Jakub Šrol

Slovak Academy of Sciences | SAV · Institute of Experimental Psychology

A recent study (Pennycook et al., 2015) found that the propensity to judge randomly generated, syntactically correct (i.e., bullshit) statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural beliefs). Besides generalizing these findings to a different cultural setting, we...

This study presents a psychometric evaluation of the Expanded Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT7) based on item response theory. The participants (N = 1204) completed the CRT7 and provided self-reported information about their cognitive styles through the Preference for Intuition and Deliberation Scale (PID). A two-parameter logistic model was fitted...

The study explores whether people are more inclined to accept a conclusion that confirms their prior beliefs and reject one they personally object to even when both follow the same logic. Most of the prior research in this area has relied on the informal reasoning paradigm; in this study, however, we applied a formal reasoning paradigm to distingui...

One of the current topics in research on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is its growing familiarity among the general public. Surprisingly, Bialek and Pennycook (2017) showed that previous exposure does not diminish the CRT's predictive power in Heuristics and Biases (H&B) tasks, but proposed that the relationship is moderated by analytic think...

This paper examines the predictors of belief in the efficacy of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and its use, including cognitive factors (scientific reasoning, health literacy, locus of control), beliefs (holistic and magical health beliefs pseudoscientific beliefs, and trust in doctors), sociodemographic factors, and cancer diagnosis....

Background The present study explored moderators of the relation between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour that could help close the green gap. Methods A sample of 500 individuals (250 women) participated in the study. Apart from socio-demographic characteristics, participants answered questions about their environmental conce...

Unlabelled: Scientific reasoning and trust in science are two facets of science understanding. This paper examines the contribution of science understanding, over and above analytic thinking, to the endorsement of conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs about COVID-19 and behavioral intentions to engage in the recommended preventive behavior. We e...

The main aim of this paper was to examine overconfidence in the domain of bullshit detection and the contributing factors that explain why some people have the blind spot about their own incompetence. To verify whether people's lack of metacognitive awareness of their bullshit detection abilities is the result of self-enhancement motivation, we exp...

Analytical thinking is a vital part of intellectualism, although their relationship has not been directly examined. Therefore, in a representative Slovak sample (N = 410), we examined a newly developed Intellectualism-Anti-Intellectualism Scale (IAIS) by Marques et al. (2017) and its relationships to two indicators of analytical thinking - cognitiv...

Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic 1,2 . Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19...

Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1,2. Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 r...

Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1,2. Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 r...

The present study explored moderators of the relation between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour that could help to close the green gap. A sample of 500 individuals (250 women) participated in the study. Apart from socio-demographic characteristics, participants answered questions about their environmental concerns and pro-envir...

The present study explored moderators of the relation between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour that could help to close the green gap. A sample of 500 individuals (250 women) participated in the study. Apart from socio-demographic characteristics, participants answered questions about their environmental concerns and pro-envir...

The authors of the Integrated ScienceIntegrated science:MultidisciplinarityMultidisciplinarityandInterdisciplinarityInterdisciplinarityinHealthHealth were asked how you would see the future of your field 30 years later. This chapter presents the authors’ views on this subject in 2050. The Al-Samah danceDance. In the above poem, Hushang Ebtehaj says...

When it comes to healthHealth, people often hold beliefsBelief that are either unsupported or directly opposed by scientificScientific evidence, i.e., epistemically suspect beliefsEpistemically suspect beliefs (ESBs)(ESBEpistemically suspect beliefs (ESBs)). They prefer alternatives (e.g., homeopathy, healing by crystals, magnets, or herbsHerb) ove...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to examine factors related to questionable health behavior, such as avoiding recommended preventive guidelines. The aim of this paper was to explore whether the behavior reflecting active avoiding of preventive measures against COVID-19 (curfew regulations, hygiene, facial masks, and social distancing) was...

