Willingness to transmit and the spread of pseudoscientific beliefs

Pseudoscientific beliefs are widespread and can be damaging. If several studies have examined the factors leading people to accept pseudoscientific beliefs, no attention has been paid to the factors contributing to people's willingness to transmit these beliefs. To test whether the willingness to transmit pseudoscientific beliefs contributes to their spread, independent of their believability, we asked participants to rate statements corresponding either to pseudoscientific beliefs (Myths), or to their (correct) negations (Non‐Myths). Statements were rated on believability, on how willing participants would be to transmit them, and on how knowledgeable they would make someone who produces them. Results revealed that participants who believed in Myths were more willing to transmit them than the participants who believed in Non‐Myths were willing to transmit Non‐Myths. A potential factor driving the increased willingness to transmit both Myths and Non‐Myths might be participants' belief that holding the beliefs makes one seem more knowledgeable.     

The metacognitive disambiguation effect

From an early age, children show a tendency to map novel labels onto unfamiliar rather than familiar kinds of objects. Accounts of this tendency have not addressed whether children develop a metacognitive representation of what they are doing. In 3 experiments (each N = 48), preschoolers received a test of the metacognitive disambiguation effect, which involved deciding whether the referent of a novel label was located in a bucket of things “I know” or bucket of things “I don’t know.” Most 4-year-olds passed this test, whereas most 3-year-olds did not. Children’s performance was predicted by their ability to report whether various words and pseudowords were ones that they knew, even after age and vocabulary size were controlled. As children develop an awareness of their lexical knowledge/ignorance, they also develop a metacognitive representation of their tendency to map novel labels onto unfamiliar rather than familiar kinds.     

Deception,Catholicism, and Hope: Understanding Problems in the Communication of Unfavorable Prognoses in Traditionally-Catholic Countries

The doctor's use of deception in appropriate circumstances has commonly been considered a necessity of the medical art. Resistance to full and frank communication is typical of many traditionally Catholic countries, and particularly of Italy, a western country where Catholicism remains particularly influential. The Catholic teaching on truth and lies, and the problem of telling the truth to a severely ill patient is discussed. It is suggested that the contemporary Catholic model of gradually telling a terminal patient the truth, which looks reasonable and feasible in theory, is rarely followed in practice, as in the majority of cases the truth is not told tout court. Problems stem from the way in which medicine is currently practiced in Italy; from the synergism between Catholicism and the medical tradition's grounded paternalism; and from the ambiguity of the term ‘hope’. Catholic ethics in fact recommends that the truth must be told without destroying hope, but the Catholic meaning of ‘hope’ is very different from its meaning in current language.