Disproven but still believed: The role of information and individual differences in the prediction of topic‐related pseudoscience acceptance

Abstract

The spread of pseudoscience (PS) is a worrying problem worldwide. The study of pseudoscience beliefs and their associated predictors have been conducted in the context of isolated pseudoscience topics (e.g., complementary and alternative medicine). Here, we combined individual differences (IIDD) measures (e.g., personality traits, thinking styles) with measures related with the information received about PS: familiarity and disproving information (DI) in order to explore potential differences among pseudoscience topics in terms of their associated variables. These topics differed in their familiarity, their belief rating, and their associated predictors. Critically, our results not only show that DI is negatively associated with pseudoscience beliefs but that the effect of various IIDD predictors (e.g., analytic thinking) depends on whether DI had been received. This study highlights the need to control for variables related to information received about pseudoscientific claims to better understand the effect of other predictors on different pseudoscience beliefs topics.

Authority brings responsibility: feedback from experts promotes an overweighting of health-related pseudoscientific beliefs

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to experimentally investigate whether the updating of pseudoscientific beliefs is positively biased after receiving supporting and discrediting information from different sources of information. Our results go beyond the identification of which individuals are most likely to show greater adherence to pseudoscience (García-Arch et al, 2022;Rodríguez-Ferreiro & Barberia, 2021;Šrol, 2021;Torres et al, 2020), and suggest that supporting and discrediting information provided by expert practitioners is differently weighted by the non-professional population. Specifically, our work indicates that when receiving feedback from experts about pseudoscientific treatments, people underweight discrediting relative to supporting information.…”

“…To date, the results of this research suggest that there are a variety of cognitive correlates for pseudoscience endorsement mainly rooted in cognitive biases (Bensley et al, 2020). These beliefs have been associated with well-known phenomena such as illusions of causality (Torres et al, 2020), jump-to-conclusions (Rodríguez-Ferreiro & Barberia, 2021), probabilistic reasoning biases (Šrol, 2021); and self-reported measures of intuitive and analytic cognitive styles (García-Arch et al, 2022;Šrol, 2021). Unfortunately, correlational studies fail to account for how pseudoscientific beliefs emerge in the population and therefore remain limited in informing of effective strategies to ameliorate them in society.…”

“…Stimuli consisted of a set of 30 pseudoscientific statements related to health improvements, health interventions, and prevention of health problems (e.g., "Chiropractic (treatment of the musculoskeletal system) can improve our immune system", "Natural remedies, such as Bach flower remedies, help overcome emotional imbalances", "Massage on the circulatory system (lymphatic drainage) can help to improve the body's defences", see Table 1, Supplementary Materials). These stimuli were extracted from validated questionnaires (Fasce & Picó, 2019;García-Arch et al, 2022;Torres et al, 2020) and complemented with new items based on an official list of pseudoscientific interventions recently published by the Spanish government (https://www.conprueba.es/). Experimental task.…”

“…For example, some patients tend to accept pseudoscientific treatments and avoid information that may discredit them (Shih et al, 2009). Moreover, a recent study revealed that having received supporting health-related pseudoscientific information is a positive predictor of participants' pseudoscience beliefs, whereas receiving discrediting information showed null predictive capacity (García-Arch et al, 2022). This evidence highlights the importance of studying how health-related pseudoscience beliefs are updated after receiving supporting and discrediting information.…”

Authority Brings Responsibility: Feedback from Experts Promotes an Overweighting of Health-Related Pseudoscientific Beliefs

“…To date, the results of these research works suggest that there is a variety of cognitive correlates for pseudoscience endorsement that are mainly rooted in cognitive biases [ 4 ]. These beliefs have been associated with well-known phenomena such as illusions of causality [ 5 , 6 ], jump-to-conclusions [ 7 ], probabilistic reasoning biases [ 8 ], and self-reported measures of intuitive and analytic cognitive styles [ 8 , 9 ]. Unfortunately, correlational studies fail to account for how pseudoscientific beliefs emerge in the population and therefore remain limited in informing of effective strategies to ameliorate them in society.…”