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Attitudes towards scientific knowledge: social dispositions and personality traits

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Abstract

The present pilot study investigates the relationships between scientific ignorance and several individual attitudes, personality traits and cultural behaviors. Starting from well-established practices and standards of psychometric analysis, our work has produced a complex cross-scalar survey of scientific competency between students attending an art and multimedia high school. Data are classified through six scales about self-esteem, scientific attitudes, paranormal beliefs, scientific competency, social desirability and personality traits. The results are considered in relation to three hypotheses: the correlation between positive scientific attitude and lower paranormal beliefs plus higher scientific competencies; the scientific attitude is enhanced by cultural and scientific activities and negatively related to superstition; people who show specific personality traits have higher positive attitude and interest toward science, while other traits are more related to superstitious beliefs. The outcome of our poll confirms our hypotheses and shows additional traits correlations.

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Notes

  1. These five personality traits are the constituents of a taxonomy introduced to represent fundamental personality traits in neuropsychological measurements. They consist in: Openness to experience (being inventive or curious); Conscientiousness (tendency to control and self-discipline); Extraversion (engagement with the external world and disposition to interact with people); Agreeableness (inclination to social harmony); Neuroticism (proneness to negative emotions, e.g. anxiety, depression or anger; emotional instability) (McCrae and Costa 1990).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous referees of Synthese for their comments that greatly contributed to improve the paper, as well as Lorenzo Magnani, and Selene Arfini. The work of Paolo Petricca and Claudia Casadio was supported by the PRIN 2017 Research 20173YP4N3—MIUR, Ministry of University and Research, Rome, Italy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Medicina e Scienze dell’Invecchiamento, University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy

    Marco Tommasi

  2. Dip. di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne, University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Pescara, Italy

    Paolo Petricca & Claudia Casadio

  3. University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy

    Giorgio Cozzolino

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  1. Marco Tommasi
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  2. Paolo Petricca
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  3. Giorgio Cozzolino
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  4. Claudia Casadio
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Correspondence to Paolo Petricca.

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Tommasi, M., Petricca, P., Cozzolino, G. et al. Attitudes towards scientific knowledge: social dispositions and personality traits. Synthese 199, 119–139 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02632-0

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