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The Effect of High-Anxiety Situations on Conspiracy Thinking
Abstract
The aim of the present studies was to examine a possible relationship between anxiety and conspiracy thinking about ethnic and national groups. Two hundred university student volunteers participated in 3 studies. Study One (N = 87; mixed male and female sample) found that state-anxiety and trait-anxiety, measured with the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), were positively correlated with conspiracy thinking about Jewish people, Germans and Arabs. Study Two (N = 46; male sample) and Study Three (N = 67; female sample) were designed to check whether a high-anxiety situation (connected with waiting for an examination) would increase conspiracy thinking. Findings from Studies Two and Three showed that the pre-exam (high-anxiety) situation increased conspiracy thinking about Jewish people. This effect was not mediated by state-anxiety. Hence, further research should focus on searching for possible mediators of the relationship between a pre-exam situation and conspiracy thinking. The obtained results are consistent with previous findings showing that conspiracy thinking about Jewish people is sensitive to situational factors and with findings on links between anxiety and processing information about threat-related stimuli.
... Anxiety affects the social and political attitudes of individuals (Jost et al., 2007). Grzesiak-Feldman (2013) reported that state anxiety and trait anxiety were positively correlated with Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Vizyoner Dergisi, Yıl: 2023, Cilt: 14, Sayı: 37, 37-51. ISSN: 1308-9552 Süleyman Demirel University Visionary Journal, Year: 2023 conspiracy thinking about Jewish people, Germans, and Arabs. ...
... The first hypothesis of our research was that there was a positive relationship between fear of COVID-19 and believing in conspiracy theories, which was supported by our findings. Existential threats and concerns about death experienced by individuals increase the level of belief in conspiracy theories (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Newheiser et al., 2011). Sullivan et al. (2010) state that various situational threats cause anxiety in the individual and, an enemy is created to cope with this anxiety even though there is no clear evidence. ...
The main purpose of the study is to determine the level of Turkish university students' belief in the COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The study involves 676 university students from 52 cities in Turkey who are 18 to 36 years old (M = 22.21 years, SD = 2.65). The research is structured in two stages: Study 1 and Study 2. In Study 1, a valid and reliable measuring tool called the COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Scale (CTCV-19S) is developed to determine the extent to which students believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In Study 2, on the other hand, the level of Turkish university students' belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is examined using the CTCV-19S within the framework of the role of fear of COVID-19 fear and political orientation. As a result, it is found that Turkish university students believed in COVID-19 conspiracy theories at a higher rate than the general population, and there is a positive relationship between COVID-19 fear and COVID-19 conspiracy theories. It is also found that students with right-wing political views are more prone to believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
... As a result, the CTs has been related with underlying psychopathological traits, as schizotypy, which make a person more likely to develop erroneous beliefs (e.g., Georgiou, et al., 2019;Hart & Graether, 2018). Also has been related to people with low educational level (Douglas et al., 2016;Sallam et al., 2021); female gender (Sallam et al., 2021); that have high levels of anxiety or worry (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013); lower monthly income (Sallam et a., 2021); that use social media sources of information (Earnshaw et al., 2020;Wilson & Wiysonge, 2020); that feel they have no power (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999); that need to feel unique compared to others (Lantian et al., 2017); that feel the need to belong (Graeupner & Coman, 2017), or that feel that their group is underestimated (Cichocka et al., 2016), or threatened (Jolley et al., 2018). However, these data are not conclusive, since they are unstable and it is very influenced by cultural impact (Sallam, et al., 2020), and sociodemographic context of the sample (Vicol, 2020). ...
... Also in health personnel, where only the 38.3% of sample were women. Thus, the higher frequency in this group could be explained by the high levels of anxiety described for this population in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic (see: Tolsa & Malas, 2021); which has been described as a predictor of CTs (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). In this study, middle age appears as a predictor factor, but in the absence of references that confirm it, and taking into account the characteristics of the sample, all with a medium-high educational level and the irregular distribution of women between group, more studies are needed to confirm it. ...
Pandemics are a global threat, with vaccination being the main weapon of control. Fear, an unpleasant emotional state caused by a threatening stimulus perception, is known to be behind inhibitory behaviours; being, with mistrust, the basis of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (CTs). It would be appropriate to know the fear influence on these theories. In this way, a cross-sectional online survey was applied to 2.987 subjects, in a COVID-19 context, characterized by high levels of uncertainty and mistrust, with the aims of analyse the relationship between some anti-vaccine CTs and vaccination intention (VI), also the influence of fear to vaccination (VF) on TCs and VI in this context. As result, all CTs were positive predictors of VF and negative predictors of VI. The correlations were significant (p <0.001), from moderate to high, for all analysed variables, with a significant and moderate directionality and size of association. Regression analysis indicated a moderate and significant explained variance (r2 = 0.54) of CTs + VF in VI. The analysis also indicates that safety and security CTs were more strongly associated with VF (r2 = 0.347) and VI (r2 = 0.46) than other CTs. Obtained results were more significant than those found by other researchers. Knowing in each case the main anti-vaccine CTs and the associated fear can help to plan programs to increase vaccination levels.
... Focusing on negativity could potentially lead to threat and fear responses and activate more extremist opinions. This is based on research results that showcase that fear or anxiety is linked to conspiracy thinking about minorities (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). In addition, people are more likely to remember and believe threatening information about immigrants (Gadarian and Albertson, 2014). ...
