Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues

Light, Nicholas; Fernbach, Philip M.; Rabb, Nathaniel; Geana, Mugur V.; Sloman, Steven A.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo0038

Cited by 38 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…It has, however, been recently reported that those opposing genetic modification (GM) technology as applied to food [4] and vaccines [5], while having low levels of understanding of the science (objective knowledge), nevertheless report that they do understand the science (subjective understanding). The same has most recently been reported for a diversity of well-evidenced science issues [6], as well as for anti-establishment voting patterns [7]. This accords with earlier evidence that what people think they understand about a subject is related to attitude towards that subject [8,9].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 86%

People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified

Fonseca¹,

Pettitt

Woollard

et al. 2023

PLoS Biol

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People differ greatly in their attitudes towards well-evidenced science. What characterises this variation? Here, we consider this issue in the context of genetics and allied sciences. While most prior research has focused on the relationship between attitude to science and what people know about it, recent evidence suggests that individuals with strongly negative attitudes towards specific genetic technologies (genetic modification (GM) technology and vaccines) commonly do not objectively understand the science, but, importantly, believe that they do. Here, using data from a probability survey of United Kingdom adults, we extend this prior work in 2 regards. First, we ask whether people with more extreme attitudes, be they positive or negative, are more likely to believe that they understand the science. Second, as negativity to genetics is commonly framed around issues particular to specific technologies, we ask whether attitudinal trends are contingent on specification of technology. We find (1) that individuals with strongly positive or negative attitudes towards genetics more strongly believe that they well understand the science; but (2) only for those most positive to the science is this self-confidence warranted; and (3) these effects are not contingent on specification of any particular technologies. These results suggest a potentially general model to explain why people differ in their degree of acceptance or rejection of science, this being that the more someone believes they understand the science, the more confident they will be in their acceptance or rejection of it. While there are more technology nonspecific opponents who also oppose GM technology than expected by chance, most GM opponents fit a different demographic. For the most part, opposition to GM appears not to reflect a smokescreen concealing a broader underlying negativity.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 86%

People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified

Fonseca¹,

Pettitt

Woollard

et al. 2023

PLoS Biol

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“…Instead, our account assumes a difference in the way that people process information: We propose that dispositional overconfidence blocks conspiracy believers from adequately questioning their beliefs and perhaps even realizing that their beliefs are on the fringe. This perspective is indirectly supported by past work finding that people who reject scientific consensus think that they know the most about science (despite actually know the least) (Light et al, 2022) and that conspiracy belief is correlated with stronger "illusion of explanatory depth" (i.e., inflated confidence in their understanding of the causal processes related to political policies) (Vitriol & Marsh, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 87%

Overconfidently conspiratorial: Conspiracy believers are dispositionally overconfident and massively overestimate how much others agree with them

Pennycook¹,

Binnendyk²,

Rand

2022

Preprint

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There is a pressing need to understand belief in false conspiracies. Past work has focused on the needs and motivations of conspiracy believers, as well as the role of overreliance on intuition. Here, we propose an alternative driver of belief in conspiracies: overconfidence. Across eight studies with 4,181 U.S. adults, conspiracy believers not only relied more intuition, but also overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests (i.e. were overconfident in their own abilities). This relationship with overconfidence was robust to controlling for analytic thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism, and was strongest for the most fringe conspiracies. We also found that conspiracy believers – particularly overconfident ones – massively overestimated (>4x) how much others agree with them: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time.

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“…Such a miscalibration of subjective and objective knowledge might have worrisome effects such as, for example, discouraging learning and information searches on the issue or even favoring the preservation and distribution of false information [72]. In fact, research has found positive relationships between knowledge miscalibration and the holding of anti-consensus views on scientific and political issues [73], which might be explained by a reduced sensitivity to new evidence [74][75][76].…”

Section: Effects Of Attitudinal Congruence On Political Participation...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on social media: Relating processing fluency, subjective knowledge, and political participation

Frauhammer¹,

Neubaum²

2022

Preprint

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Encountering political disagreements in our daily lives can discourage us from participating in democratic processes. To date, research has mainly focused on social motives or attitudinal mechanisms to explain this phenomenon. In the present study, we adopt a different approach and highlight metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on processing fluency (i.e., perceived ease of processing) and subjective knowledge as well as their relationship with behavioral outcomes such as political participation. In a pre-registered online experiment (N = 1,258), participants saw a political social media post with six opinionated user-generated comments. These comments either all matched (congruent condition) or contradicted (incongruent condition) participants’ personal opinions. In line with our hypotheses, the congruent stimuli evoked a higher feeling of processing fluency than the incongruent ones. Furthermore, participants in the congruent condition indicated a higher willingness for political participation and rated their own knowledge on the topic as higher than participants in the incongruent condition—even though the factual knowledge gain should be equal in both conditions. Finally, we observed a positive relationship between subjective issue knowledge and issue-specific political participation. Altogether, these findings highlight the importance of considering metacognitive constructs such as subjective knowledge to explain political behaviors and suggest that attitudinal congruence might influence the way we perceive our own knowledge and information processing.

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Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues

Cited by 38 publications

References 48 publications

People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified

People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified

Overconfidently conspiratorial: Conspiracy believers are dispositionally overconfident and massively overestimate how much others agree with them

Metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on social media: Relating processing fluency, subjective knowledge, and political participation

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