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The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 523–535 (2022)Cite this article

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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. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub ‘the Einstein effect’: across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, scientists held greater authority than spiritual gurus. In addition, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist compared with the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgements for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored our experimental findings. These findings suggest that irrespective of one’s religious worldview, across cultures science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

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Fig. 1: Observed relation between religiosity and credibility ratings per source for each country.
Fig. 2: Summary of the multilevel-model (unconstrained) estimates per country and predicted overall effects.
Fig. 3: Multilevel-model (unconstrained) estimates for the exploratory analyses.
Fig. 4: Multilevel-model (unconstrained) estimates and predicted overall effects for explicit trust ratings.

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Data availability

All data collected as part of the experimental study, as well as preprocessed secondary data on explicit trust are provided at https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/qsyvw (https://osf.io/qsyvw/). Raw data on the explicit trust ratings are available at https://wellcome.org/reports/wellcome-global-monitor/2018.

Code availability

Analysis code for all main results and supplementary analyses is available at https://osf.io/qsyvw/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funds from the Templeton Foundation (grant number 60663) to M.v.E., the Cogito Foundation (grant number R10917) to R.Mc.K., the Australian Research Council (grant number DP180102384) to N.L. and R.M.R., Templeton Religion Trust (reference TRT0196) to J.A.B., and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (reference 17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and 10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) to S.A. The analysis was carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Suzanne Hoogeveen, Julia M. Haaf, Bastiaan T. Rutjens & Robin Wuyts

  2. School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Joseph A. Bulbulia

  3. Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Robert M. Ross & Neil Levy

  4. Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Ryan McKay

  5. Département d’études cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France

    Sacha Altay

  6. Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Theiss Bendixen

  7. Institute of Psychology, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Renatas Berniūnas

  8. Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Arik Cheshin

  9. Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Claudio Gentili

  10. International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Raluca Georgescu

  11. Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK

    Will M. Gervais

  12. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

    Kristin Hagel

  13. School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Christopher Kavanagh & Hugh Turpin

  14. Department of Psychology, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Christopher Kavanagh

  15. Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Neil Levy

  16. School of Psychology, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Santiago, Chile

    Alejandra Neely

  17. Department of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Lin Qiu

  18. Department of Social and Work Psychology, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

    André Rabelo

  19. School of Social and Health Sciences, James Cook University, Singapore, Singapore

    Jonathan E. Ramsay

  20. Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Filip Uzarevic

  21. Department of Anthropology and Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Dimitris Xygalatas

  22. Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Michiel van Elk

Authors
  1. Suzanne Hoogeveen
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  2. Julia M. Haaf
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Contributions

M.v.E. and S.H. conceptualized the idea, designed the study and formulated the hypotheses. S.A., T.B., R.B., A.C., C.G., R.G., K.H., C.K., R.Mc.K., A.N., L.Q., A.R., J.E.R., R.M.R., H.T., F.U., R.W., D.X. and S.H. provided cultural knowledge (including translations) for adjusting the materials to the national context and collected the data. S.H. analysed the data with input from J.A.B. and J.M.H. S.H. wrote the first draft of the manuscript, with major critical input from J.M.H., J.A.B., R.M.R., R.Mc.K. and M.v.E. and additional suggestions from S.A., T.B., R.B., A.C., C.G., R.G., W.M.G., K.H., C.K., N.L., A.N., L.Q., A.R., J.E.R., B.T.R., H.T., F.U., R.W. and D.X.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suzanne Hoogeveen.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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 Nature Human Behaviour thanks Nick Allum, Friederike Hendriks, Jens Koed Madsen and Rens van de Schoot for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Data, analysis code, and stimuli are provided at https://osf.io/qsyvw/. Full materials in each language can be found at https://osf.io/kywjs/.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–7, Tables 1–5, Results, Discussion (on COVID-19).

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Hoogeveen, S., Haaf, J.M., Bulbulia, J.A. et al. The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity. Nat Hum Behav 6, 523–535 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01273-8

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