... However, the negativity bias did not play a role in reducing or reinforcing extremist attitudes. Contrary to our expectations, having more negative thoughts, and negative information more readily available, did not increase people's extremist attitudes (Gadarian and Albertson, 2014;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). We might also have expected a reactance effect, in which the more extreme content that triggers negative thoughts leads to a counterreaction, so that people overcorrect in their expressed opinions, and therefore the measurement of extremist attitudes is lower. ...
Extremists often aim to paint a biased picture of the world. Radical narratives, for instance, in forms of internet memes or posts, could thus potentially trigger cognitive biases in their users. These cognitive biases, in turn, might shape the users’ formation of extremist attitudes. To test this association, an online experiment (N=392) was conducted with three types of right-wing radical narratives (elite-critique, ingroup-outgroup, violence) in contrast to two control conditions (nonpolitical and neutral political control condition). We then measured the impact of these narratives on the activation of three cognitive biases of relevance in the formation of extremist attitudes: the ingroup-outgroup bias, the negativity bias, and the just-world hypothesis. The results indicate that violence narratives seem to be particularly harmful as they heighten participants’ negativity bias and increase just-world views. Just-world views in turn show a positive relationship to extremist attitudes, which highlights the need of regulating violence invocations on social media.
... Research has also uncovered several predictors of this general tendency to believe conspiracy theories. Prior cross-sectional work has found that greater conspiracist ideation is predicted by higher levels of need for uniqueness [16], higher dispositional levels of anxiety [17], and a more intuitive thinking style [18]-to name a few. Greater narcissism has also been linked to higher levels conspiracist ideation [19]. ...
... Thus, belief in a single conspiracy theory is not in and of itself an indication of conspiracist ideation. Consistent with this idea, research suggests that a variety of situational factors can nudge people toward endorsing a given specific conspiracy theory, including a lack of control [23], anxiety [17], and social identity threat [24]. More generally, people seem to be drawn to believing conspiracy theories when they experience threats to existential (e.g., control, security), epistemic (e.g., understanding, accuracy), and social (e.g., self and group image) motives [4,25]. ...
A primary focus of research on conspiracy theories has been understanding the psychological characteristics that predict people’s level of conspiracist ideation. However, the dynamics of conspiracist ideation—i.e., how such tendencies change over time—are not well understood. To help fill this gap in the literature, we used data from two longitudinal studies (Study 1 N = 107; Study 2 N = 1,037) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that greater belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories at baseline predicts both greater endorsement of a novel real-world conspiracy theory involving voter fraud in the 2020 American Presidential election (Study 1) and increases in generic conspiracist ideation over a period of several months (Studies 1 and 2). Thus, engaging with real-world conspiracy theories appears to act as a gateway, leading to more general increases in conspiracist ideation. Beyond enhancing our knowledge of conspiracist ideation, this work highlights the importance of fighting the spread of conspiracy theories.
... Along these lines, it has been argued that conspiracy theories can be characterized as deeply emotional theories because they are based on negative emotional experiences rather than rational considerations [41]. Consistent with this view, extensive research has shown that conspiracy beliefs are associated with perceived loss of control, stress, anxiety, and threat perceptions [11,[42][43][44][45][46]. Experimental studies also support this view [42,47,48]. ...
... Consistent with this view, extensive research has shown that conspiracy beliefs are associated with perceived loss of control, stress, anxiety, and threat perceptions [11,[42][43][44][45][46]. Experimental studies also support this view [42,47,48]. Although belief in conspiracies is often conceptualized as an attempt to manage negative emotional experiences, available evidence suggests that this method is not effective, as such theories ultimately fail to provide effective relief of aversive emotions and may even foster a negative feedback loop that leads to a decreased sense of autonomy and control, as well as to heightened levels of anxiety, powerlessness, and existential threat [49,50]. ...
As COVID-19 has spread worldwide, conspiracy theories have proliferated rapidly on social media platforms, adversely affecting public health. For this reason, media literacy interventions have been highly recommended, although the impact of critical social media use on the development of COVID-19 conspiracy theories has not yet been empirically studied. Moreover, emotional dysregulation may play another crucial role in the development of such theories, as they are often associated with stress, anxiety, lack of control, and other negative emotions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that emotion dysregulation would be positively associated with conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and that critical use of social media would attenuate this association. Data from 930 Italian participants (339 men and 591 women) were collected online during the third wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. A moderated model was tested using the PROCESS Macro for SPSS. Results showed that: (1) emotion dysregulation and critical social media use accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19; and (2) critical social media use moderated the effect of emotion dysregulation on conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19. Implications for preventing the spread of conspiracy theories are discussed.
... The psychological literature, however, only began studying Conspiratorial beliefs around the mid-1990s (Woods.,2016. With little attention given to conspiracy belief within 3 SOCIAL MEIDA & CONSPIRATORIAL BELIEF the psychological literature before the '90s, (Bratich., 2002(Bratich., , 2008Coady., 2019;DeHaven-Smith., 2010, 2013Husting & Orr., 2007) only within the last decade or so has research looked at operationalising and measuring conspiratorial belief (Swami., 2017). ...
