Running head: GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 1 A new measure of general misconceptions: Relations with rational, intuitive, critical thinking, and monetary incentives Marle Wortelboer Master thesis Economic Psychology Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences 1st Supervisor: W.W.A. Sleegers 2nd Supervisor: F. van Leeuwen March 22th 2019 GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 2 Abstract Past research indicated several issues regarding measurements of (psychological) misconceptions. In this paper, it was aimed to develop a new Test of General Knowledge and Misconceptions (TOGKAM) based on recent suggestions to address previous limitations of Bensley et al. (2014). In order to validate this TOGKAM, relations with rational- and intuitive thinking styles and critical thinking dispositions were tested. It was hypothesized that an Intuitive-Experiential thinking style was positively correlated with TOGKAM scores, whereas a Rational-Analytic thinking style and Critical Thinking dispositions were negatively correlated with TOGKAM scores. In addition, it was examined whether monetary incentives decreased the endorsement of misconceptions. Hypothesized was, that incentivized participants were more likely to use rational and analytic thinking styles and subsequently endorsed fewer misconceptions. Results of this study supported all the hypotheses. Keywords: misconceptions, intuitive- and rational thinking styles, critical thinking, dual- processing. GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 3 A new measure of general misconceptions: Relations with rational, intuitive, critical thinking, and monetary incentives Misconceptions are widely held beliefs that contradict established scientific evidence (Gardner & Brown, 2013; Sak, 2011). Misconceptions, or sometimes called myths, are stable and often deeply rooted beliefs about the world. Common misconceptions such as ‘bats are blind and navigate through echolocation’ or ‘the Chinese wall is the only man-made structure visible from space with the naked eye, are often part of ‘folk wisdom’ (McCutcheon, 1991). Despite the amount of research on the topic, implying sufficient knowledge is available regarding misconceptions, more information concerning the prevalence, origin, prevention and previous test assessments is required. Several studies demonstrated that misconceptions appear within all age groups and do not only prevail among lay people but also among experts of competence, or intelligence, such as with cardiologists and other healthcare workers (Cross, 2005; Sternberg, 1996; Winner, 1996). However, while misconceptions can be found throughout the entire population and within each field of knowledge, their exact prevalence rates are not well known (Garrett & Fisher, 1926; Crowe & Miura, 1995; Swami, Stieger, Pietschnig, Nader, & Voracek, 2012). For instance, within the field of psychology, the prevalence rate of psychological misconceptions is found to range from 40–70% among students (Arntzen, Lokke, Lokke, & Eilertsen, 2010). Moreover, a substantial increase was found from student’s myth recognition scores, from 38.5% to 66.3% (Kowalski & Taylor, 2009). Lastly, Furnham and Hughes (2014) showed that 35% of the 249 psychological myths were believed by over 50% of the respondents to be true. In conclusion, there is argued that these discrepancies in the prevalence estimations are assumed to be partly due to methodological issues (Bensley et al., 2014). GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 4 It is necessary to prevent misconceptions because they tend to pose a threat to society. First, misconceptions form obstacles to learning by impeding the acquisition of new and accurate knowledge (Gardner & Brown, 2013). This is particularly an issue for teachers as students already possess misconceptions before attending science courses (Mestre, 2001; Hammer, 1996). Secondly, misconceptions consist of misleading information which could influence people to make wrong decisions in their everyday lives (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio, & Beyerstein, 2011). For example, people’s inaccurate belief that vaccinations cause autism, prevent them from seeking vaccinations for themselves and their children. As a result, the vaccination-rate against contagious diseases such as measles had strongly decreased (Madsen et al., 2002). In addition, even among experts misconceptions are prevalent with disastrous consequences. For example, it is found that when healthcare workers hold misconceptions as ‘exercise is ‘bad’ for the heart’, which could eventually lead to patients having a slower recovery and reduced rate of return to work (Lin, Furze, Spilsbury, & Lewin, 2008; Angus et al., 2012). In summary, misconceptions could prompt serious challenges for laypersons, policy makers, journalists, attorneys, and others (Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2017). Psychological Origins of Misconceptions One important source for misconceptions consists of a variety of psychological dispositions. In other words, an individual's personal attitudes, motivations, and opinions can shape their beliefs. Moreover, once misinformation becomes fixed in a person's knowledge base, new information is frequently distorted or ignored, resulting in strengthening or the retention of the inaccurate beliefs (Taylor & Kowalski, 2004). Therefore, strongly held, but incorrect beliefs are particularly difficult to change (Vosniadou, 2001; Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz. & Cook, 2012). GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 5 Lewandowsky et al. (2012) argued that awareness, motivation or the availability of cognitive sources are required to be able to reject incorrect information. There are various psychological traits, such as habitual patterns of behavior, thoughts, and emotions that affect whether misconceptions are adopted or rejected. In terms of misconception, critical thinking is the most obvious factor in affecting the endorsement. It is the disposition and ability to retrieve and use information to evaluate knowledge claims. For example, Taylor and Kowalski (2004) showed that students who actively employed critical thinking (CT) skills to evaluate newly encountered information were less susceptible to misconceptions. However, people often fail in signaling difficulties and activate critical thinking dispositions due to people often rely on heuristics (Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2016). Moreover, the acceptance of misconceptions versus scientifically supported beliefs relates to differences in information processing. The dual process theory posits that people have an intuitive system that automatically learns from experience and is largely unconscious (system 1), and a rational system for engaging in verbal reasoning that is conscious, deliberate, and analytic (system 2), (Evans & Stanovich, 2013). For people who tend to endorse psychological misconceptions, an intuitive process may be dominant, whereas, for those who hold fewer misconceptions, a rational process may be dominant (Bensley et al., 2014). To illustrate this, the following misconception can be used ‘Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to hide when they sense danger’. Here, it is possible that people simply recognize this information and as a somewhat social proof argumentation, intuitively accept the misconception to be true. However, there is also a possibility that people more deeply analyze the information and conclude that there is no benefit for ostriches sticking their head in the sand, and reject this information to be GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 6 true. This illustrates that these two systems of information processing affect the determination of misconception endorsement. In essence, within misconception research, the inference of the human brain processes information in two different systems should be taken into account. Pacini and Epstein (1999) came up with a Cognitive-Experiential self-theory as a dual-process model of cognition. They suggested that human behavior is controlled by two distinct information processing systems (1) a Rational-Analytic system that is conscious, controlled, logic-based, and largely affect free, and (2) An Intuitive-Experiential system that is predominantly preconscious, automatic, and tied to intuition and affect. Since these systems are closely related to the dual-process approach, similar assumptions regarding a link with misconception endorsement could be established. From these approaches, explanations regarding the prevalence of misconceptions could be provided. First, it is argued that people’s intuition can interfere with the process of determining information correct or incorrect, resulting in more errors (Myers, 2002). Therefore, effortful reflective thinking is required in order to be able to reject these misconceptions. Measurement Issues A full understanding of misconceptions relies on a reliable and valid assessment of misconceptions. However, despite the importance of misconceptions research, popular measures of misconceptions suffer from severe methodological problems (Crowe & Miura, 1995; Swami et al., 2012). One methodological issue refers to the response format. Misconception measures often consist of a true/false (T/F) format. Participants have to indicate whether they believe a particular misconception is either true or false. However, the T/F format is problematic since (1) responses could be influenced by an acquiescence bias (yea-saying bias), (2) the format of T/F often GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS AND THINKING STYLES 7 constraints responses to be either completely true or false although