Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware?
The main aim of our study was to investigate whether COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs are driven by a lack of useful and potentially protective mindware or by contaminated mindware. On the quota sample of 501 adult Slovaks, we also investigated whether personally relevant content improves scientific rea...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Slovak Academy of Sciences, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Studia Psychologica |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.savba.sk/index.php/studiapsychologica/article/view/2989 |
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| _version_ | 1849683532010487808 |
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| author | Viktória Sunyik Vladimíra Čavojová |
| author_facet | Viktória Sunyik Vladimíra Čavojová |
| author_sort | Viktória Sunyik |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
The main aim of our study was to investigate whether COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs are driven by a lack of useful and potentially protective mindware or by contaminated mindware. On the quota sample of 501 adult Slovaks, we also investigated whether personally relevant content improves scientific reasoning by using two versions of scientific reasoning tasks – one with coronavirus scenarios and one neutral, but we found no effect. While probabilistic reasoning and scientific knowledge negatively predict belief in
COVID-19 conspiracy theories, anti-scientific attitudes significantly contribute to their higher acceptance. Thus, addressing anti-scientific attitudes and developing probabilistic reasoning and scientific knowledge may be crucial to attenuate health-related conspiracy beliefs.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-fa553990c29544818347dc6cf6b03cb8 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 0039-3320 2585-8815 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-06-01 |
| publisher | Slovak Academy of Sciences, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Studia Psychologica |
| spelling | doaj-art-fa553990c29544818347dc6cf6b03cb82025-08-20T03:23:50ZengSlovak Academy of Sciences, Centre of Social and Psychological SciencesStudia Psychologica0039-33202585-88152025-06-0167210.31577/sp.2025.02.915Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware?Viktória Sunyik0https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6597-5126Vladimíra Čavojová1Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences The main aim of our study was to investigate whether COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs are driven by a lack of useful and potentially protective mindware or by contaminated mindware. On the quota sample of 501 adult Slovaks, we also investigated whether personally relevant content improves scientific reasoning by using two versions of scientific reasoning tasks – one with coronavirus scenarios and one neutral, but we found no effect. While probabilistic reasoning and scientific knowledge negatively predict belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, anti-scientific attitudes significantly contribute to their higher acceptance. Thus, addressing anti-scientific attitudes and developing probabilistic reasoning and scientific knowledge may be crucial to attenuate health-related conspiracy beliefs. https://journals.savba.sk/index.php/studiapsychologica/article/view/2989conspiracy beliefsprobabilistic thinkingscientific reasoninganti-scientific attitudesmindware |
| spellingShingle | Viktória Sunyik Vladimíra Čavojová Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? Studia Psychologica conspiracy beliefs probabilistic thinking scientific reasoning anti-scientific attitudes mindware |
| title | Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? |
| title_full | Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? |
| title_fullStr | Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? |
| title_short | Health-Related Disinformation: Should We Focus More on Reducing the Mindware Gap or Corrupted Mindware? |
| title_sort | health related disinformation should we focus more on reducing the mindware gap or corrupted mindware |
| topic | conspiracy beliefs probabilistic thinking scientific reasoning anti-scientific attitudes mindware |
| url | https://journals.savba.sk/index.php/studiapsychologica/article/view/2989 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT viktoriasunyik healthrelateddisinformationshouldwefocusmoreonreducingthemindwaregaporcorruptedmindware AT vladimiracavojova healthrelateddisinformationshouldwefocusmoreonreducingthemindwaregaporcorruptedmindware |