... A further relationship between fear and anxiety have been associated with conspiratorial belief (Grzesiak-Feldman., 2013). Fear is a consequence of the feeling of anxiety, a person may feel anxious due to a perceived threatening situation or having low feelings of control (Swami., 2016). ...
Aims: The present study examined the relationship between social media and
Instagram usage, maternal and individual education, and household income on conspiratorial belief levels. Previous research has identified that social media usage, as well as education and income, affect conspiratorial belief levels, with longer time spent on social media, as well as low levels of education and income leading to the adoption of conspiratorial beliefs.
Method: Multiple questionnaires were administered to participants (n = 83) through a
google forms document containing a demographics questionnaire, the Instagram intensity scale (IIS), the social media networking intensity scale (SNAIS) and the generic
conspiratorial belief scale (GCBS).
Results: Results showed that social media and Instagram usage were significantly correlated with conspiratorial belief levels, while maternal and individual education, and income, found no significant effect. Findings indicate a weak positive relationship with both Instagram (p < .03) and social media usage (p < .02) at a statistically significant level.
Conclusion: Findings provided the literature with a significant
correlation with social media usage and conspiratorial belief within a well-educated high-income sample. Challenging previous research that such a sample would find low levels of conspiratorial belief, suggesting further research to examine possible mediating factors between social media, education, and income as predictors of conspiracy belief.
... For example, feeling uncertain caused by experiencing distress makes conspiracy beliefs stronger [54]. A similar tendency can be seen when people are anxious, as they are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, as it helps them to deal with fear [55]. The same mechanism can be observed in the feeling of alienation and powerlessness [56]. ...
The worldwide pandemic that started in December 2019 was a cause of a great rise in the feeling of threat in society. A feeling of threat and distress can be influenced by the span of emotions experienced by a person, and as it is rather clear, that the situation of pandemic evokes negative emotions, they can range from fear to depression, to even disgust. In this study, we wanted to verify the influence of the negative emotions of automatic origin, related to the well-being and homeostasis of the organism and the negative emotions of reflective origin, which are related to social constructs, on the feeling of threat caused by the pandemic outbreak. We expected automatic emotions to have a greater influence on the feeling of threat. We used an online questionnaire to measure the intensity of negative emotions and the feeling of threat among Polish participants in the time of the early outbreak of the pandemic (March–April 2020). Regression analyses were used to identify the predictors of the feeling of threat. The results show the distinctive effect of automatic and reflective groups of emotions. While automatic emotions always increased the feeling of threat, the reflective emotions suppressed the distress, especially in the group of middle-aged and elderly participants. As reflective emotions are developing in the process of socialization, the observed results could suggest, that young people do not process the situation of the pandemic in reflective categories, which leaves them more worried about the situation. We suggest, that promoting reflective thinking can be helpful in interventions in the cases of anxiety caused by the pandemic, as well as in social communication regarding the topic of the pandemic.
... These beliefs often suggest a strict division between good and evil and offer unambiguous answers to complex problems (Leone et al., 2018;Pellegrini et al., 2021). Conspiracy theories belief might have positive results for the individuals, helping them satisfy their needs: (1) epistemicto avoid uncertainty, satisfy curiosity, and assign meaning (Van Prooijen & Douglas, 2017) and that is the reason why people with tendencies for conspiracy thinking seek patterns even there are none (Van Prooijen et al., 2018); (2) existentialto rebuild a sense of control, safety, and power (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013) and (3) socialto sustain self-image and the image of one's group. Conspiracy thinking links to feeling special (Lantian et al., 2017), is connected to feeling a need to belong (Graeupner & Coman, 2017) or a sense that one's group is not valued enough (Cichocka et al., 2016) or even faces a threat (Jolley et al., 2018). ...
Building on the Moral Foundations Theory and findings regarding the linkage of values, convictions, and beliefs, the aim of the study was to compare people displaying various constellations of moral foundations regarding their tolerance of ambiguity, fear of COVID-19 (FCV), endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and the extent to which they believed in the effectiveness of five COVID-19 preventive measures. This study was self-report and questionnaire-based (N = 212), performed on the general public (age from 18 to 65). Moral foundations clustered into four groups: Individualizing, Binding, Anti-Individualizing, and Generally Moral. The endorsement of Individualizing values (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity) was linked to higher FCV and higher rating of the effectiveness of COVID-19 preventive measures. Endorsing Binding values (Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity) was related to lower tolerance of ambiguity and displaying higher conspiracy beliefs. Findings are discussed in the light of their meaning of values for socially responsible behavior during a pandemic.
... Scientists across the world joined in the endeavor to better understand the virus and discover effective treatments and vaccines. Researchers highlighted the protective effect of understanding and trusting science against unfounded beliefs Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Swami et al., 2016;van Prooijen & Douglas, 2017;van Prooijen & van Vugt, 2018). However, it is important to stress that providing more information to the public (i.e., improving scientific knowledge) is not enough; despite the emergence of new information and the growing scientific consensus on the coronavirus, various data interpretations were available, and conspiracy believers selected information to suit their theories, often exploiting disagreements between experts. ...
