Reading Check #5

Question 1

conspiracy theories

Answer 1

refer to attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an important
event by accusing a hidden coalition of perceived malicious
and powerful people or organizations of having secretly planned and implemented these
events

Question 2

gullible conspiracist hypothesis

Answer 2

conspiracy believers are less likely to rely on a rational mindset
- suggested by a variety of indirect evidence

Question 3

rational consipiracist hypothesis

Answer 3

in certain circumstances, individuals who believe in conspiracy theories may do so in a rational, calculated manner
- does not seem to be in line with reality
- could come more from a self-reported (subjective) critical thinking ability rather than a measured (objective) critical thinking ability

Question 4

What have previous studies found about the link between analytical thinking and conspiracy theorists

Answer 4

• people who strongly believe in conspiracy theories
  show a low level of analytic thinking
• eliciting analytic thinking
  through different procedures causally decreases conspiracy beliefs

Question 5

Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale

Answer 5

• assessed belief in conspiracy theories
• 15-item scale (from 1 = Definitely not true to 5 = Definitely true) measuring the general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories
• constructed in way to avoid referring to known examples of conspiracy theories but only very
  general ideas (e.g., “Certain significant events have been the result of the activity of a small
  group who secretly manipulate world events”
• averaged all the items to form a unique score, with a higher score corresponding to higher conspiracy beliefs

Question 6

Concerns about the use of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale

Answer 6

• concerns about the lack of information on the psychometric qualities of measures of belief in conspiracy theories
  solution: exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses were performed on this scale
• unidimensional nature of the scale (only measures a single construct) not empirically supported (been tested and validated through systematic, scientific research)

Question 7

psychometric qualities

Answer 7

reliability, validity, and overall quality of a psychological measure or test

Question 8

exploratory factorial analyses

Answer 8

generally used to discover the factor structure of a measure and to examine its internal reliability

Question 9

confirmatory factorial analyses

Answer 9

test whether measures of a construct are consistent with a researcher’s understanding of the nature of that construct

Question 10

factor structure of a measure

Answer 10

correlational relationship between a number of variables that are said to measure a particular construct

Question 11

Critical thinking Ability Test

Answer 11

• consists of reading a letter to the editor of a fictional
  newspaper
• writer of the letter argues in 8 paragraphs in defense of the idea that overnight parking should be prohibited in a specific area
• participants were asked to reply
  to each paragraph by assessing and explaining the relevance (or not) of the arguments and for the 9th paragraph, they reported their overall evaluation of the letter as a whole
• write their responses in the format of a letter to the editor
• 3 judges independently assessed the arguments provided by the participants
• scoring system emphasizes a list of critical thinking competence, such as getting the point, identifying good arguments or assumptions, seeing other possibilities or explanations
• averaged the mean assessment score of the three judges to form a single score of critical thinking ability,
  with a higher score meaning higher critical thinking ability

Question 12

How did they assess rater reliability in the Critical thinking Ability Test

Answer 12

• Intraclass Correlation Coefficient
• indicated a moderate to good interrater reliability

Question 13

Intraclass Correlation Coefficient

Answer 13

• assess the reliability or consistency of measurements within groups or classes
• quantifies how strongly units in the same group resemble each other,

Question 14

Results of Study 1

Answer 14

As predicted by the gullible conspiracist hypothesis the higher people scored on the critical thinking test (M = 3.61, SD = 4.54), the less they believed in conspiracy
theories

Question 15

Questions remaining after Study 1

Answer 15

still do not know whether these allegations of a high level of critical thinking based on reported speeches of a visible sub-population of conspiracy believers could be
generalized to a larger population of conspiracy believers
- focus on this secondary
question in Study 2, with an additional measure of subjective critical thinking ability

Question 16

regression slope

Answer 16

represents rate of change in the dependent variable as the independent variable changes

Question 17

linear regression analysis

Answer 17

used to predict the value of the dependent variable based on the value of the independent variable

Question 18

The aims of Study 2

Answer 18

1. confirm the negative association between critical thinking ability and the belief in conspiracy theories to
2. aim not to restrict this association
   to students from one university and on the same academic level

Question 19

Hypothesis from Study 2

Answer 19

if the extracted sample from previously reported statements are representative of what conspiracy theorists actually think, then a positive linear relationship between beliefs in conspiracy theories and self-reported (subjective) critical thinking ability can be observe

Question 20

What is a possibility in Study 2 and how did they test it?

Answer 20

people who strongly disbelieve in conspiracy theories consider themselves to have better subjective critical thinking ability than people with an average level of belief in conspiracy theories
- test a curvilinear relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and individuals’ self-reported (subjective) critical thinking ability

Question 21

How did they measure self-reported (subjective) critical thinking?

Answer 21

• created three items (e.g., “I have good critical thinking ability”), including a reverse-coded item (from
  1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Totally agree)
• averaged these three items to create a unique score (α = .83), with a high score corresponding to a high subjective critical thinking ability

Question 22

Results of Study 2

Answer 22

• negative correlation between critical thinking abilityand belief in conspiracy theories
• no evidence that subjective critical thinking ability was linearly or quadratically related to conspiracy belief.

Question 23

multiple regression analysis

Answer 23

used to model the relationship between one dependent variable and two or more independent variables

Question 24

Two One-Sided Tests (TOST)

Answer 24

• used to test for equivalence between two groups
• assess whether the difference between two groups is small enough to be considered practically insignificant

Question 25

Smallest Effect Size of Interest (SESOI)

Answer 25

• define the smallest magnitude of an effect that is considered practically significant or meaningful in the context of the research
• represents the smallest difference or effect size between groups or treatments that researchers believe would have real-world relevance or impact

Question 26

Significance of the results

Answer 26

• reinforce the credibility of the gullible conspiracist hypothesis
• did not detect any significant relationship between subjective critical thinking ability and belief in conspiracy theories, does not support the rational conspiracist hypothesis

Question 27

Benefits of the design of this study

Answer 27

• observational study
• prevents us from making causal inference about the effect of critical
  thinking ability on belief in conspiracy theories

Question 28

How can the results of this study be applied to the real world?

Answer 28

encourage the implementation of initiatives to reduce conspiracy beliefs through the enhancement of critical thinking ability