Understanding and Mitigating Antiscientific Attitudes toward COVID-19 through an Interdisciplinary Approach
Progetto One of the most striking characteristics of the recent COVID-19 pandemic is the spread of antiscientific beliefs. Antiscientific attitudes, often appearing in the form of fake news, conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific theories, are a very typical phenomenon in our era. In this regard, sense-making has constantly grown harder for most social actors. Given that sense-making is a primary human need, it is plausible that pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories might represent tools for providing sense to contemporary social reality, no matter how simplistic such tools are.
Within such a framework, pivotal is the role played by Web 2.0 Social Media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is well-known how social media have exerted massive effects not only on communication processes, but also political agendas and public opinion processes. Very peculiar is the way social media have changed social actors’ perceptions of reality: antiscientific attitudes, fake scientific news and conspiracy theories thrive in social media, especially in contexts of high uncertainty and fear, as well as mistrust in traditional information channels.
We aim to identify the predictors of antiscientific attitudes toward the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing participants recruited in social-media groups endorsing or not such views. To characterise individuals with NoNo-vax and Pro-vax attitudes, we will exploit an interdisciplinary approach involving researchers from different fields (sociology, social psychology and evolutionary psychology).
After examining the differences between No-vax and Pro-vax individuals in sociological and psychosocial terms (also with reference to social-media dynamics), a more fine-grained assessment will be implemented by testing a subsample of participants in the laboratory. Indeed, previous research has not assessed whether fitness-related traits such as intelligence, attractiveness, health status, etc. could be negative predictors of No-vax attitudes.
The interdisciplinary approach proposed here (involving the collaboration of researchers with expertise in sociology and in social and evolutionary psychology) would enable both a more thorough understanding of factors involved in the spread of beliefs and behaviours toward COVID-19 and the development of interventions (e.g., improvement of scientific and digital literacy, improvement of reasoning skills and critical thinking) targeted at specifically vulnerable groups in order to prevent the related negative outcomes.
In particular, our findings could help to understand the phenomenon of No-vax attitudes, and provide a starting point for developing interventions to both prevent the development and spread of anti-scientific beliefs and mitigate their negative effects.
of fake news, conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific theories, are a very typical
phenomenon in our era. In this regard, sense-making has constantly grown harder
for most social actors. Given that sense-making is a primary human need, it is
plausible that pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories might represent tools for
providing sense to contemporary social reality, no matter how simplistic such
tools are.
Within such a framework, pivotal is the role played by Web 2.0 Social Media,
such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is well-known how social media have
exerted massive effects not only on communication processes, but also political
agendas and public opinion processes. Very peculiar is the way social media have
changed social actors’ perceptions of reality: antiscientific attitudes, fake scientific
news and conspiracy theories thrive in social media, especially in contexts of high
uncertainty and fear, as well as mistrust in traditional information channels.
We aim to identify the predictors of antiscientific attitudes toward the COVID-19
pandemic by comparing participants recruited in social-media groups endorsing or
not