Unlabelled:
Scientific reasoning and trust in science are two facets of science understanding. This paper examines the contribution of science understanding, over and above analytic thinking, to the endorsement of conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs about COVID-19 and behavioral intentions to engage in the recommended preventive behavior. We examined the direct and indirect effects of science understanding on normative health behavior in a representative sample of the Slovak population (N = 1024). The results showed more support for the indirect pathway: individuals with a better understanding of science generally had fewer epistemically suspect beliefs and as a consequence tended to behave more in line with the evidence-based guidelines and get vaccinated. Neither scientific reasoning nor trust in science directly predicted non-compliance with preventive measures, but analytic thinking correlated positively with non-compliance with preventive measures. The strongest predictor of epistemically suspect beliefs was trust in science, which also directly predicted the intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Therefore, reasoning about which experts or sources to believe (second-order scientific reasoning) has become more important than directly evaluating the original evidence (first-order scientific reasoning).
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04284-y.
... The belief in Bill Gates as the cause of the pandemic from the conceptual lens of this research could be linked to existential motives. This motive according to Grzesiak-Feldman, (2013), Tetlock (2002), Abalakina-Paap et al., (1999), are usually exerted by people when they feel some powerful forces (like Bill Gates) has control over their lives and rendered them insecure, this existential motive is adopted to compensate for their perceived weakness and give them a feeling that they are still in control of their lives and territory. Blaming Bill Gate who has invested so much on vaccine production and distribution globally is not morally correct, however, humans according to Douglas et al., (2017) always hold on to beliefs that is appealing and popular within their circle of influence. ...
The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination to control transmission, morbidity, and mortality is highly dependent on the population's readiness to embrace the vaccine. This study explores the level of willingness of various demographics in accepting COVID-19 vaccine. A narrative literature review using thematic analytical method was used to determine the level of vaccine acceptance among various socio-demographics. Conspiracy belief was used as the conceptual framework to explore the causes of vaccine hesitancies. It was discovered from the reviewed literatures that vaccine hesitancy was present in all surveyed countries and population. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancies correlated with age, gender, level of education, country of residence, race, ethnic and religion affiliations. The studied revealed that participants who were at least 55 years or older were more receptive to COVID-19 vaccines compared to those between 25 to 54, some studies revealed that those between 16 to 24 years were more receptive than those between 25 to 34 years. The studies showed vaccine hesitancies were higher in female than their male counterparts and also those with no education or low education were more prone to vaccine refusals than college and university graduates. Furthermore, religion affiliation and belief plays a significant role in vaccine hesitancies, those whose religion opposes vaccine acceptance had high refusal rate compared to those whose religion encourages vaccinations, while participants without any religion affiliations showed more willingness to get vaccinated. Ethnicity and racial characteristics were highly significant in all the reviewed literatures, with highest hesitancies among Black race than their Whites counterparts. Majority of Asians and Latinos had over 70% vaccine acceptances, the race and ethnic affiliations were further substantiated when it was observed that people from South America such as Ecuador, Brazil, some Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh had the highest vaccine acceptance compared to countries in Africa and Europe. The primary reason for this vaccine hesitancies was the various conspiracies theories in circulation that labelled the vaccines as either diabolic or unsafe. Targeting populations with high vaccine reluctance rates can help achieve high vaccination coverage. Effective communication should be adopted by using appropriate channels as this will foster trust and increase vaccine uptake.
... Indeed, an increasing body of literature has demonstrated that conspiracy beliefs are associated with different types of psychological threats (for a review, see Douglas et al., 2017;van Prooijen, 2020). For example, Grzesiak-Feldman (2013) found that state and trait anxiety positively correlated with conspiracy beliefs (blaming Jews, Arabs, and Germans for their alleged wrongdoings) and that experimentallyinduced anxiety (i.e., waiting outside an exam hall vs. a neutral control condition) increased people's tendency to seize on conspiracy explanations. Similarly, previous research has linked attachment anxiety (Green & Douglas, 2018), existential anxiety (Newheiser et al., 2011), generalized anxiety disorder symptoms (Leibovitz et al., 2021), and perceived stress (Swami et al., 2016) to conspiracy beliefs. ...
Conspiracy beliefs typically flourish in threatening situations that evoke negative emotions. In the present research, we hypothesized that conspiracy beliefs may therefore serve as a psychological response to difficulties in the domain of emotion regulation (i.e., dysregulation of emotional experiences, expressions, and responses). This hypothesis was tested among British, American, and Polish participants and conceptually replicated across three studies. Specifically, we examined the associations between difficulties in emotion regulation and belief in general notions of conspiracy (Study 1, n = 391 and Study 2, n = 411) and belief in specific conspiracy theories in (Study 3, n = 558). Across all three studies, difficulties in emotion regulation positively predicted belief in conspiracy theories. These findings suggest that people having more problems with regulating their emotions may be most prone to believing in conspiracy theories.
... Research shows that either individual dispositions in the perception of uncertainty (van Prooijen and Jostmann 2013), a recall of memories of situations in which one experienced a lack of control (Whitson and Galinsky 2008;van Prooijen and Acker 2015) or perceived threats to a social status quo (Jolley, Douglas, and Sutton 2018) increase conspiratorial thinking. Many correlational studies have shown a relationship between emotions associated with threat and uncertainty and belief in conspiracy theories (Abalakina-Paap et al. 1999;Grzesiak-Feldman 2013;Newheiser, Farias, and Tausch 2011;van Prooijen 2016). A similar relationship can be found between the increase/decrease of religiosity and existential (Baimel et al. 2022;Orman 2019;Herman 2007;Norris and Inglehart 2015). ...
