Robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities ("the Einstein effect"): Across 24 countries & all levels of religiosity, nonsense from a scientist was considered more credible than nonsense attributed to a spiritual guru

Hoogeveen, Suzanne, Sacha Altay, Theiss Bendixen, Renatas Berniūnas, Joseph Bulbulia, Arik Cheshin, Claudio Gentili, et al. 2020. “The Einstein Effect: Global Evidence for Scientific Source Credibility Effects and the Influence of Religiosity.” PsyArXiv. December 1. doi:10.31234/osf.io/sf8ez

Abstract: People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. Here, we present data from a cross-cultural study in which individuals (N = 10,195) from a religiously and culturally diverse sample of 24 countries were presented with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. The data indicate a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub "the Einstein effect": across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, nonsense from a scientist was considered more credible than nonsense attributed to a spiritual guru. Additionally, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist vs. the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgments for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored the experimental patterns. These findings suggest that irrespective of religious worldview, science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

Update Feb 7 2022: From the final version, The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity. Suzanne Hoogeveen, Julia M. Haaf, Joseph A. Bulbulia, Robert M. Ross, Ryan McKay, Sacha Altay, Theiss Bendixen, Renatas Berniūnas, Arik Cheshin, Claudio Gentili, Raluca Georgescu, Will M. Gervais, Kristin Hagel, Christopher Kavanagh, Neil Levy, Alejandra Neely, Lin Qiu, André Rabelo, Jonathan E. Ramsay, Bastiaan T. Rutjens, Hugh Turpin, Filip Uzarevic, Robin Wuyts, Dimitris Xygalatas & Michiel van Elk. Nature Human Behaviour, Feb 7 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01273-8

Discussion

In the current cross-cultural study, we used a straightforward manipulation and measurement of source credibility effects at the individual level. We found a robust source effect on credibility judgements of meaningless statements ascribed to different authority figures; across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, gobbledegook from a scientist was considered more credible than the same gobbledegook from a spiritual guru. In addition to this robust overall Einstein effect, participants’ background beliefs predicted the credibility evaluations; individuals scoring low on religiosity considered the statement from the guru less credible than that from the scientist, whereas this difference was less pronounced for highly religious individuals. These patterns were consistent with explicit trust data collected for over 100,000 individuals from 143 countries: across 140 of 143 of these countries, people indicated greater trust in scientists than in traditional healers, with a larger difference for non-religious compared with religious individuals. Robustness analyses for the experimental study indicated that the effects were robust against different data inclusion criteria (for example, attention checks) and analytic choices (for example, selection of covariates, dependent variable, prior settings). Moreover, the effects also emerged compellingly when analysed as a between-subjects design (Table 2), suggesting that they are not simply explained by social desirability or participants responding in line with their guess of the research hypothesis (also note that recent empirical work indicates that online survey experiments are generally robust to experimenter demand effects77). Results of exploratory response time analyses suggest that in addition to giving more positive evaluations, people may actually put more effort into processing information from credible sources (although they did not recall it better). In particular, participants spent more time and may have tried relatively harder to decipher the gobbledegook from the scientist, whereas previous scepticism may have steered some to immediately dismiss the information from the guru as nonsense.

The pattern of results suggests that variability in the source effect between individuals and countries is more strongly driven by differences in the credibility of the spiritual authority than the scientific authority. Based on the literature one could consider various plausible hypotheses explaining cross-cultural variation in the source effects, for instance in terms of cultural religiosity, vertically versus horizontally structured societies, general trust in authorities and specific trust patterns toward religious and secular authorities78,79,80,81,82,83. However, although our analysis indicated quantitative differences in the size of the source effect between countries (that is, varying positive effects), we did not find qualitative differences (that is, changes in the direction or presence of the effect). Descriptively, the weakest source effects (that is, smallest difference between the scientific and the spiritual source) are observed in Asian countries (Japan, China, India), possibly because the spiritual guru as presented in the survey more closely fits Eastern belief systems than Abrahamic faith traditions. However, this explanation remains speculative and we are hesitant to overinterpret the cross-national variability both in the overall credibility judgements and the effect of source. Although we included main effects of age, gender, level of education and socio-economic status in the analyses, the different sampling strategies that were applied between countries also calls for caution in making inferences based on direct comparisons.

Our findings could reflect a universal gullibility with regard to gobbledegook statements: only a small minority of participants, regardless of their national or religious background, displayed candid scepticism towards the nonsense statements, and 76% of participants rated the scientist’s gobbledegook at or above the midpoint of the credibility scale (compared with 55% for the guru). However, the notion of a general gullibility underlying the observed effects is not entirely supported by the data. The median response was the midpoint of the credibility scale. Participants may have primarily used the midpoint of the scale to indicate that they were uncertain about whether or not the claim was credible, that is, to refrain from passing judgement at all84,85,86. This response might appear as a lack in motivation to critically reflect on the information that was presented; at the same time, saving one’s cognitive resources can also be considered ‘strategic’. First, as with most psychology experiments, our study was a zero-stakes task with no incentive for accuracy, which may have lowered effort and biased responses toward the midpoint. Second, when analytical reasoning about the plausibility of a presented claim does not yield any conclusion, the most rational thing to do may be either suspending judgement (selecting the neutral midpoint of the rating scale) or calibrating judgement to previous beliefs about the source of the claim. If one considers the group to which the source belongs generally competent and benevolent, it makes sense to give a positive judgement of their difficult-to-evaluate claim. After all, credible experts often acquired credentials based on their reputation of discovering phenomena that seem implausible at first glance55. For instance, the premises of using vaccines (‘inserting a virus prevents disease’) or facts about climate change (‘humans are changing the weather’) are intuitively dubious, yet reputable scientists have convinced many laypeople of their truth.

