The role of epistemic beliefs in predicting citizen interest and engagement with science and technology

Abstract

Epistemic beliefsone's beliefs about the nature of knowledgehave been recognized as important predictors of learning outcomes. This study focuses on the role of epistemic beliefs in predicting citizen engagement with science and technology. In accordance with theories of learning and domain knowledge acquisition, the findings highlight the potential importance of epistemic beliefs in motivating individuals to be interested in and to consume informative media content related to science and technology. The analyses confirm that certain cognitive dispositions and epistemic beliefs substantially increase the ability to explain variation in citizens' interest in science and technology and consumption of related news content. If the relationships we observe represent causal effects, enhancing epistemic motivations might be an effective strategy in achieving science communication's goal of cultivating interest and promoting citizen engagement with science and technology.

A framework for understanding reasoning errors: From fake news to climate change and beyond

“…Evidence for this was found across 45 countries (N = 38,113) and, in fact, the effect for CRT performance (higher CRT scores correlate with fewer misperceptions) was actually greater than the effect of political ideology (conservatism associated with greater misperceptions) cross-culturally (Kantorowicz-Reznichenko et al, 2022). Furthermore, the effect of analytic thinking on accurate COVID-19 beliefs may be mediated by social media use (Stecula & Pickup, 2021) such that analytic thinking may influence the media that one engages with (such that more analytic people engage with higher quality sources, see also Choung et al, 2020;Mosleh et al, 2021) There is also evidence that people who are more analytic are (or were) more likely to get COVID-19 vaccinations (Caravaggio et al, 2021;Lindeman et al, 2022;Newton et al, 2021;Pennycook, McPhetres, et al, 2021) and, more broadly, more willing to engage in other preventative behaviors (although the evidence in this case is more inconsistent and likely depends on which behaviors and when/where) (Pennycook, McPhetres, et al, 2021;Stanley et al, 2021;Swami & Barron, 2021;Teovanović et al, 2021). Emotionality also plays a role in COVID-19 misperceptions such that people who are more emotional tend to have more misperceptions, although analytic thinking appears to blunt its impact (M. Li et al, 2022).…”

Valuing different forms of knowledge predicts belief in epistemically suspect claims: Development and validation of the Foundations of Knowledge Questionnaire

“…For example, Garrett & Weeks (2017) developed a three-factor scale of 'Faith in Intuition,' 'Need for evidence,' and 'Truth is political', which were found to be associated with conspiracist ideation and misperceptions about political topics (Garrett & Weeks, 2017;Young et al, 2022). Ståhl and colleagues (2016) also devised two scales to measure the importance and moral imperative of rationality, and these were found to predict belief in unsubstantiated claims (Ståhl & van Prooijen, 2018) and engagement in science (Choung et al, 2020). However, Garrett and Weeks' (2017) inventory covers a range of loosely related constructs that were pooled together to test a priori theoretical predictions.…”

Who supports science-related populism? A nationally representative survey on the prevalence and explanatory factors of populist attitudes toward science in Switzerland

“…Scholarship further indicates that science-related populist attitudes are connected to trust in science and trust in scientists : It assumed that trust can reduce negative attitudes toward science, because trustworthiness perceptions partly derive from a rather stable “propensity to trust” [ 21 ] that can attenuate more volatile reservations against science—such as science-related populist attitudes, which may fluctuate considerably over time [ 70 ]. However, the reverse causality is also conceivable, as trust can be as volatile as science-related populist attitudes and may therefore be reduced by them [ 53 , 65 , 72 ]. Empirical research offers little evidence on the direction of the relationship between trust in science and populist attitudes toward it, but it does indicate that such a relationship exists: For example, it has been found that trust in science and scientists tends to be lower among people who hold pseudoscientific beliefs [ 71 ], refrain from deferring to scientific authority [ 72 ], and believe that science should accept other forms of knowledge like common sense [ 73 ].…”

“…General perceptions of science. Science-related populist attitudes are probably also associated with general perceptions of science: Interest in science and scientific literacy, for example, could be lower among science-related populists, because they tend to reject established science and may thus be less interested in it and reluctant to learn about it [65]. Nevertheless, populist ideation about science and its epistemology requires a certain level of cognitive engagement with questions about the role of scientific knowledge in society and people's daily life.…”