What are the Implications of Believing that there is no Truth?

Rebecca Morgan

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Research Mentor(s): Terri Conley, Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 4 (2pm-2:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 7
Presenter: 7

Event Link

Abstract

In this research project, we aim to answer how nescience””or the belief that the truth is unknowable””can affect one’s general outlook. Little research has been done on this topic before, but we hypothesize that believing there is no truth can have a negative effect on other important views, and may be linked to distrust in academics, belief in conspiracy theories, among other things. This may cause those with higher nescience to make less informed decisions, particularly in politics. The way we intend to investigate this is through a survey which combines multiple personality scales, allowing us to compare levels of nescience with other character traits. Scales include Belief in Conspiracy Theories, curiosity about science, intellectual humility, and anti-intellectualism, as well as our own scale to measure nescience.

Authors: Rebecca Morgan, Terri Conley
Research Method: Survey Research