With the little help of science understanding: Examining the direct and indirect role of scientific reasoning and trust in science in normative health behaviour during pandemic

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 these direct and indirect effect of science understanding on normative health behavior in a representative sample of Slovak population (N = 1024). The results showed more support for the indirect path: people who understand science better had generally less epistemically suspect beliefs and as a consequence, tended to behave more in line with evidence-based guidelines and were more likely to get vaccinated. Neither scientific reasoning nor trust in science predicted avoidance of preventive measures directly, but analytic thinking correlated positively with avoiding preventive measures. The strongest predictor of epistemically suspect beliefs was trust in science, which also directly predicted the intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Thus, it seems that reasoning about which experts or sources to believe (second-order scientific reasoning) has become even more important than directly evaluating original evidence (first-order scientific reasoning).