... Goertzel (1994) has showed that the tendency to believe in conspiracies is also correlated with feelings of insecurity about unemployment. So, insecurity, anxiety and people's need for control are closely related to their tendency to believe in conspiracy theories (Van Prooijen & Acker, 2015;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Goertzel, 1994). ...
Yeni medya giderek daha fazla halkla ilişkiler ve reklam alanında kullanılmaya başlamıştır. Sosyal paylaşım ağları özellikle
Twitter ünlülerin duyurum (public announcement) bağlamında çok fazla kullandıkları bir mecra halini almıştır. Bu duyurum
biçimi halkla ilişkiler modelleri bağlamında ele alınıp incelendiğinde Barnum’un basın ajansı modeli ile ilişkilendirilebilir. Basın
ajansı modelinde çeşitli uygulamaların duyurumu için gazetelerden yer satın almayıp, ilginç ve abartılı haberlerin para
ödenmeden yayınlatması söz konusu olabilmiştir. O dönemki basın ajanslarının en belirgin özelliği, müşterilerinin basında yer
alabilmeleri için her türlü uygulamayı yararlanılabilir kabul etmeleridir. Genellikle boşanma, evlenme, basit soygun olayları,
moda vs. gibi haberlerle, artistlerin gazete sayfalarında yer almalarını sağlayan Barnum, ilginç bir biçimde her zaman okuyucu
bulmuştur.
Bildiriye konu olan araştırmada; ünlülerin-pop sanatçılarının “Basın Ajansı/Tanıtım” modelini Twitter mecrasını kullanma
pratiklerine nasıl yansıttıklarını ortaya koymak amaçlanmıştır. Başka bir ifadeyle, Socialbakers 2017 araştırma raporuna göre en
çok takipçisi olan ilk 10 pop sanatçısının resmi Twitter hesapları; Twitter paylaşımlarının içerikleri çözümlenerek ilgili modelle
ilişkisi irdelenmeye çalışılmıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Sosyal Medya, Duyurum, Ünlü Haberleri, Basın Ajansı Modeli
... Este elemento común es el hecho discriminatorio (Miró Llinares, 2016), pero junto a él aparece también como elemento protagónico el prejuicio. Ha podido observarse que la desinformación, especialmente en su vertiente conspiranoica, tiende a apoyarse sobre el prejuicio hacia determinadas minorías, muy especialmente hacia los judíos, o individuos de otras etnias o nacionalidades (Fong et al., 2021;van Prooijen y van Lange, 2014;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Cook et al., 2020;Kofta y Sedek, 2005). ...
Primero algunos procesos electorales y luego la crisis de la COVID-19 han situado en el centro de atención de los eventos de comunicación ofensiva y peligrosa en las redes sociales a la desinformación. La presente investigación analiza un evento de desinformación, el lanzamiento y difusión del hashtag #ExposeBillGates, a través de los 183.016 tuits que utilizaron dicho hashtag durante su periodo de actividad en junio de 2020. Mediante análisis de redes y recurriendo al procesado del contenido de los mensajes se ha podido observar que la dimensión del evento fue altamente dependiente de la participación de un pequeño número de cuentas, así como encontrarse cierta comunicación violenta y de carácter injurioso, pero no discurso de odio. Se discute la necesidad de estudiar más en profundidad la relación entre dos macrofenómenos comunicativos de naturaleza distinta pero más imbricados en su origen «problemático» de lo que puede parecer.
... Existential motives involve the need to manage threat and concomitant anxiety (Green & Douglas, 2018;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Radnitz & Underwood, 2017;Swami et al., 2016), the need for control (Sullivan et al., 2010), loss of control (Farhart et al., 2021;van Prooijen & Acker, 2015), powerlessness (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999), alienation or anomie (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999;Bruder et al., 2013;McHoskey, 1995), and system identity threat . Thus, CT belief may help some cope with a threatening, uncertain world. ...
Conspiracy theories (CTs) and CT belief stem from uncertain, hard to explain, crisis situations, especially when strongly held social and political identities are threatened making people feel anxious, insecure, or out of control. Connected to alarming developments in world politics, CTs are no longer manifestations of extremists and paranoids. As salience increases, scholars continue to examine their antecedents and consequences. This chapter highlights the interdisciplinary roots of the study of CTs and CT belief. It sets the stage with important definitions and measurement challenges, then reviews scholarship on psychological, social, political, and situational factors behind CTs and CT belief. Consequences are vast, allowing for only brief discussion of the spread, persistence, and prevalence related to negative health, social, political, and environmental effects. As it is unlikely that broad weaponisation of CTs or their blaze online will cease in the near future, the chapter concludes by discussing directions for future research.
... The relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and anxiety had already been observed before the pandemic outbreak [35]. Recent literature shows that conspiracy beliefs can also be regarded as a predictor of the perceived coronavirus threat [36]. ...
This study investigated the relationship between fear of the coronavirus, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and dimensions of the need for cognitive closure. As there is evidence of associations between these variables, we hypothesized that the relationship between the need for closure dimensions and coronavirus fear may be mediated by conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19. We analyzed the results from 380 individuals who completed online versions of three scales: the Fear of COVID-19 Scale: a short version of the Need for Closure Scale: and—designed for this study—the Conspiracy Theories about the Coronavirus Scale. The results showed that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories fully mediated the relationship between the fear of the coronavirus and avoidance of ambiguity, as well as closed-mindedness. The findings provided evidence that beliefs in conspiracy theories may play a significant role in reducing the level of coronavirus fear in people with high levels of these traits. In addition, a partial mediation between the fear of the coronavirus and the need for predictability was found. The limitations and implications of the research are discussed.
