third is a cognitive style, or a way of thinking, that insists on splitting the world into strict, opposing categories like good versus evil or right versus wrong. The researchers wanted to know which of these three specific habits actually predicts whether someone will believe in conspiracy theories. To find out, they conducted two separate studies involving hundreds of Japanese participants, ranging from university students to adults from the general public.
In the first study, the researchers surveyed 320 university students. They asked them to fill out questionnaires measuring their three attitudes toward uncertainty, as well as their beliefs in various conspiracy theories. When they analyzed the answers, a clear pattern emerged. The emotional anxiety about uncertainty and the love for complexity had almost no connection to conspiracy beliefs. The only factor that consistently predicted a belief in secret plots was the cognitive style of splitting the world into binary opposites. People who tended to see things as strictly black and white were significantly more likely to endorse conspiracy theories. This finding held true even when the researchers accounted for the students' age and gender.
To ensure this result was not just a quirk of university students, the researchers launched a second, larger study with 657 Japanese adults. This time, the study was carefully planned in advance to avoid bias, and the participants were recruited from the general population. They used the same questions about uncertainty and added more measures, including a test for right-wing authoritarianism, which is a personality trait characterized by a strong adherence to social norms and authority. The results were strikingly similar to the first study. The emotional discomfort with ambiguity and the desire for complexity remained unrelated to conspiracy beliefs. Once again, the tendency to view the world in rigid, binary terms was the strongest predictor. Even when the researchers statistically controlled for authoritarianism and other factors like trust in government or political views, the link between this binary thinking style and conspiracy beliefs remained strong.
The researchers also investigated whether this binary thinking was simply a side effect of being authoritarian. While the two traits were related, the study showed that the habit of splitting the world into "us versus them" or "good versus bad" had its own independent power to predict conspiracy beliefs. It was not just a reflection of a desire for authority; it was a distinct way of processing information that made people more susceptible to stories about hidden enemies. The study suggests that conspiracy theories appeal to a specific type of mind: one that finds comfort in simple, two-sided narratives where the world is divided into clear camps, rather than a mind that is simply anxious about the unknown or bored by simple explanations.
These findings offer a new perspective on why some people are drawn to conspiracy theories. It is not necessarily because they are afraid of the unknown or because they crave complexity. Instead, it appears to be because their minds naturally organize the world into strict, opposing categories. When a complex event happens, this cognitive style makes a simple, two-sided story about a secret plot feel like the only logical explanation. The researchers noted that this way of thinking might be flexible. In their analysis, they found that people who engaged more frequently with arts like haiku poetry, which often embraces ambiguity and multiple meanings, tended to have lower levels of this rigid binary thinking. While the study was observational and could not prove that art changes beliefs, it hints that experiences which encourage holding multiple possibilities at once might help loosen the grip of the binary mindset that fuels conspiracy theories.
Ultimately, this research clarifies a long-standing puzzle in psychology. It shows that the link between uncertainty and conspiracy is not about feeling anxious or wanting complexity, but about a specific way of seeing the world in black and white. By identifying this specific mental habit, the study provides a clearer target for understanding how conspiracy beliefs take root. It suggests that the path to reducing these beliefs may not lie in simply reassuring people that the world is safe, but in helping them become comfortable with the idea that the world is not always divided into simple, opposing sides.
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