Is political extremism supported by an illusion of understanding?

Sloman, Steven A.; Vives, Marc–Lluís

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105146

Cited by 12 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Exposing an illusion of explanatory depth (IoED; by asking people to explain an issue) can help people to incorporate consensus of professional in their judgments (Meyers et al, 2020), but this has only been tested in for expert economists and economic issues. Exposing the illusion may also reduce attitude polarization (Crawford & Ruscio, 2021; Fernbach et al, 2013; Sloman & Vives, 2022). Taken together, if consensus information is presented in conjunction with exposing an IoED, people may shift their attitudes toward the consensus opinion.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 vaccine skeptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging.

Białek

Meyers²,

Arriaga

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes about vaccine safety and intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine. We surveyed 729 unvaccinated individuals from four countries in the early stages of the pandemic and 472 unvaccinated individuals from two countries after 2 years of the pandemic. We found belief of vaccine safety strongly correlated with intention to vaccinate in the first sample and less strongly in the second. We also found that consensus messaging improved attitudes toward vaccination even for participants who did not believe the vaccine is safe nor intended to get it. The persuasiveness of expert consensus was unaffected by exposing participants' lack of knowledge about vaccines. We conclude that highlighting expert consensus may be a way to increase support toward COVID-19 vaccination in those hesitant or skeptical. Public Significance StatementUnvaccinated individuals are persuaded by consensus information that public health experts believe the vaccine is safe to administer to humans or that the experts intend to get vaccinated (Study 1, early pandemic) or that they got vaccinated (Study 2, late pandemic). The positive shift in attitude toward vaccination is modest but suggests that some individuals will be more willing to get vaccinated if consensus information on the safety and administration of the vaccine is communicated.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 vaccine skeptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging.

Białek

Meyers²,

Arriaga

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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“…There are two potential reasons for this result. First, Sloman and Vives (2022) show that the experimental effect of explanation is limited for policy issues involving protected values. Their experiment shows that even if self-ratings of understanding are reduced through explanation, attitudinal extremity are not reduced.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Extremism, knowledge, and overconfidence in the covid-19 restriction times

Hatori,

Bhandary

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Public response to restriction policy against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) can polarize into two extremes: one absolutely in favor of restrictions for the sake of human life and health, and other absolutely against the restrictions for the sake of human rights and daily life. This study examines psychological nature of extremism regarding individuals’ self-restraint from social behavior, which was and has been encouraged by the Japanese government as restriction measures, as well as possible measures to mitigate this extremism. We hypothesize that people with more extreme views on self-restraint tend to have less knowledge of this virus, and, nevertheless, tend to be more overconfident in the sense that they falsely believe they understand COVID-19 and the effects of self-restraint. It is also postulated that overconfidence can be reduced by asking them to explain how self-restraint works. To test these hypotheses, we conducted an online experiment on the Japanese adults (n = 500) to measure the extent of their knowledge of COVID-19 and to examine the effect of explanation task on their understanding regarding COVID-19 and extremism. The results indicate that the extreme attitudes were associated with insufficient knowledge about the symptoms, risks, and characteristics of COVID-19. Moreover, their extreme attitudes tended to moderate through this experimental study to an extent that they realized they did not understand COVID-19 including the effects of self-restraint. This suggests that people with extremism may have been overconfident in their own understanding of the COVID-19 restrictions.

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“…Therefore, one important avenue for future research is to explore how to experimentally manipulate intellectual humility in the context of controversial debates. Insights from studies focused on fostering intellectual humility could provide inspiration, for example, work on the explanatory depth approach (e.g., Sloman & Vives, 2022; Vaupotič et al, 2021) or interventions implemented at schools (e.g., Ellerton et al, 2022; Meagher et al, 2019; Porter, Catalán Molina, et al, 2022; Porter & Schumann, 2018; Porter et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%