Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Area of Concentration

Biospychology and Environmental Studies with Rhetoric and Writing

Abstract

In 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic ripped apart American society in irreparable ways across every aspect of life in the United States. However, this event was not unique, science has often sailed the waves of controversy throughout human history much like the controversy during the pandemic. For American society to continue to progress and advance, the majority of the public must be trusting of the scientific community. In the current study, I explored new attributes that could be related to trust in science. Specifically, I studied personality factors, a person's forgiveness and intellectual humility, in the context of trust in science. A survey consisting of 70 questions was completed by 91 adults who had lived in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Political orientation and religiosity were the only two variables that were found to be correlated with trust in science, suggesting either that personality factors are less likely to influence trust in science than other variables or that I did not have enough variability in my sample. Because forgiveness and intellectual humility both require openness to changes in findings and conclusions, as commonly occur in science, I propose that work with a more varied sample be conducted in future studies to investigate these attributes in relation to trust in science.

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