The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

Abstract

People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. Here, we present data from a cross-cultural study in which individuals (N = 10,195) from a religiously and culturally diverse sample of 24 countries were presented with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. The data indicate a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub "the Einstein effect": across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, nonsense from a scientist was considered more credible than nonsense attributed to a spiritual guru. Additionally, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist vs. the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgments for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored the experimental patterns. These findings suggest that irrespective of religious worldview, science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

Not all bullshit pondered is tossed: Reflection decreases receptivity to some types of misinformation but not others

“…We also found no effect of Source, which was surprising given that past studies have found that pseudo-profound bullshit is rated as more profound when attributed to credible or expert sources than when no source is given (Gligorić & Vilotijević, 2019;Hoogeveen et al, 2020;Ilić & Damnjanović, 2021). However, much of the bullshit that people are exposed to is encountered online (Simpson, 2019) and the way that we presented our stimuli is noticeably dissimilar to the visual formats more common to the ways in which misinformation is often presented online, particularly on social media (e.g., memes, fake news headlines, social media comments, etc.).…”

A Many-Analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

“…The dataset provided to the analysts featured data from 10,535 participants from 24 countries collected in 2019. The data were collected as part of the cross-cultural religious replication project (see also Hoogeveen et al, 2021;Hoogeveen and van Elk, 2018). The dataset contained measures of religiosity, well-being, perceived cultural norms of religion, as well as some demographic items.…”

Religiosity and Credibility of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) of the Civil Aviation Authority of The Philippines (CAAP)

“…Moreover, research showed a significant relationship between religiosity and credibility. Hoogeveen et al (2020) claimed that more people believe in a spiritual guru because they have reasonable judgments. Significantly, Said et al (2019) found that religiosity is negatively associated with fraudulence, implying that religiosity discourages fraudulent transactions.…”