... Individuals tend to form conspiratorial beliefs when they experience anxiety or worry and perceive a lack of control over an uncertain situation or outcome (Bruder et al., 2013;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;van Prooijen & Acker, 2015). The dispositional inability to tolerate these aversive reactions is termed intolerance of uncertainty (Carleton, 2016). ...
Introduction: Inconsistent use of protective preventive measures and nonadherence of the guidelines set by the World Health Organization regarding the coronavirus are associated with increased morbidity and mortality, as well as increased health care costs. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the role of COVID-19 related worries, conspiracy beliefs, and uncertainty in adherence to preventative measures in Iran. Method: In a large survey with data collected online from a volunteer sample of 599 individuals, assessments were made of the distress associated with the anticipated potential consequences associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, extent of agreement with conspiracy beliefs, level of situation-specific uncertainty, and self-reports of compliance with preventive measures. Data were analyzed to explore paths leading to nonadherence to safety guidelines proposed by the medical authorities. Results: A large majority of individuals report significant distress and worry associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicate that increasing levels of situation-specific uncertainty intolerance, as well as conspiracy beliefs regarding the coronavirus, are associated with non-compliance with the advised protocols. Specifically, the results show that worries related to the COVID-19 pandemic are linked to non-compliance with preventive measures through conspiracy beliefs and feelings of uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 situation even after gender, education, and perceived socioeconomic status were controlled. Conclusions: Findings imply that emotional exhaustion is likely to have set in and become counterproductive as people choose to violate safety guidelines. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.
... Il est important de noter que cette étude a été menée durant une période complexe et anxiogène, ce qui a un impact non négligeable sur le processus décisionnel, pouvant ainsi être biaisé. Comme démontré dans les recherches antérieures sur le sujet, la quête de sens, le flux extrême d'informations et le manque de compréhension influencent nos pensées et attitudes(Douglas, 2021;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Pennycook et al., 2016). Ainsi il est important de s'informer et combler ce besoin de recherche de compréhension mais il est nécessaire de ne pas y apporter des réponses trop rapides et intuitives.Pour terminer, cette étude comporte certaines limitations. ...
Les précédentes recherches ont démontré que les personnes qui ont tendance à se fier à leurs intuitions et, qui ont des connaissances scientifiques de base plus faibles sont moins capables de discerner les informations vraies et fausses concernant la COVID-19 (Čavojová et al., 2022; Pennycook et al., 2020). Cette exposition à des informations erronées et les inquiétudes quant à la sécurité des vaccins peuvent contribuer à la baisse des intentions de se faire vacciner. Dans cette étude, un prétest investiguant les raisons de se faire vacciner ou non a été conduit. Les réponses ont été analysées de manière qualitative et ont permis de relever que la solidarité et la protection des autres ainsi que la protection personnelle étaient les principales raisons de se faire vacciner. D’autre part, les raisons principales de ne pas se faire vacciner étaient principalement liées au vaccin et sa nouvelle technologie vaccinale, notamment le manque de recul et le manque de confiance, ainsi qu’aux restrictions antidémocratiques. Ensuite, ces réponses ont permis d’élaborer deux listes de raisons, respectivement pour et contre la vaccination. Le but de cette recherche quantitative est d’investiguer les éventuels liens entre le statut vaccinal et le style de pensée (intuitif ou analytique). Tout d’abord les résultats de l’étude 2 rejoignent ceux de l’étude 1 concernant les raisons de refuser la vaccination. Cependant, les résultats ont mis en avant des différences selon la profession concernant les raisons des se faire vacciner. Ensuite, les résultats ont également révélé que les personnes vaccinées avaient des connaissances factuelles au sujet de la vaccination plus élevées que le groupe de personnes non-vaccinées, néanmoins les résultats ont démontré que les facteurs cognitifs (style de pensée) n’ont pas permis de prédire l'adhésion à la vaccination. Finalement, seules la croyance dans la science et les performances aux questions factuelles permettent de prédire le statut vaccinal.
... As highlighted by Šrol et al. (2021), people's emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are crucial for understanding related conspiracy beliefs. People are more likely to believe in broader conspiracy theories when they experience negative emotions (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Freeman and Bentall, 2017). Limited studies showed associations with some emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and worry, with COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted individual’s life and society, and such an emergency has increased the likelihood of recurring conspiratorial thinking. There is much research on broader conspiratorial thinking and studies on COVID-19-related conspiratorial thinking has been growing worldwide, moreover, the negative consequences of COVID-19 specific conspiratorial beliefs for people’s health are clear. However, person-centered research aiming at identify groups of individuals who share patterns of relations between COVID-19 specific conspiratorial beliefs and other psychological features is still scarce. A sample of 1.002 people (18–40 years old, M = 23; SD = 5.19) responded to a questionnaire administered online. The aim was to identify groups of individuals based on their beliefs about COVID-19 conspiracy theories and to compare the groups identified in terms of psychological characteristics associated such as automatic defense mechanisms, coping strategies, powerlessness, emotions, emotional regulation, attitudes toward the COVID-19, social distancing discontent, perceptions of COVID-19 severity and temporal perspective. A k-mean cluster analysis identified the groups of Believers (22.26%), Ambivalent believers (34.3%), and Non-believers (43.21%). The three groups differ particularly in terms of defense mechanisms, and time perspective. Results suggested the need to tailor interventions for individuals believing in COVID-19 conspiratorial theories based on differences in the psychological characteristics among the three groups.
