Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Health misinformation is a persistent feature of digital environments and poses a challenge for public health and individual decision-making. Prior research suggests that institutional trust, vaccination attitudes, and health literacy are associated with belief in health misinformation, but most evidence comes from contexts with relatively stable levels of institutional trust. Here, we examine these relationships in Argentina, a socio-political context characterized by high volatility and institutional distrust. In this study, we collected original data from a representative sample to assess credibility judgments of true and false health-related information alongside measures of institutional trust, vaccination attitudes, media literacy, health literacy, and beliefs in complementary medical treatments. Adopting an exploratory, structure-mapping approach, we characterize how these cognitive and attitudinal factors are jointly organized. By identifying distinct individual profiles of belief and information evaluation, we clarify patterns of vulnerability to health misinformation.