Irrational Beliefs

Irrational beliefs are often used as an umbrella term that comprises a variety of psychological constructs: from specific cognitive biases to a wider class of epistemologically suspect beliefs (superstitions, paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs, conspiracy theories etc.) or cognitive styles (analytical versus intuitive thinking), but also unsubstantiated self-related beliefs. This collection of papers illustrates this diversity well. Apart from the descriptive portion of the data, which has merit on its own, the authors provide important methodological innovations in the way these beliefs are measured, but also look deeper in their functionality and consequences.

the call, several groups of authors have contributed their most recent research on the related phenomena (Table 1). In three papers cognitive biases are treated as a form of irrational thinking, in line with the framework in which biases are defined as a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment (Haselton, Nettle, & Andrews, 2005).
cognitive reflection moderated the relationship between intellectual abilities and proneness to anchoring, suggesting that engaging in the cognitive process of adjustment leads to a lower anchoring bias.
A study by Damnjanović, Novković, Pavlović, Ilić, and Pantelić (2019, this issue) investigated how introducing a reference point in Cognitive Reflection Task (CRT; Frederick, 2005) influences the switch between the fast, heuristic system, and the deliberate system. In a counterbalanced repeated design, the authors used two versions of a CRT, i.e. with and without a reference point. The findings of this study supported the hypothesis that introducing reference point increases performance on the CRT and lowers cognitive bias.
In the third study in this group, the authors (Damnjanović, Ilić, Pavlović, & Novković, 2019, this issue) explored how sensitive parents are to outcome bias depending on their involvement in the decision and the domain of decision. They presented the parents with different scenarios varying by involvement (high vs. low), and domain (health vs. non-health related). The scenarios were followed by a positive, a negative outcome or no outcome at all (control situation). Highly involving decisions yielded weaker outcome bias than low-involvement decisions in both health and non-health domain. Introducing a neutral, control group enabled them to further interpret the outcome effects -a highly-involving dilemma followed by negative outcome did not produce significantly different evaluation compared to the evaluation of a decision without an outcome. Although the results confirm the robustness of the outcome bias as a phenomenon, at the same time they illustrate the conditions that could diminish or eliminate it.
Three papers dealt with conspiratorial beliefs. Specifically, two papers explored the consequences of conspiracy beliefs on important societal outcomes, while one paper investigated the inherent structure of conspiratorial They found that people endorsing a conspiratorial interpretation of the catastrophe preferred to distance themselves from skeptics, while skeptics preferred greater distance to conspiracy believers. This effect, however, was stronger in the group of skeptics than in the group of believers, probably because conspiracy beliefs are socially stigmatized. In addition, more global interpretation of national history played a role in this specific conspiratorial belief -people who believed that their group is unique in terms of historical suffering were more prone to interpret the event in a conspiratorial way.
Taken together, findings from these two studies illustrate how the spread of conspiratorial thinking following a collective trauma in certain society can be detrimental to intergroup relations, but also how it contributes to intragroup divides as well.

Žeželj & Lazarević 3
Research conducted by Lukić, Žeželj, and Stanković (2019, this issue) explored a curious phenomenon of believing in mutually exclusive conspiracy theories. The authors replicated previous findings indicating the complexity of the conspiratorial pattern of thinking, i.e., the possibility to believe completely contradictory conspiracy beliefs at the same time. Additionally, their fine-grained analyses revealed mechanisms of the reasoning behind the endorsement of contradictory conspiracy theories. Namely, in overcoming contradictory beliefs people tend to use two strategies: first, the crucial content of the conspiracy theory is extracted while the other information is devalued; second, contradictory scenarios of the same event are treated as possible versions. In other words, these findings demonstrated that conspiracy theories believers are not as irrational as typically portrayed in contemporary literature.
The irrationality of irrational beliefs is further contested in the following two papers in which the authors examine the consequences of superstitious beliefs and beliefs in paranormal phenomena.
As opposed to the accumulated evidence that irrational beliefs lead to negative personal and societal outcomes, Kostovičová (2019, this issue) experimentally investigated a controversial claim that inducing a luckrelated superstition, paradoxically, leads to more rational thinking, i.e. better performance on a list of cognitive tasks (CRT, conjunction fallacy, probabilistic reasoning). She found a negative effect of "lucky charm" on boys', but a positive effect on girls' performance; the effect in girls was mediated by increased self-efficacy. It implies that induction can be beneficial to certain groups, by lowering anxiety and increasing confidence, but detrimental to others. These two studies provide some evidence of potentially positive effects of endorsing irrational beliefs -through alleviating performance anxiety or even existential anxiety. The evidence should, however, be treated as preliminary, as the effects are small and context-dependent -therefore future direct and conceptual replications are warranted.
While Branković viewed experiential/rational cognitive styles as antecedents of ESP beliefs, Jokić and Purić (2019, this issue) investigated personality determinants of the two cognitive styles (Epstein, 1991;Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996). The authors focused on a broader personality space, defined by the HEXA-CO model (Ashton & Lee, 2007) and Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI -Petrides & Furnham, 2001). The results of this study revealed that four thinking styles can be defined by combining rational and experiential dimensions. Although experiential thinking leads to irrational and superstitious beliefs, when combined with high rationality, irrational beliefs can be replaced by rational and logical thinking. Out of the personality traits, TEI was the crucial predictor of experiential thinking and the second best predictor of rational thinking, after Openness to experiences.
Finally, Erceg, Galić, and Bubić (2019, this issue) did not focus on personality traits or motivations, but rather on cognitive and rational thinking abilities as determinants of a broader category of so-called "epistemically sus-Editorial 4 pect beliefs", that incorporate superstitious beliefs, belief in luck, paranormal and ESP beliefs. The authors argue that all these beliefs share one common feature, and that is ontological confusion -for example, blurring the ontological distinction between categories of phenomena, and quote empirical evidence of these beliefs form one higher-order factor (Lindeman & Aarnio, 2006;Lindeman & Svedholm, 2012). They found that rational thinking abilities, cognitive styles, and self-control, but not intelligence, significantly predicted the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. Their results point to the fact that intelligence and rational thinking should not be equated, and that one can deviate from norms for rational reasoning independent of their intelligence.
Taken together, this collection of papers illustrates the diversity of contemporary research on irrational beliefs.
Apart from the descriptive portion of the data, which has merit on its own, the authors provide important methodological innovations in the way these beliefs are measured, but also look deeper in their functionality and consequences. The reader should keep in mind that this special issue was meant not to provide an exhaustive overview of such a wide topic, but to familiarize them with a variety of methods, topics, and approaches. We hope that it would be thought-provoking, especially due to the fact that the authors restrain from value-judgments when it comes to people who endorse them and even explore the potential positive consequences of certain irrational beliefs.

Funding
The authors have no funding to report.