Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We examined the degree to which cognitive style, cultural worldview, conspiracy ideation, and religious and politi-cal demographic variables correspond to agreement with scientific claims across four domains. Participants rated their level ofagreement with scientific statements in four domains (evolution, GMOs, vaccinations, climate change) along with open-endedquestions to investigate participants’ reasons for their support or rejection, filled out individual difference measures, and com-pleted a demographics questionnaire asking about frequency of attendance at religious services as a proxy for religiosity, andpolitical ideology along the liberal-conservative spectrum. Lower agreement with scientific statements was found to be relatedto a lower analytic thinking style and a stronger conservative political ideology. Our results contribute to a better understandingof the cognitive and social profiles of individuals who reject scientific conclusions and can be useful in designing future researchefforts aimed at investigating science acceptance and science denial.