Importance of domain-specific metacognition for explaining beliefs about politicized science: The case of climate change

One of the oldest debates in psychological research into politicized science such as nanotechnology, vaccination, or climate change centers around role knowledge. Does increased knowledge affect beliefs about it? While has traditionally focused on object-level knowledge, here we highlight importance meta-knowledge: How much people believe they know science. Specifically, demonstrate meta-knowledge (measured confidence knowledge) for explaining with one most contested examples: change. For a national Germany sample (N = 509), frequentist and Bayesian analyses demonstrated that was predictive beliefs, above beyond These results held both belief is risky, anthropogenic, when controlling political attitude, demographic variables. Furthermore, second German 588), stronger predictor compared to other-domain (biological physical) suggesting outside respective domain, metacognitive did not explain beliefs. relevance domain-specific metacognition By demonstrating metacognitive, rather than solely thought, these add our understanding cognitive mechanisms involved formation