Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research suggests that peoples learning may be influenced by individual differences in their epistemic beliefs, such asFaith in Intuition (FiN), Need for Evidence (NfE), and belief that Truth is Political(TiP). This study investigated the extentto which these epistemic beliefs influenced belief in scientific information about global warming and trust in sources.Participants read statements about global warming and rated how much they believed the information and trusted thesource. Each statement was presented with a conservative, liberal, or scientific source and framed in certain or tentativelanguage. We found that epistemic beliefs significantly interacted with source and language tentativeness. For example,those with low FiN believed certain language statements more than tentative language statements. Those with low NfEbelieved conservative sources more than scientific or liberal sources. These findings demonstrate how individuals epistemicbeliefs interact with source and language factors to influence belief and trust of scientific information.