... People may engage in conspiracy theories when epistemic, existential, and social needs are not ful lled (3). Epistemic need referred to people's motivation to maintain certainty, consistency, and accuracy in their understanding of the world (10,11). The term "existential need" is used to describe people's need to feel safe, secure, and in control of their environment (12) while social need referred to people's drive to uphold a favorable and positive social image of themselves and the community to which they belong (13). ...
Introduction
The non-endemic multicountry outbreak of monkeypox (MPX) has emphasized the issue of conspiracy theories that go viral in times of societal crisis. Now, it is the turn of MPX to join COVID19 in the conspiracy theory realm. Social media outlets were flooded by a scourge of misinformation as soon as MPX cases began to appear with an evident cross-pollination between diverse conspiracy theories. Given the adverse consequences of conspiracy beliefs, this study aimed to assess the extent of endorsement of MPX conspiracy beliefs among the Lebanese population and to identify its associated factors.
Methods
Using a convenience sampling technique, a web-based cross-sectional was conducted among Lebanese adults. Data was collected using an Arabic self-reported questionnaire. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify the factors associated with the MPX conspiracy beliefs scale.
Results
Conspiracy beliefs regarding emerging viruses including MPX were detected among 59.1% of Lebanese adults. Participants endorsed particularly the conspiracy theories linking the virus to a deliberate attempt to reduce the size of the global population (59.6%), gain political control (56.6%) or pharmaceutical companies' financial gain (39.3%), in addition to the manmade origin of MPX (47.5%). Remarkably, the majority of surveyed adults exhibited a negative attitude toward the government's preparedness for a potential MPX outbreak. However, a positive attitude was revealed toward the effectiveness of precautionary measures (69.6%). Female participants and those having a good health status were less likely to exhibit a higher level of conspiracy beliefs. On the contrary, divorced or widowed adults, those having a low economic situation, poor knowledge level, and negative attitude either toward the government or precautionary measures were more prone to disclose a higher level of conspiracy beliefs. Notably, participants relying on social media to get information about MPX were also more likely to have a higher level of conspiracy beliefs compared to their counterparts.
Conclusion
The widespread extent of conspiracy beliefs endorsement regarding MPX among the Lebanese population urged the policymakers to find ways to reduce people’s reliance on these theories. Future studies exploring the harmful impacts of conspiracy beliefs on health behaviors are recommended.
... Such events elicit feelings of uncertainty, and conspiracy theories can give people an explanation for a situation and its ultimate cause and hence reduce confusion. Furthermore, experimentally induced high-anxiety situations were associated with conspiracy thinking in research participants [187]. The COVID-19 pandemic is both a major and a stressful event. ...
When a high-ranking British politician was falsely accused of child abuse by the BBC in November 2012, a wave of short messages followed on the online social network Twitter leading to considerable damage to his reputation. However, not only did the politician’s image suffer considerable damage, moreover, he was also able to sue the BBC for £185,000 in damages. On the relatively new media of the internet and specifically in online social networks, digital wildfires, i.e., fast spreading, counterfactual or even intentionally misleading information occur on a regular basis and lead to severe repercussions. Although the example of the British politician is a simple digital wildfire that only damaged the reputation of a single person, there are more complex digital wildfires whose consequences are more far-reaching. This thesis deals with the capture, automatic processing, and investigation of a complex digital wildfire, namely, the Corona and 5G misinformtionsevent - the idea that the COVID-19 outbreak is somehow connected to the introduction of the 5G wireless technology. In this context, we present a system whose application allows us to acquire large amounts of data from the online social network Twitter and thus create the database from which we extract the digital wildfire in its entirety. Furthermore, we present a framework that provides the playing field for investigating the spread of digital wildfires.
The main findings that emerge from the study of the 5G and corona misinformation event can be summarised as follows. Although published work suggests that a purely structure-based analysis of the information spread allows for early detection, there is no way of predictively labelling spreading information as probably leading to a digital wildfire. Digital wildfires do not emerge out of nowhere but find their origin in a multitude of already existing ideas and narratives that are reinterpreted and recomposed in the light of a new situation. It does not matter if ideas and explanations contradict each other. On the contrary, it seems that it is the existence of contradictory explanations that unites supporters from different camps to support a new idea. Finally, it has been shown that the spread of a digital wildfire is not the result of an information cascade in the sense of single, particularly influential short messages within a single medium. Rather, a multitude of small cascades with partly contradictory statements are responsible for the rapid spread. The dissemination media are diverse, and even more so, it is precisely the mix of different media that makes a digital wildfire possible.
... Some studies also show that perceptions of powerlessness (Abalakina-Papp et al., 1999;van Prooijen and Jostmann, 2013) are linked with conspiracy beliefs. In light of such findings, van Prooijen and point to the importance of affect which is stressed by research demonstrating that anxiety and fear are related to conspiracy beliefs (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). ...
