Root to Rx
Skepticism isn't one thing. It's a balance, and people find it in different ways. Eight quick questions show which move you reach for.
The scale of skepticism
Aim for Skeptic: open enough to be convinced, sharp enough not to be fooled. A Cynic distrusts the messenger by default but can still be won over. A Denier rejects solid evidence no matter what.
Six ways people get there
No sign-up. A quick self-portrait, not an official test.
Evidence literacy is the ability to find, judge, and weigh evidence: knowing what counts as good evidence, how much a claim is actually supported, and how confident to be, so you can act on health information instead of on hype or fear.
This is a light quiz for reflection, not a validated psychological test. But the ideas under it are real work in cognitive and social psychology (not neuroscience, and we won't pretend otherwise).
The scale reflects actively open-minded thinking (Baron): good reasoning seeks out contrary evidence and avoids both credulity and dogmatism. The six styles echo real findings, including lateral reading (Wineburg & McGrew), detecting pseudo-profound nonsense (Pennycook et al., 2015), science curiosity (Kahan et al., 2017), non-confrontational persuasion (Broockman & Kalla, 2016), and inoculation or "prebunking" (van der Linden & Roozenbeek). The Architect reflects research-methods literacy, which we describe rather than score.
The three quick gut-checks at the end are a light calibration measure: whether your stated confidence matched the evidence, the one thing here we actually score.