Date of Graduation
5-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Psychological Science
Advisor/Mentor
Behrend, Douglas
Committee Member
Neville-Shepard, Ryan
Second Committee Member
Eidelman, Scott
Third Committee Member
Plavcan, Joseph
Abstract
Conspiracy theories are claims that are unverified, less plausible than the mainstream explanation, and contain a malevolent actor. A potentially related concept is intellectual humility, which is a person's willingness to admit when they are not knowledgeable about a subject and turn to an expert or authority figure for an answer. I hypothesized that adolescents who are more prone to endorse conspiracy theories in general as well as believe in specific conspiracy theories would have lower levels of intellectual humility than their conspiracy-resistant peers. Participants read eight conspiratorial vignettes and answered questions about traits of the vignettes, then filled out the Adolescent Conspiracy Beliefs Questionnaire and the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale. Results suggest that adolescents with higher amounts of intellectual humility are less likely to say that a conspiratorial claim is plausible, and adolescents who are generally conspiratorial are more likely to say that a conspiratorial claim is plausible. However, results also suggest that the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and intellectual humility may not be linear. Future research should investigate these relationships further.
Keywords
Adolescents; Conspiracy Theory; Developmental Psychology; Intellectual Humility; Intellectual Servility
Citation
Honn, C. (2023). Adolescent Perception of Different Conspiracy-Like Scenarios. Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/psycuht/64
