The Impact of Communicating the Benefits and Safety of Psilocybin on Policy Support: A Survey Based Experiment.
February 24, 2025 Karla Hitchins, James Reynolds preprint
In an online survey experiment with 804 participants, providing evidence about the benefits of psilocybin increased overall support for psilocybin policies (effect size d = .11) and strengthened beliefs that psilocybin is both beneficial (d = .44) and safe (d = .26). Providing evidence about safety also increased overall policy support (d = .10) and strengthened beliefs that psilocybin is safe (d = .28), but did not change beliefs about its benefits. The findings suggest that communicating the benefits and safety of psilocybin can shift public attitudes and policy support, though the durability of these effects remains unknown.