Rolling Myth Lab

Principal investigator – Adam Siwiak

Co-workers – Klara Austeja Buczel, Wiktoria Rabińska

Extensive literature shows positive correlations between pseudoscience, paranormal phenomena, and conspiracy beliefs (Bensley et al., 2019; Darwin et al., 2011; Douglas et al., 2016; Drinkwater et al., 2012; Jastrzębski & Chuderski, 2022; Lewandowsky et al., 2013; Lobato et al., 2014; Ståhl & van Prooijen, 2018). All these beliefs are considered epistemically unjustified (Lobato et al., 2014), and, grouped together, are implausible from a scientific standpoint and lack supporting evidence. Bensley et al. (2019) reported that people tend to exhibit a generalized acceptance of baseless epistemic claims, which appears interconnected as a unified worldview. Hence, it can be said that people who support one kind of such beliefs or claims generally support another ones (Bensley et al., 2019; Lobato et al., 2014).

The problem of epistemically unwarranted beliefs lies not only within mere existence of false claims or unproven theories, but also in its threatening impact on society. This is especially visible in, for example, the subject of climate policy. The scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change leaves no room for reasonable doubt (Cook et al., 2016; Powell, 2019). At the same time, science denial has significantly delayed climate action and remains a major obstacle to effective climate mitigation (Oreskes & Conway, 2010; Lewandowsky et al., 2019). Epistemically unjustified beliefs can lead to health issues (e.g., vaccine refusal), wasteful spending (e.g., homeopathy), imprudent life decisions (e.g., following fortune tellers), prejudice and discrimination (e.g., sexually related phobias, in recent times especially transphobia), or support for radical political movements (e.g., riots against public institutions).

This project aims to assess how belief in conspiracies, paranormal phenomena and pseudoscience influences susceptibility to misinformation. These epistemically unjustified beliefs are usually positively related to misinformation reliance using different procedures (Anthony & Moulding, 2019; Bowes & Tasimi, 2022; Enders et al., 2022; van Prooijen et al., 2022), but what was interesting for us was the post-event misinformation effect (PEM) paradigm. PEM can be defined as integrating false information from external sources into a memory report of an event (Polczyk, 2007). This phenomenon has been studied for about 45 years (Loftus et al., 1978; McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985; Zaragoza & Lane, 1994; Loftus, 2005), including in non-laboratory settings (Lommen et al., 2013). The most common method in these studies is a three-stage procedure (Loftus et al., 1978): participants first view original material, for example a video clip depicting certain situation (such as theft, robbery, car crash, etc.); after some time, they are exposed to post-event information, which includes misleading information that contradicts or adds to the original content (Pezdek & Roe, 1997). The last phase consists of a final memory test where participants are asked to provide answers related to the original event. The effect is revealed when misinformed participants give more misinformation-consistent responses than those who weren’t misinformed (e.g., Loftus, 2005). PEM is especially prevalent in the forensic context - although often considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in legal proceedings (e.g., Lavis & Brewer, 2017; Luna & Martín-Luengo, 2012), eyewitness testimonies can often be found unreliable, leading to wrongful convictions (Smith & Cutler, 2013). Such unreliable testimonies result, e.g., from some kind of memory reports error, and such an error which is most typical is PEM, or suggestibility. Thus, in this project we will use not only PEM paradigm, but also interrogative suggestibility paradigm (Gudjonsson, 1984).

Siwiak, A., Buczel, K. A., Rabińska, W., & Szpitalak, M. (under review). Mindcraft and Mechanistic Archangels: Using analytical thinking to protect eyewitness memory from the misinformation effect enhanced by epistemically unjustified beliefs.

Siwiak, A., Buczel, K. A., Rabińska, W., & Szpitalak, M. (2024). New Age of measuring paranormal and related beliefs: Psychometric properties and correlates of the Polish version of the Survey of Scientifically Unaccepted Beliefs (SSUB). PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7u98d

Siwiak, A., Szpitalak, M., & Polczyk, R. (2019). Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale – Polish adaptation of the method. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 50(3), 259–269. https://doi.org/10.24425/ppb.2019.130699

Siwiak, A., & Szpitalak, M. (2017). The tendency to conspiracy thinking and misinformation. Problems of Forensic Sciences, 112, 139–153.

Publications from the project

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Rolling Myth Lab