Abstract
Science denial is a pressing social problem, contributing to inactivity in the face of climate change, or to a resurgence in outbreaks of preventable diseases. Cognitive factors are a significant driver of science denial, in addition to social factors such as political ideology. Biases pertaining to judgments of contingency (i.e., inferring causal relationships where none exist) have been associated with misbeliefs, such as belief in the paranormal and conspiracy theories. Here, we examine whether contingency biases likewise predict science denial. We show that (a) various tasks used to study relevant biases do in fact load on a single latent ‘contingency illusion’ factor; (b) this contingency illusion bias is associated with increased science denial; (c) the contingency illusion bias mediates the relationship between intuitive (vs. analytic) cognitive style and science denial; and (d) this holds even when accounting for political ideology.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings for the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |
Place of Publication | Seattle |
Publisher | Cognitive Science Society |
Pages | 829-835 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Event | Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (42nd : 2020) - Virtual Duration: 29 Jul 2020 → 1 Aug 2020 |
Conference
Conference | Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (42nd : 2020) |
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City | Virtual |
Period | 29/07/20 → 1/08/20 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright the Author(s) 2020. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.Keywords
- science denial
- individual differences
- causal illusion
- misbelief
- analytic style