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You are not reading the primary document. You are reading the interpretation of the report by a third party (hence use of the word "saner" which is a value judgment highly unlikely to be presented in academic research of this type). It would help to read original research by these same authors, Wood and Douglas, for some context into the scope of their research.

For example, from a SAGE press release for a 2012 article on research into conspiracy theorists state of mind, at http://www.sagepub.com/press/2012/january/SAGE_BelievingImpossibleCons
piracyTheories.sp:

"...To see if conspiracy views were strong enough to lead to inconsistencies, the researchers asked 137 college students about the death of Princess Diana. The more people thought there "was an official campaign by the intelligence service to assassinate Diana," the more they also believed that "Diana faked her own death to retreat into isolation." Of course, Diana cannot be simultaneously dead and alive.

The researchers wanted to know if the contradictory beliefs were due to suspicion of authorities, so they asked 102 college students about the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). People who believed that "when the raid took place, OBL was already dead," were significantly more likely to also believe that "OBL is still alive." Since bin Laden is not Schrödinger's cat, he must either be alive or dead. The researchers found that the belief that the "actions of the Obama administration indicate that they are hiding some important or damaging piece of information about the raid" was responsible for the connection between the two conspiracy theories. Conspiracy belief is so potent that it will lead to belief in completely inconsistent ideas...