Trust in (open) science: Does knowledge about open science practices improve laypersons’ trust in psychological research?
One third of people barely trust science. Adhering to open science (OS) practices improves replicability and reproducibility – two cornerstones of credible science. Science communication including information on OS practices might foster trust. In the past, members of the general public indeed reported to trust research more if it followed OS guidelines. However, experimentally, adhering to OS practices did not affect trust in specific studies. This might be due to knowledge gaps around OS. In a representative survey in Austria (n = 276), we investigated whether a trust-boosting effect of OS practices in layperson summaries of psychological findings arises if participants receive a short introduction to OS beforehand. Our results did not support this hypothesis. We will discuss whether interventions beyond our simple primer could enable the general public to identify OS practices as cues of credibility but also whether such cues could be misused to make misinformation seem more trustworthy.