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Previous studies show that trust in science is an important predictor of health behavior. While it varies significantly in the population, the factors explaining this variability are not fully understood. In the present study, we first aimed to investigate the role of previously documented predictors of trust in science, specifically education, political conservatism, religiousness, conspiracy ideation, and openness to experience. Second, we aimed to investigate the incremental value of two novel predictors - intellectual humility and cognitive reflection. An adult sample from the United States (N = 705) completed an online questionnaire containing basic demographic questions and measures of trust in science and the proposed predictors. The results showed that political conservatism, religiousness, conspiracy ideation, and openness to experience significantly contributed to trust in science, while education did not. Furthermore, after controlling for these factors, an aspect of intellectual humility, openness to revising one's viewpoint, emerged as one of the key predictors of trust in science. Our study provides a better understanding of factors contributing to trust in science and highlights a novel malleable factor that could be addressed with future interventions. • Conservatism, religiousness, conspiracy ideation, and openness predicted trust in science. • Education did not predict trust in science. • Openness to revising one's viewpoint emerged as a novel predictor of trust in science. • Another potential predictor, cognitive reflection, did not predict trust in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the psychological consequences of the increasingly politicized nature of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States relative to similar Western countries? In a two-wave study completed early (March) and later (December) in the pandemic, we found that polarization was greater in the United States ( N = 1,339) than in Canada ( N = 644) and the United Kingdom. ( N = 1,283). Political conservatism in the United States was strongly associated with engaging in weaker mitigation behaviors, lower COVID-19 risk perceptions, greater misperceptions, and stronger vaccination hesitancy. Although there was some evidence that cognitive sophistication was associated with increased polarization in the United States in December (but not March), cognitive sophistication was nonetheless consistently negatively correlated with misperceptions and vaccination hesitancy across time, countries, and party lines. Furthermore, COVID-19 skepticism in the United States was strongly correlated with distrust in liberal-leaning mainstream news outlets and trust in conservative-leaning news outlets, suggesting that polarization may be driven by differences in information environments.

We present a large exploratory study ( N = 15,001) investigating the relationship between cognitive reflection and political affiliation, ideology, and voting in the 2016 Presidential Election. We find that Trump voters are less reflective than Clinton voters or third-party voters. However, much (although not all) of this difference was driven by Democrats who chose Trump. Among Republicans, conversely, Clinton and Trump voters were similar, whereas third-party voters were more reflective. Furthermore, although Democrats/liberals were somewhat more reflective than Republicans/conservatives overall, political moderates and nonvoters were least reflective, whereas libertarians were most reflective. Thus, beyond the previously theorized correlation between analytic thinking and liberalism, these data suggest three additional consequences of reflectiveness (or lack thereof) for political cognition: (a) facilitating political apathy versus engagement, (b) supporting the adoption of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, and (c) drawing individuals toward candidates who share their cognitive style and toward policy proposals that are intuitively compelling.