It has often been suggested that we now live in a "post-truth" world. People increasingly rely on their own feelings as a yardstick for what is true. Psychologists at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have now developed the "Youniversalism" scale to allow them to measure people's belief in subjective and experiential truths. The research is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

When emotions and personal beliefs outweigh facts and expertise, it makes it harder to recognize and correct disinformation. "That can have serious consequences," says Bastiaan Rutjens, a psychologist at the UvA and one of the researchers involved. "For example, people could negatively impact their health by following unfounded medical advice, such as we see increasingly on social media."

Researchers call this way of thinking "intuitive epistemology": the idea that you can sense what is true and that everyone's truth is equally valid. "This concept has been described before in the humanities, by Wouter Hanegraaff among others, but until now there was no good way to measure it," says Rutjens.

The new term 'youniversalism'
By combining "you" and "universalism," the new term encompasses the idea that the individual sees themselves as central in constructing and explaining the world around them. The scale has been tested on more than 1,500 people...