Investigating Factors Influencing Audiences’ Integration of Scientific Evidence

Abstract

When being faced with scientific evidence, it is important that people integrate this evidence into their belief system. Here we investigate the influences of external and internal factors on lay audiences’ belief updating based on scientific evidence. Participants were presented a series of fictitious hypotheses. For each hypothesis, we assessed their initial beliefs and subjective expertise, presented them fictitious study outcomes, and then assessed their beliefs again. Importantly, the outcomes’ presentation format and ordering were manipulated. Participants exhibited more belief updating when study outcomes were presented simultaneously instead of sequentially. While chronologically ordering outcomes given sequential presentation did not affect belief updating, participants weighted more recently presented outcomes more strongly. We further found that belief updating was less pronounced with increasing subjective expertise, and more pronounced with increasing trust in science and scientific literacy. These results provide practical implications for science communication and the consumption of scientific evidence.