critical appraisal
Definition
Critical appraisal refers to the selective evaluation of conspiracy theories based on the plausibility and evidential support of a given claim, rather than the blanket rejection of all conspiratorial thinking. A successful intervention, on this account, is one that improves a participant's ability to distinguish unreasonable conspiracy theories from those that may have a genuine basis, avoiding what has been termed blind scepticism. Inoculation-based interventions, tested across two studies with a combined sample of 1,766 participants, reduced susceptibility to implausible conspiracy theories but failed to improve participants' appraisal of plausible ones, and in some cases increased scepticism towards the latter. Only the Discernment condition, which explicitly discouraged blind scepticism, produced statistically significant improvements in participants' appraisal of both plausible and implausible conspiracy theories. These findings indicate that measuring discernment as an outcome is necessary if researchers are to distinguish genuine critical appraisal from a generalised tendency to disbelieve conspiratorial claims.
Sources: O’Mahony et al. (2024)
Related Terms
- intervention (1 shared article)
- inoculation (1 shared article)
- misinformation (1 shared article)
- conspiracy theories (1 shared article)
- discernment (1 shared article)
Applications
Critical Appraisal and Inoculation Interventions
Inoculation-based interventions, including both passive and active formats, improved detection of implausible conspiracy theories but did not improve critical appraisal of plausible ones. In the second study, standard inoculation methods were associated with increased scepticism toward plausible theories, a pattern the authors described as blind scepticism rather than genuine discernment.
Sources: O’Mahony et al. (2024)
Critical Appraisal and Discernment
The Discernment condition was the only intervention to produce statistically significant improvements in critical appraisal across both plausible and implausible conspiracy theories. This condition was designed specifically to discourage the wholesale rejection of conspiracy claims, treating the ability to differentiate between more and less credible theories as a distinct and measurable outcome.
Sources: O’Mahony et al. (2024)
Critical Appraisal and Conspiracy Beliefs
Existing measures of conspiracy belief typically present items where the correct response is rejection, meaning they cannot detect whether an intervention has improved selective reasoning or simply increased generalised disbelief. This measurement limitation means that interventions appearing successful by conventional metrics may in fact be reducing critical appraisal of plausible conspiracy theories rather than improving it.
Sources: O’Mahony et al. (2024)