Rationale Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories can have severe consequences; it is therefore crucial to understand this phenomenon, in its similarities with general conspiracy belief, but also in how it is context-dependent. Objective The aim of this systematic review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the available research on COVID-19 c...

One of the appeals of conspiracy theories in times of crises is that they provide someone to blame for what has happened. Thereby, they increase distrust, negative feelings, and hostility toward implicated actors, whether those are powerful social outgroups or one’s own government representatives. Two studies reported here examine associations of C...

Background Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular among the general population and patients with various diseases, but our understanding of the predictors of CAM use for the population of women with or without cancer diagnosis is still quite limited. This paper examines predictors of attitudes toward and use of CAM, including cogni...

Coronavirus Disease 2019 broke out in China at the end of 2019 and spread rapidly around the world. In response, many countries have adopted social distancing and lockdown measures. But restrictive measures resulted in many unwanted psychological consequences, including mental fatigue. Mental fatigue in turn is very likely to cause psychopathologic...

While well-being is known to be mainly predicted by relatively stable personality traits and demographic factors, under circumstances of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the role of these predictors may be attenuated, and more situational factors may come into play. In the present study, we examined those relatively stable predictors of well-being al...

In this paper, we explored the scientific literacy of a general sample of the Slovak adult population and examined factors that might help or inhibit scientific reasoning, namely the content of the problems. In doing so, we also verified the assumption that when faced with real-life scientific problems, people do not necessarily apply decontextuali...

The endorsement of epistemically suspect (i.e., paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific) beliefs is widespread and has negative consequences. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasoning processes – such as lower analytic thinking and susceptibility to cognitive biases – that might lead to the adoption of such beliefs. In two studies...

Purpose This study aims to investigate how congruence between the image of a successful entrepreneur and one’s own gender-role orientation affects entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Design/methodology/approach A total of 552 working-age adults (49.5% women) answered questions on gender-role orientation, perception of a successful entrepreneur, EI, a...

This paper focuses on the science understanding (scientific reasoning and trust in science) and analytic thinking and their role in: 1) having less conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs about COVID-19, and 2) behavioral intentions in line with scientific consensus (i.e. following evidence-based guidelines and vaccination intentions). We examined...

Delay discounting, the tendency to choose a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward, has been conceptualized either as a personal preference or as a rational thinking component. In this study (N = 397), the associations between monetary delay discounting-constructed as a rational thinking task-and cognitive individual difference measures w...

Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories can have severe consequences; it is therefore crucial to understand this phenomenon. We present a narrative synthesis of COVID-19 conspiracy belief research from 85 international articles, identified and appraised through a systematic review. We identify a number of significant antecedents of COVID-19 conspira...

One of the appeals of conspiracy theories in times of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is that they provide a scapegoat – someone to blame for what has happened. By doing this, they increase distrust, negative feelings, and even hostility toward implicated actors, whether those are powerful social outgroups or one’s own government representat...

Societal crises and stressful events are associated with an upsurge of conspiracy beliefs that may help people to tackle feelings of lack of control. In our study (N = 783), we examined whether people with higher feelings of anxiety and lack of control early in the COVID‐19 pandemic endorse more conspiracy theories. Our results show that a higher p...

COVID-19 conspiracy theories emerged almost immediately after the beginning of the pandemic, and the number of believers does not appear to decline. Believing in these theories can negatively affect adherence to safety guidelines and vaccination intentions, potentially endangering the lives of many. Thus, one part in successfully fighting the pande...

We examined whether scientific reasoning is associated with health-related beliefs and behaviors over and above general analytic thinking ability in the general public (N = 783, aged 18–84). Health-related beliefs included: anti-vaccination attitudes, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and generic health-related epistemically suspect beliefs. Scientific...

As one of the barriers to their personal engagement in climate change issues, people report insufficient understanding of this problem. And yet, while better scientific knowledge and trust in science have been shown to be associated with people's concern over climate change issues, the relationship is not a straightforward one. An influential study...