In this study, we intentionally selected authorities that are generally considered benevolent30,31 and we generated statements that are nearly impossible to (in)validate and that bear no relation to controversial or politicized scientific topics about which people may have strong previous attitudes (efficacy of vaccinations, climate change, etc.). By using ambiguous claims without any specific ideological content, we tried to isolate the worldview effect regarding the source from any worldview effect related to the content of the claims. At the same time, we aimed to maximize the efficacy of our manipulation, by varying the names, photographs and visual contexts (chalkboard versus stars) in addition to the authority’s profession. This approach makes it more difficult to single out which specific factor contributes to the source effect (for example, the observed effects might be partly driven by the authority’s appearance rather than their domain of expertise). Relatedly, some participants might have recognized the depicted men (Enrico Fermi and José Argüelles), although we consider it unlikely that many did. Because we did not ask whether participants recognized any of the depicted sources, we tried to indirectly and retrospectively assess recognition by scanning the open text items at the end of the survey (comments and awareness item) for any mentioning of either ‘Enrico’, ‘Fermi’, ‘José’ or ‘Argüelles’ (ignoring capitalization or diacritical marks). Only one (Spanish) participant mentioned recognizing both of the sources. Although this obviously does not prove that no other participants might have known the depicted sources, it seems unlikely that this was the case for a large proportion of participants. On the other hand, the multifaceted nature of the manipulation also increases its ecological validity; our stimuli resemble popular internet memes and real-life instances of source credibility also involve a combination of different features (for example, authorities typically look the part in public and appear in congruous contexts). Furthermore, a recent study showed that the mere mentioning of a famous source such as Aristotle or the Dalai Lama enhanced profundity ratings for pseudo-profound nonsense relative to unauthored versions, suggesting that even the mere name of an authority may suffice to induce source effects87.

The effects observed in our experimental data and the associations identified in the existing trust data were highly comparable, suggesting that by using our source credibility manipulation we tapped into participants’ attitudes about scientific and religious authorities. A noteworthy divergence, however, is that whereas our data showed a small positive relation between religiosity and credibility ratings for gobbledegook from the scientist, the trust data demonstrated a small but negative association between religiosity and trust in scientists. The finding that religious people are generally less trusting towards science has often been reported in the literature53,88,89,90. However, recent studies suggest that the negative relation between religiosity and trust in science might be US-specific and be weak or absent in other countries91,92,93,94. In addition, although trust is probably closely linked to credibility, explicit trust assessments and credibility ratings of specific statements may diverge, perhaps particularly for the kind of obscure statements used in the current study. That is, the gobbledegook statements may still have resonated better with religious individuals than non-religious individuals, resulting in the main effect of religiosity on credibility ratings. This main effect may be driven by a tendency for intuitive reasoning, which has been related to religiosity78,95,96 and receptivity of pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific nonsense36,67. It could thus be that mistrust in science only partially dampens the allure of well-sounding science-related gobbledegook for intuitive reasoners36.

Notably, our study showed that across 24 countries even those who are highly religious are prone to a scientific source credibility bias, what we have deemed the Einstein effect. Looking ahead, there are at least six compelling horizons for future research to address the generalizability and underlying causes of the Einstein effect. First, whether scientific education diminishes the appeal of scientific authority outside its immediate domain remains unclear. Although those who place faith in science are prone to Einstein effects38,40,97,98, strong scepticism is normative within the practice of science—as anyone who has experienced peer review will attest. Although it is 150 years since Charles Peirce famously argued for fixing beliefs from the ‘method of science’ in favour the ‘method of authority’, the role of appeals to scientific authority among scientists remains unclear99. Second, future researchers might investigate whether political partisanship predicts differences in scientific source credibility. Although political commitments may share common psychological features with religious commitments100,101,102,103, the rise of anti-science populist ideologies might diminish or reverse Einstein effects among political partisans. By contrast, individual differences in deference to science104 may predict enhanced Einstein effects, although a recent study failed to find this pattern for faith in science (van der Miesen et al., in preparation). Third, the historical origins of scientific source credibility across different cultures remain unclear. If we were to wind back the clock a century to Einstein’s era, would we also observe preferential source credibility for scientific authority over spiritual authority? Fourth, the proximate and sustaining social and technological causes of scientific source credibility are not addressed in our study, and remain ripe for investigations. Is scientific source credibility an artefact of global information networks, country-wide science education or the sequestering of religious authority to the private domain? Fifth, although our study covers 24 countries worldwide, we cannot claim universality for our findings. Indeed, investigating source credibility in cultures where spiritual authority dominates may help to clarify the mechanistic questions that our study raises but does not address. Sixth, future work may extend the current work and investigate how the Einstein effect is affected by content cues (for example, the use of jargon, argument coherence, disclosure of uncertainty105) and personal attitudes towards the topic106,107,108.

In conclusion, our results strongly suggest that scientific authority is generally considered a reliable source for truth, more so than spiritual authority. Indeed, there are ample examples demonstrating that science serves as an important cue for credibility; the cover of Donald Trump’s niece’s family history book is adorned by ‘Mary L. Trump, PhD’; advertisements for cosmetic products often claim to be ‘clinically proven’ and ‘recommended by dermatologists’, and even the tobacco industry used to appeal to science (for example, ‘more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette’). By systematically quantifying the difference between acceptance of statements by a scientific and spiritual authority in a global sample, this work addresses the fundamental question of how people trust what others say about the world.