IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v18y2021i21p11196-d664233.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pseudoscientific Health Beliefs and the Perceived Frequency of Causal Relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Julie Y. L. Chow

    (School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
    School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia)

  • Ben Colagiuri

    (School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia)

  • Benjamin M. Rottman

    (Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA)

  • Micah Goldwater

    (School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia)

  • Evan J. Livesey

    (School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia)

Abstract

Beliefs about cause and effect, including health beliefs, are thought to be related to the frequency of the target outcome (e.g., health recovery) occurring when the putative cause is present and when it is absent (treatment administered vs. no treatment); this is known as contingency learning . However, it is unclear whether unvalidated health beliefs, where there is no evidence of cause–effect contingency, are also influenced by the subjective perception of a meaningful contingency between events. In a survey, respondents were asked to judge a range of health beliefs and estimate the probability of the target outcome occurring with and without the putative cause present. Overall, we found evidence that causal beliefs are related to perceived cause–effect contingency. Interestingly, beliefs that were not predicted by perceived contingency were meaningfully related to scores on the paranormal belief scale. These findings suggest heterogeneity in pseudoscientific health beliefs and the need to tailor intervention strategies according to underlying causes.

Suggested Citation

  • Julie Y. L. Chow & Ben Colagiuri & Benjamin M. Rottman & Micah Goldwater & Evan J. Livesey, 2021. "Pseudoscientific Health Beliefs and the Perceived Frequency of Causal Relationships," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-16, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:21:p:11196-:d:664233
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11196/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11196/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Josue Garcia-Arch & Itxaso Barberia & Javier Rodríguez-Ferreiro & Lluís Fuentemilla, 2022. "Authority Brings Responsibility: Feedback from Experts Promotes an Overweighting of Health-Related Pseudoscientific Beliefs," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-11, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:21:p:11196-:d:664233. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.