Browsing by Subject "fluid intelligence"

Understanding who develops a positive attitude towards science is an important topic to study as the relevance of science and understanding of science have become more and more important in contemporary societies. This thesis examines cognitive correlates of science attitudes. Science attitudes are defined as attitudes the general public has towards scientific research and the scientific community. Additionally, science attitudes were characterised as consisting of three dimensions: science identity, trust in science and the importance of science. Cognitive correlates of science attitudes are studied because it is a scarcely studied topic. The theoretical framework for cognition is an adaptation of Stanovich’s tripartite theory of the mind, which is a specification of dual process models. The theory concerns rational thought and action and proposes three kinds of cognition: reflective, algorithmic, and autonomous. The cognitive factors examined are characterised according to the framework: reflective cognition is represented by analytical thinking, epistemic curiosity and probability heuristics and algorithmic cognition is represented by fluid intelligence. In addition to these, creative thinking is examined, and it is represented by divergent thinking and insight. Sociodemographic determinants were also considered. The data is survey data, which was collected with a non-probabilistic volunteer sampling method. After excluding the non-valid participants, the sample size was 153 observations (F=108, M= 34, other =16). The age range was 19-74 years (mean = 48.6, median = 53). Due to missingness, a data imputation was performed. The study applied linear regression analysis. The results of the study indicate that the different dimensions of science attitudes have different cognitive correlates. Analytical thinking was positively associated with science identity whereas epistemic curiosity, performance in probability heuristics as well as fluid intelligence were positively associated with importance of science. Trust in science did not have any cognitive correlates. Additionally, having a lower level of education was related to having a more negative attitude towards science. Science attitudes seem to be multidimensional constructs that have cognitive and sociodemographic determinants. The topic requires more research in order to clarify the relationships of the determinants of science attitudes. In addition, more attention should be paid on the definition of “science” in science attitudes as it may affect comparability of the results.