Politics, Personality, and Poor Decision-Making? Psychological Variables’ Impact on Changing False Knowledge

We live in an era where media provide easy access to incorrect information on scientific and psychological issues that perpetuates misconceptions (e.g., autism is caused by vaccines, we only use 10% of our brain, or global warming is not influenced by humans). A theory called conceptual change has been widely used to design methods to revise misconceptions. This presentation will research of how political beliefs, the personality trait open-mindedness, and need for cognition interact with changing knowledge for false. A theory of memory will be presented and experimental results from a reading task explained that assist in changing knowledge for false, scientific, information. Audience members will find the theoretical work about knowledge change compelling and gain insight about the difficulty in presenting factual information in our current political and cultural climate