How do citizens form beliefs about politicized topics science such as climate change, COVID-19 or vaccinations? In this project, we illuminate the role of metacognition, the insight that citizens have into the reliability and fallibility of their own knowledge and reasoning.

How do citizens form beliefs about politicized topics science such as climate change, COVID-19 or vaccinations? This research programme illuminates the role of metacognition, the insight that citizens have into the reliability and fallibility of their own knowledge and reasoning. This research highlights the role of metacognition for belief-updating in response to novel evidence, information search, information proliferation in social networks, and for effective science communication. Combining state-of the art methods from signal detection theory with national surveys and experimental methods, this research investigates questions such as: To what extent do citizens have insight into their beliefs about the truth value of statements about politicized compared to non-politicized science? We also explore how this metacognitive insight—or lack thereof—can help us better understand well-known phenomena such as public polarization, and the proliferation of misinformation in social networks.