An exploratory study of topic-specific variation in epistemic beliefs among psychology students

How individuals conceive knowledge and knowing plays a crucial role in psychology education. While often examined at the domain level, the Theory of Integrated Domains in Epistemology (TIDE) suggests that epistemic beliefs may also vary at the level of specific topics.

We investigated whether epistemic beliefs of psychology students differ depending on the topic under consideration and tested the hypothesis that beliefs would cluster by subdisciplinary proximity (i.e., clinical vs. cognitive topics). Using the Epistemic Thinking Assessment (ETA), we implemented three scenarios addressing depression, schizophrenia, and language acquisition. A counterbalanced repeated-measures design was used with 480 first-year psychology students. Multilevel modeling was applied to distinguish topic effects from sequence effects.

Results indicated significant variation in epistemic beliefs across topics, leading to the rejection of the subdisciplinary hypothesis. Students scored significantly higher on absolutism and lower on evaluativism when reasoning about schizophrenia compared to depression and language acquisition. Thus, the two clinical topics did not elicit similar profiles.

Findings confirm that epistemic beliefs are topic-specific within psychology and are driven by topic characteristics (e.g., perceived biological certainty) rather than disciplinary labels. These results highlight the need for granular, topic-specific approaches in epistemological assessments and critical thinking instruction.