Spanish researchers say there’s a chance that we can interrupt and or stop a person from believing in pseudoscience, stereotypes and unjustified beliefs. These beliefs, called causal illusions, can lead a person to unhealthy or irresponsible opinions, so the researchers sought to train kids from 40 high schools about scientific methods and control conditions. They say, over their pilot study and a six-month follow-up, they were able to provide a reliable form of debiasing the kids against causal illusions.
Journal/conference: Royal Society Open Science
Link to research (DOI): Paper
Organisation/s: Universidad de Deusto, Spain
Media release
From: The Royal Society
A large-scale study and six-month follow-up of an intervention to reduce causal illusions in high school studentsCausal illusions are associated with pseudoscience, stereotypes, and unjustified beliefs. They consist of believing that there is a causal relationship between events that are unrelated. This research tested an educational intervention on scientific methods and control conditions to reduce them. It involved more than 40 schools, and included a pilot study (n = 287), a large-scale implementation (n = 1,668) and a six-month follow-up (n = 353). To our knowledge, this is the first research showing the efficacy and long-term effects of a debiasing intervention against causal illusions that can be used on a large scale through the educational system.