TY - JOUR
T1 - The Role of Conspiracy Mentality in Denial of Science and Susceptibility to Viral Deception about Science
AU - Landrum, Asheley
AU - Olshansky, Alexander
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the organizers of the International Flat Earth Conference for allowing us to interview conference attendees and request email addresses from attendees to participate in our online survey. In addition, we are grateful to Tim Linksvayer, Deena Weisberg, Michael Weisberg, Stephan Lewandowsky, Cam Stone, and Rosalynn Vasquez for providing feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank the Science Communication and Cognition Lab team members for their help and support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/8/13
Y1 - 2019/8/13
N2 - Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theories and they can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists due to individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national, online panel (N=513), and recruited in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N=21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.
AB - Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theories and they can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists due to individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national, online panel (N=513), and recruited in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N=21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.
KW - Conspiracy theories
KW - Fake news
KW - Flat Earth
KW - Motivated reasoning
KW - Public acceptance of science
KW - Public understanding of science
KW - Science communication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073959486&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/pls.2019.9
DO - 10.1017/pls.2019.9
M3 - Article
C2 - 32412208
VL - 38
SP - 193
EP - 209
JO - Politics and the Life Sciences
JF - Politics and the Life Sciences
IS - 2
ER -