“I did my own research”: Overconfidence, (dis)trust in science and
conspiracy theories endorsement
Abstract
Epistemically suspect beliefs, such as endorsement of conspiracy
theories or pseudoscientific claims are widespread even among highly
educated individuals. The phenomenon of conspiratorial thinking is not
new, yet the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a global health crisis of an
unprecedented scale, facilitated the emergence and rapid spread of some
rather radical health related pseudoscientific fallacies. Numerous
correlates of the tendency to endorse conspiracy theories have already
been addressed. However, many of them are not subject to an
intervention. Here, we have tested a model that includes predictors
ranging across stable characteristics such as demographics (gender, age,
education, size of the place of residence), less stable general traits
such as conservatism and overconfidence in one’s own reasoning
abilities, to relatively changeable worldviews such as trust in science.
A hierarchical regression analysis (N=859 participants) showed
that included predictors explained a total of 46% of the variance of
believing in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, with only gender,
overconfidence and trust in science yielding significance. Trust in
science was the strongest predictor, implying that campaigns aimed at
enhancing public trust in both science as a process, and scientists as
individuals conducting it, might contribute to the reduction in
susceptibility to pseudoscientific claims. Furthermore, overconfidence
in one’s own reasoning abilities was negatively correlated with an
objective measure of reasoning (syllogisms test), and positively with
the endorsement of conspiracy theories, indicating that so-called
Dunning-Kruger effect plays a role in pseudoscientific conspiratorial
thinking regarding COVID-19.