The role of epistemic trust and epistemic disruption in vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy thinking and the capacity to identify fake news.

ABSTRACT: Epistemic trust - defined as readiness to regard knowledge, communicated by another agent, as significant, relevant to the self, and generalizable to other contexts-has recently been applied to the field of developmental psychopathology as a potential risk factor for psychopathology. The work described here sought to investigate how the vulnerability engendered by disruptions in epistemic trust may not only impact psychological resilience and interpersonal processes but also aspects of more general social functioning. We undertook two studies to examine the role of epistemic trust in determining capacity to recognise fake/real news, and susceptibility to conspiracy thinking-both in general and in relation to COVID-19. Measuring three different epistemic dispositions-trusting, mistrusting a

SUBMITTER: Tanzer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11616851 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature