| Project Description: Although there has been a dramatic increase in scientific knowledge in the past half century, the prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs is still on the rise in our society. Pseudoscientific beliefs not only could cause a direct threat to the physical or psychological integrity of the ones self or others, it can also be harmful through the loss of money, time and productivity spent on ineffective treatments. Pseudoscientific thinking can also decrease one’s ability to understand and evaluate the findings and implications of scientific discoveries. Because pseudoscientific beliefs can be harmful to believers and society in several ways, research surrounding pseudoscientific beliefs has gained increased attention among scientists and educators. Although there are validated measures of paranormal beliefs, currently there are not any validated measures of pseudoscientific beliefs. The purpose of the present study is to validate a new measure of pseudoscientific beliefs, and to examine how such beliefs correlate to measures of mental health.
Measures of paranormal beliefs, anxiety, avoidance, and our new measure of pseudoscientific beliefs will be administered to participants in groups and should take approximately 30 minutes to complete. Measures will be administered in a classroom. Participants will only be asked to complete a single questionnaire session. No identifying information will be collected from participants. |