Studies on individual differences in susceptibility to cognitive biases have identified several cognitive dispositions which were thought to predict reasoning by contributing to the efficiency of analytic thought. However, hybrid models suggest that differences between reasoners may arise already in the intuitive stages of the reasoning process. To...

We examined whether scientific reasoning predicts health-related beliefs and behaviors over and above the general analytic thinking ability in general public (N = 783, aged between 18 – 84 years). Health-related beliefs included: the anti-vaccination attitudes, conspiracy beliefs related to the COVID-19 disease, and some generic epistemically suspe...

Threatening events (hurricanes, disease outbreaks, famines) are associated with an upsurge of conspiracy beliefs that provide people with simple explanations to tackle the feelings of anxiety and lack of control. In our study (N = 783), conducted shortly after the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in our country, we examined whether people wi...

A key component of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict between intuitively cued “heuristic” answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that people differ in their ability to detect such conflicts, it is not clear which factors are driving these differences. In the present study (N = 399) we exp...

The endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs (i.e. paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific beliefs) is both surprisingly widespread and has been shown to have important negative real-life consequences. For these reasons, it is important to understand individual differences in epistemically suspect beliefs and their associations with other...

Key mechanism in rational reasoning is the ability to detect a conflict between intuition and logical demands of the task. The monitoring mechanism is traditionally considered to be a component of analytical thinking, however, hybrid models suggest that the detection is possible even at the intuitive level. We used two-response paradigm in which p...

Studies on individual differences in susceptibility to cognitive biases have identified several cognitive dispositions which were thought to predict reasoning by contributing to the efficiency of analytic thought. Recently formulated hybrid models, however, suggest that substantial differences between reasoners may arise early already in the intuit...

This paper examines whether scientific‐reasoning skills predict people's susceptibility to epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive biases. We used the recently developed Scientific‐Reasoning Scale (SRS; Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017) because it measures the ability to read and evaluate scientific evidence. Alongside the SRS, 317 participants aged...

One of the key components of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict that may arise between intuitively cued “heuristic” answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that people differ in their ability to detect such conflicts, it is not clear which individual factors are driving these differences. I...

Abstrakt Úvod: V práci skúmame vzťah temperamentových a charakterových čŕt Cloningerovho Psychobiologického modelu osobnosti a Temnej triády osobnostných čŕt v teoretickom modeli Paulhusa a Williamsa. Metódy: Dimenzie temperamentu a charakteru sme skúmali prostredníctvom slovenského prekladu Temperament & Character Inventory (TCI-R), úroveň temných...

Present study is focused on the key mechanism in the cognitive bias research-the ability to detect conflict between intuition and logic. Participants answered 8 syllogisms, provided confidence for their responses, and filled in the Need for Cognition (NFC) scale. Confidence data showed that people process conflict and no-conflict problems different...

Objectives. The aim of present study was to determine , whether executive inhibition and cog-nitive flexibility contribute to resisting belief bias in reasoning. It was also of interest to find out, whether all people inhibit their beliefs, or only cognitively less disposed participants depend on this process while solving syllogisms. Sample and se...

Psychológovia identifikovali rad systematických odchýlok, ktoré ovplyvňujú ľudské myslenie v celej jeho šírke. Spomedzi mnohých možno uviesť napr. sklon k sebapotvrdzovaniu, ktorý závažne ovplyvňuje schopnosť testovania hypotéz (Evans, 2016) a vyhľadávania a hodnotenia evidencie (Nickerson, 1998). Naše uvažovanie je taktiež skreslené v prospech dos...

Príspevok je venovaný porovnaniu kognitívnych štýlov u vysokoškolských študentov s rôznym odborným zameraním. Na zachytenie kognitívneho štýlu sme použili dotazník Preferencie k intuícii a deliberácii, a objektívnu mieru kognitívneho štýlu – Rozšírený Test kognitívnej reflexie. Výskumný súbor tvorilo 1648 študentov. Obe metódy poukázali na silnú pr...