Joanna Blackman
Research Mentor(s): Terri Conley
Mentor Department: Psychology
Authors: Joanna Blackman, Terri Conley
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 34
Abstract
By manipulating people’s thought processes, political leaders can significantly increase their power over the people. As a result, people may be drawn to ideas that evoke intense emotions rather than ones that support proven scientific data. Previous studies in our lab have shown that nescience—the belief that truth is unknowable or that truth does not exist—can be correlated to negative consequences, including anti-intellectualism, the belief in conspiracy theories, and the belief that pseudo-profound statements are profound. The goal of the current research project is to determine whether or not nescience can be induced, as well as to identify the relationship between nescience and four concepts: anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theory belief, association of meaning with pseudo-profound statements, and stress. The half of the participants assigned to the experimental group were presented with scientific videos debunking the notion that universal truths could exist. Participants in the control group were presented with videos portraying empirical data that demonstrates the effectiveness of certain scientific discoveries. From this project, we were able to better understand how nescience can be induced and to what extent it affects one’s beliefs regarding anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories, pseudo-profound statements, and stress. We were able to induce nescience among the participants in the experimental group, and we found that their stress levels increased to a significant degree. While we did not find significant relationships between nescience and the other aforementioned variables, we saw that the mean levels of participants’ belief in anti-intellectualism increased.
