Paul BertinUniversité Libre de Bruxelles | ULB
Paul Bertin
PhD
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30
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Publications (30)
Climate change is currently one of humanity’s greatest threats. To help scholars understand the psychology of climate change, we conducted an online quasi-experimental survey on 59,508 participants from 63 countries (collected between July 2022 and July 2023). In a between-subjects design, we tested 11 interventions designed to promote climate chan...
Conspiracy beliefs are prevalent among members of disadvantaged groups. Adopting a social identity perspective, we hypothesized that these beliefs would reduce the endorsement of internal attributions for inequalities that could negatively affect the image of disadvantaged ingroups. In Study 1 ( n = 1,104), conspiracy mentality was negatively assoc...
Conspiracy beliefs are prevalent among members of disadvantaged groups. Adopting a social identity perspective, we hypothesized that these beliefs would reduce the endorsement of internal attributions for inequalities that could negatively affect the image of disadvantaged ingroups. In Study 1 (n = 1104), conspiracy mentality was negatively associa...
Conspiracy beliefs entail a scapegoating function by attributing the consequences of crises, such as economic downturns, to the secret action of outgroups. While conspiracy beliefs have been described as reactions to economic threats, we argue that this factor alone is not sufficient. Rather, perceiving one's ingroup as unfairly deprived compared t...
Individuals differ in their general propensity to believe in conspiracy theories, often referred to as conspiracy mentality. Because prototypical conspiracy theories exhibit a conspiratorial content (i.e., they claim that a conspiracy occurred) and an alternative status (i.e., they are rejected by authorities), it is unclear if conspiracy mentality...
Populism is on the rise across liberal democracies. The sociopsychological underpinnings of this increasing endorsement of populist ideology should be uncovered. In an online cross-sectional survey study among adult samples from five countries (Chile, France, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom; N = 9,105), we aimed to replicate an economic dist...
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and a...
Victimhood has been linked to conspiracy beliefs in various contexts. However, the causal relationship between these constructs remains unclear. Following previous work, conspiracy beliefs could be described as victimized beliefs that are consequences of perceiving one’s ingroup as especially suffering from a situation (i.e., exclusive forms of col...
Effectively reducing climate change requires dramatic, global behavior change. Yet it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an e...
Conspiracy theories – which posit that secret groups cooperate to pursue malevolent goals – are a prominent feature in social and political discourse. Psychological research on conspiracy theories has boomed in the past 20 years, generating insights to the correlates and consequences of conspiracy beliefs. However, the literature suffers some limit...
This article untangles competing conceptualisations of nostalgia and identifies a specific form of collective‐restorative nostalgia as politically significant. We argue that the link between resentment and this type of nostalgia emerges from their joint critique of the socio‐political realities of the present. Nostalgia provides spatial and tempora...
Conspiracy theories arise during important societal and political events, with negative consequences. Yet, conspiracy theories remain to be investigated in the context of sporting tournaments, in spite of the importance of such events in contemporary societies. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, conspiracy theories alleging that the newly introduced v...
A significant trend of research construes conspiracy theories as a power challenging phenomenon. Yet, there is evidence that conspiracy theories are sometimes promoted by members of relatively powerful groups (e.g., a national majority) in order to target relatively powerless groups (e.g., immigrants). Thus, conspiracy theories are not necessarily...
A significant trend of research construes conspiracy theories as a power challenging phenomenon. Yet, there is evidence that conspiracy theories are sometimes promoted by members of relatively powerful groups (e.g., a national majority) in order to target relatively powerless groups (e.g., immigrants). Thus, conspiracy theories are not necessarily...
The identification-prejudice link describes the defensive stance toward immigrants held by strong national identifiers. Recent research refined this relationship by suggesting that defensive national identification (operationalized through national narcissism), but not secure national identification, was associated with prejudice. While previous re...
Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the Zika outbreak. While the virus is still circulating, motives underlying Zika conspiracy beliefs remain underexplored. National narcissism has been shown to be a robust social motive predicting conspiracy beliefs about other public health crises. This relationship has been interpreted as conspiracy be...
There is a growing interest in social psychology in the study of beliefs in conspiracy theories. However, intergroup processes and consequences of these beliefs remain under-investigated. In this thesis, we argue that conspiracy beliefs can be conceptualized as social identity management strategies. We propose that this identity process is particul...
Despite the scientific consensus about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there are still obstacles hindering society from acknowledging the severity of the situation. Notably, previous research suggests that climate change threats can cause people to display ethnocentric reactions to preserve the ingroup's interests. In this research, we...
Even though conspiracy theories are diverse, they are typically construed as a homogeneous phenomenon. Based on classic theorizations of conspiracy theories by Popper (1945; 2002) and Moscovici (1987), we propose to distinguish between belief in upward conspiracy theories (i.e., targeting relatively powerful groups) and downward conspiracy theories...
Even though conspiracy theories are diverse, they are typically construed as a homogeneous phenomenon. Based on classic theorizations of conspiracy theories by Popper (1945; 2002) and Moscovici (1987), we propose to distinguish between belief in upward conspiracy theories (i.e., targeting relatively powerful groups) and downward conspiracy theories...
Identification with all humanity measured as an individual characteristic is an important factor related to social and international relations, such as concern for global issues and human rights, prosocial attitudes, intergroup forgiveness, attitudes toward immigrants, solving global problems, reactions to hate crimes and dehumanisation. We examine...
Despite the scientific consensus about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there are still obstacles hindering society from acknowledging the severity of the situation. Notably, previous research suggests that climate change threats can cause people to display ethnocentric reaction to preserve the ingroup’s interests. In this research, we i...
Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it is documented that conspiracy theories negatively affect vaccination intentions, these beliefs might become a crucial matter in the near future. We conducted two cross-sectional studies examining the relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, vaccine attitudes, and...
Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it is documented that conspiracy theories negatively affect vaccination intentions, these beliefs might become a crucial matter in the near future. We conducted two cross-sectional studies examining the relations between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, vaccine attitudes and inte...