Inconsistent yet unyielding: Persistence of contradictory beliefs and strategies for their reconciliation

To better understand how inconsistent beliefs persist and whether the tendency to endorse them (labelled doublethink) is malleable, we conducted five preregistered studies and a qualitative follow-up (total N = 1635 Serbian participants). We first found and replicated that doublethink was robustly related to both a more intuitive, superficial information processing style and a lack of ability to spot contradictions (r = .20 and r = .21, ps < .001). We next tested three progressively more direct interventions to reduce doublethink, all unsuccessful - the first one tried to increase sensitivity to contradictions in irrelevant material, the second pushed respondents to reconcile pairs of newly provided inconsistent beliefs and the third made them cross-reference their own inconsistent beliefs. When asked to elaborate on their inconsistencies in semi-structured interviews, respondents did not evaluate them negatively, but instead employed circumvention strategies - attributing incompatibility to the response format or diluting the content of the claims. The most commonly used strategy was to rely on adding additional logical conditions to the beliefs (in 34% of the cases). Although these strategies could reflect rational belief safeguarding mechanisms, they also might allow for moral relativization, double standards or incompatible expectations from others (e.g. posing irreconcilable standards for minority groups).