(Illustration by Matt Chase)
Nate Allred took a crash course in conspiracy theories years ago when his college roommate watched fringe, right-wing TV news shows in the living room they shared. The more the roommate insisted that Allred open his eyes to secret plots orchestrated by nefarious actors, the more Allred became interested in the psychological dimensions of conspiracy thinking. Allred, now an assistant professor of marketing and supply-chain management at the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, has a new paper with his mentor, Lisa E. Bolton, a professor of marketing and business administration at Pennsylvania State University, that demonstrates how scientific literacy undermines conspiracy beliefs, such as claims that climate change is a hoax and that powerful people planned the COVID-19 pandemic.
Allred’s research began with efforts to identify a particular factor that has a strong relationship with conspiracy beliefs, either as a driver that leads people to believe, or as a force that diminishes their susceptibility to conspiracy thinking. Working together, Allred and Bolton developed the hypothesis that scientific literacy mitigates conspiracy thinking. They devised 10 studies to test their hypothesis, hoping to also use their research to create interventions that could be adopted in a variety of contexts.
“Many of the implications of our research are systemic, such as investing in scientific critical thinking in public education,” Allred says. “But that won’t affect your neighbor who won’t get vaccinated right now, so we also wanted our research to include quick, short-term interventions.”
Scientific literacy includes two components: factual knowledge of scientific topics and critical thinking skills that come from scientific reasoning, such as understanding the difference between correlation and causation. For the researchers, a crucial element that emerged early on was the importance of differentiating between scientific literacy and education. Whereas many commentators and policy makers call for more education to combat the spread of conspiracy theories, the researchers found that without specific scientific information and critical thinking skills—for example, to help individuals evaluate GMO safety or vaccine efficacy—more education will not safeguard against conspiracy beliefs.
In one experiment with college students nearing graduation, the researchers examined differences between STEM and non-STEM majors. They found a marked disparity in conspiracy beliefs between students graduating from the same institution and with the same education level. STEM majors with higher rates of scientific literacy were much less prone to conspiracy thinking than their peers who were not STEM majors.
In addition to tests and surveys targeting undergraduates and general populations, Allred traveled to conspiracy conventions to conduct face-to-face data collection on the ground. “Everyone has neighbors, regular people who believe in conspiracy theories, but there’s a more passionate population that I think we need to learn from,” Allred says. “We need to be talking to the people at the rallies.” Using surveys to measure scientific literacy rates in this “high conspiracy population,” Allred discovered that even among the most fervent believers, greater scientific literacy lined up with weaker conspiracy beliefs.
The researchers also drew on secondary sources, creating an international dataset to investigate country-level differences in scientific literacy and conspiracy beliefs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers were able to add another secondary, state-level dataset to track scientific literacy, conspiracy beliefs, and vaccination rates across the United States, to demonstrate the real-world effects of such beliefs.
The researchers found across the 10 studies that two categories of interventions were effective: first, boosting scientific reasoning to help people think like scientists; and second, providing accurate scientific information about a topic related to a conspiracy theory. For the researchers, the first category of interventions proved much more robust, inoculating study participants against future conspiracy beliefs. One experiment featured three-minute videos explaining the difference between correlation and causation. After watching the videos, participants showed improvements in how they evaluated evidence, helping them reject conspiracy theories about unrelated topics.
“Their work provides insights into who is most susceptible to conspiracy beliefs and how conspiracy beliefs gain traction in specific communities,” Meg Meloy, a professor of marketing at Penn State University, says. “With today’s social discourse rife with political conspiracies, and in the context of the upcoming elections, this work is important in helping to target remediation efforts.”
Find the full study: “Conspiracy Beliefs and Consumption: The Role of Scientific Literacy” by Nathan Allred and Lisa E. Bolton, Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming.
Read more stories by Daniela Blei.