Browsing by Author "Bayrak, F."

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Citation - WoS: 1
Citation - Scopus: 1
Can Reflection Mitigate Covid-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs and Hesitancy
(Routledge, 2025) Bayrak, F.; Kayatepe, E.; Özman, N.; Yilmaz, O.; Isler, O.; Saribay, S.A.
Objective design: Periods of social turmoil, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, tend to amplify conspiracy beliefs, evidenced by increased vaccine hesitancy. Despite this trend, effective interventions targeting vaccine-related conspiracy beliefs remain scarce, partly due to underexplored cognitive processes. Three competing theoretical accounts offer differing predictions about the role of reflective thinking in supporting conspiracy beliefs: the Motivated Reasoning Account suggests reflection strengthens commitment to pre-existing attitudes; the Reflective Reasoning Account posits that reflection enhances belief accuracy; and the Reflective Doubt Account proposes reflection fosters general scepticism. Main outcome measures: Utilising open science practices and a validated technique to activate reflection, we conducted an experimental investigation with a diverse sample (N = 1483) segmented by vaccine attitudes. We investigated the impact of reflection on specific and generic COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and vaccine-support behaviours across pro-vaccine, neutral, and vaccine-hesitant groups, while examining the moderating effects of scientific literacy, intellectual humility, and actively open-minded thinking. Results: The confirmatory analysis provided no direct support for the theoretical predictions. However, findings indicated that intellectual humility significantly moderated the effect of reflection, enhancing vaccine-support behaviour among participants with high intellectual humility, highlighting the complex interplay of cognitive style and prior attitudes in shaping responses to conspiracy beliefs and vaccine-support actions. Conclusion: The study highlights that while reflective thinking alone did not directly influence vaccine support behavior, its positive effect emerged among individuals with higher intellectual humility, emphasizing the importance of individual differences in shaping belief-related outcomes. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Citation - Scopus: 2
Reflection Predicts and Leads To Decreased Conspiracy Belief
(Elsevier B.V., 2025) Bayrak, F.; Sümer, V.; Dogruyol, B.; Saribay, S.A.; Alper, S.; Isler, O.; Yilmaz, O.
Recent research indicates a generally negative relationship between reflection and conspiracy beliefs. However, most of the existing research relies on correlational data on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) populations. The few existing experimental studies are limited by weak manipulation techniques that fail to reliably activate cognitive reflection. Hence, questions remain regarding (1) the consistency of the negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and cognitive reflection, (2) the extent of cross-cultural variation and potential moderating factors, and (3) the presence of a causal link between cognitive reflection and conspiracy beliefs. In two preregistered studies, we investigated the association between cognitive reflection and conspiracy beliefs. First, we studied the correlation between two variables across 48 cultures and investigated whether factors such as WEIRDness and narcissism (personal and collective) moderate this relationship. In the second study, we tested the causal effect of reflection using a reliable and effective manipulation technique—debiasing training—on both generic and specific conspiracy beliefs. The first study confirmed the negative association between reflection and belief in conspiracy theories across cultures, with the association being notably stronger in non-WEIRD societies. Both personal and collective narcissism played significant moderating roles. The second study demonstrated that debiasing training significantly decreases both generic and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs in a non-WEIRD context, with more pronounced effects for general conspiracy beliefs. Our research supports that reflection is a consistent cross-cultural predictor of conspiracy beliefs and that activating reflection can reduce such beliefs through rigorous experimental interventions. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.
Cognitive Reflection and Religious Belief: a Test of Two Models
(Society for Judgment and Decision making, 2025) Şeker, F.; Acem, E.; Bayrak, F.; Dogruyol, B.; Isler, O.; Bahçekapili, H.G.; Yilmaz, O.
Existing research suggests a negative correlation between reflective thinking and religious belief. The dual process model (DPM) posits that reflection diminishes religious belief by limiting intuitive decisions. In contrast, the expressive rationality model (ERM) argues that reflection serves an identity-protective function by bolstering rather than modifying preexisting beliefs. Although the current literature tends to favor the DPM, many studies suffer from unbalanced samples. To avoid this limitation, we recruited comparably large number of participants for both religious believers (n = 580) and non-believers (n = 594) and observed the relationship between reflection and two measures of religious belief: belief in God and disbelief in evolution. Our findings corroborate the negative associations found between higher levels of reflection and both types of belief, independent of religious affiliation. Our results align with the broader literature, supporting the DPM but not the ERM. © The Author(s), 2025.