Believers in pseudoscience present lower evidential criteria

Abstract

Previous studies have proposed that low evidential criteria or proneness to jump to conclusions influences the formation of paranormal beliefs. We investigated whether the low evidential criteria hypothesis for paranormal beliefs extends to a conceptually distinct type of unwarranted beliefs: those related to pseudoscience. We presented individuals varying in their endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs with two hypothesis testing tasks. In the beads task, the participants were asked to decide from which of two jars containing different proportions of colored beads they were collecting samples. In the mouse trap task, they were asked to guess which rule determined whether a participant-controlled mouse obtained a piece of cheese or was trapped. In both cases, the volunteers were free to decide when to stop collecting evidence before completing the tasks. Our results indicate that, compared to skeptics, individuals presenting stronger endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs tend to require less evidence before coming to a conclusion in hypothesis testing situations.

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.…”

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 health 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 [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ] and suggest that supporting and discrediting information provided by expert practitioners is differently weighted by the non-professional population. More specifically, our work indicates that when receiving feedback from experts about pseudoscientific treatments, people underweight discrediting information relative to supporting information.…”

“…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.…”

Causal illusion in the core of pseudoscientific beliefs: The role of information interpretation and search strategies

“…Although they lack adequate scientific support, these kinds of beliefs are relatively common in western society: 40% of the European population believes in lucky numbers [2], and 37% of the U.S. population considers astrology to be scientific [3]. Several studies have investigated the conditions favouring the presence of unwarranted beliefs, mostly focusing on those related to the paranormal [4][5][6][7][8]. Nevertheless, their possible cognitive basis is still unclear.…”