Previous research indicates that conspiracy thinking is informed by the psychological imposition of order and meaning on the environment, including the perception of causal relations between random events. Four studies indicate that conspiracy belief is driven by readiness to draw implausible causal connections even when events are not random, but instead conform to an objective pattern. Study 1 (N = 195) showed that conspiracy belief was related to the causal interpretation of real‐life, spurious correlations (e.g., between chocolate consumption and Nobel prizes). In Study 2 (N = 216), this effect held adjusting for correlates including magical and non‐analytical thinking. Study 3 (N = 214) showed that preference for conspiracy explanations was associated with the perception that a focal event (e.g., the death of a journalist) was causally connected to similar, recent events. Study 4 (N = 211) showed that conspiracy explanations for human tragedies were favored when they comprised part of a cluster of similar events (vs. occurring in isolation); crucially, they were independently increased by a manipulation of causal perception. We discuss the implications of these findings for previous, mixed findings in the literature and for the relation between conspiracy thinking and other cognitive processes.

Reasoning heuristics underlie many judgments (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). However, the distinction among these heuristics has never been clear. Availability (the ease with which specific instances come to mind) and representativeness (judgments based on the similarity between a target and an abstract representation) have been used to account for the same phenomena, and the processes underlying each heuristic have not been definitively identified. Construal level theory suggests that events can be represented at either a higher, more abstract level, or a lower, more concrete level, although the effect of construal level on heuristic reasoning has not been fully explored. We propose that high levels of construal increase reliance on the representativeness heuristic, whereas low levels of construal favor the use of availability. In three studies, we test whether the effect of construal level on heuristic reasoning depends on the process proposed to underlie each heuristic. Low levels of construal increase the salience of and concreteness of features and thus increase decisions relying on the availability heuristic (Study 3). On the other hand, because an abstract construal level increases the focus on similarity and abstract representations, high levels of construal increase reliance on the representativeness heuristic (Studies 1, 2, and 3).

The present paper explores the role of motivation to observe a certain outcome in people's predictions, causal attributions, and beliefs about a streak of binary outcomes (basketball scoring shots). In two studies we found that positive streaks (points scored by the participants' favourite team) lead participants to predict the streak's continuation (belief in the hot hand), but negative streaks lead to predictions of its end (gambler's fallacy). More importantly, these wishful predictions are supported by strategic attributions and beliefs about how and why a streak might unfold. Results suggest that the effect of motivation on predictions is mediated by a serial path via causal attributions to the teams at play and belief in the hot hand.

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