In contrast to beliefs in specific conspiracy theories, conspiratorial predispositions refer to people's propensity to view the world in conspiratorial terms. As such, they are one of the most important antecedents of beliefs in specific conspiracy theories. Understanding the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions is hence important. Despite this, there is still only limited research on the antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions. Previous research has also not taken the role of media use into account, even though media constitute the most important source of politically and societally information. To remedy this, in the current study we use a large-scale panel study in Sweden to investigate the antecedents of conspira-torial predispositions, with a particular focus on the role of media use. Among other things, the results show that use of right-wing political alternative media is one of the most important antecedents of conspiratorial predispositions, even when accounting for ideological leaning and ideological extremity.
... The role of expected consequences postulated by the CMCT offers an interpretation of empirical evidence showing that anxiety and lack of control encourage support of conspiracy theories (Bruder et al. 2013;Douglas et al. 2017;Grzesiak-Feldman 2013;Kofta et al. 2020). To understand why, consider again the example of the young woman greatly desiring to have kids. ...
In the social sciences, research on conspiracy theories is accumulating fast. To contribute to this research, here I introduce a computational model about the psychological processes underlying support for conspiracy theories. The proposal is that endorsement of these theories depends on three factors: prior beliefs, novel evidence, and expected consequences. Thanks to the latter, a conspiracy hypothesis might be selected because it is the costliest to reject even if it is not the best supported by evidence and by prior beliefs (i.e., even if it is not the most accurate). In this way, the model implies a key role for motivated reasoning. By examining the social conditions that favour the success of conspiracy theories, the paper embeds the model, whose focus is primarily psychological, within the broader social context, and applies this analysis to probe the role of conspiracy theories within contemporary Western societies. Altogether, the paper argues that a computational outlook can contribute to elucidate the socio-psychological dynamics underlying the attractiveness of conspiracy theories.
... anger (e.g.,Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013;Van Prooijen & Van Vugt, 2018). Our research expanded on existing findings by responding to current calls for investigating how exposure to conspiracy explanations of events can trigger people's emotions (see, e.g., K.Douglas et al., 2020) extending some of the already existing correlational designs that support elicitation of negative emotions following experiences of conspiracy theories (cf.Jolley & Paterson, 2020;Peitz et al., 2021). ...
Conspiracy theories concern milestone events, mobilizing various explanations. However, there is still emerging research on how conspiracy beliefs mobilize normative and nonnormative collective action, as well as political engagement and what the emotional underpinnings of such effects are. We conducted two experimental studies (Study 1, N = 301 and Study 2, N = 328) on exploring the relationship between exposure to conspiracy theories and normative, nonnormative collective action and political engagement, moderated by primed victimhood and mediated by fear/anxiety and anger emotional indices. Results in Study 1 showed that exposure to conspiracy theories decreases normative collective action, but increases nonnormative collective action, negative emotions of anger and fear/ anxiety and political engagement. In Study 2 we confirmed findings of Study 1, but these effects were moderated by primed victimhood. Study 2 also showed that anger index, but not fear/anxiety index, significantly mediated the moderating interaction effect between exposure to conspiracy theories and primed victimhood on the (non)normative collective action and political engagement. Results are discussed in light of the broader impact of circulation of conspiracy theories and their effective tackle amidst societal traumas.
... Thus, adopting conspiracy beliefs when facing different types of threats is not uncommon and, unsurprisingly, has already been studied by social scientists (Douglas et al., , 2019Van Prooijen & Douglas, 2017). For example, previous research explored conspiracy beliefs in relation to general and attachment anxiety (Green & Douglas, 2018;Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013), lack of control (Kofta et al., 2020;Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), maladaptive coping with stress (Marchlewska, Green et al., 2022); uncertainty Van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013;Whitson et al., 2015), powerlessness (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999;Jolley & Douglas, 2014b), feelings of relative deprivation , threats to the fairness of the political system (Jolley et al., 2018), one's feelings of self-worth , and in-group identity Cislak et al., 2021;Marchlewska et al., 2019). ...
Since March 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a global pandemic, conspiracy theories have continued to rise. This research examines the role of different forms of in-group identity in predicting conspiracy thinking in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. We hypothesized that conspiracy thinking would be predicted positively by national narcissism (i.e., a belief in in-group’s greatness which is contingent on its external validation and makes in-group members sensitive to psychological threats) but negatively by secure national identification (i.e., a confidently held ingroup evaluation, which serves as a buffer against psychological threats). In a three-wave longitudinal study conducted on a representative sample of adult Poles (N = 650), conspiracy thinking was positively predicted by national narcissism, but negatively by national identification. Further, we found evidence that conspiracy thinking strengthened national narcissism (but not national identification) over time. Implications for intra- and intergroup processes are discussed.
... Earlier theoretical accounts have underlined that conspiratorial thinking is a defensive mechanism used by threatened weak groups (Uscinski-Parent 2014) to strengthen in-group solidarity and vigilance against potential enemies. High levels of anxiety in conditions of crisis or turmoil, be it political or economic, are shown to have a strong positive correlation with beliefs in conspiracy theories ( Although recent research (Georgiou et al. 2020) was not always able to find a relation between holding Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs and levels of stress, there is a body of research showing a positive correlation between stress and endorsement in CTBs (Grzesiak-Feldman 2013;Newheiser et al. 2011;Swami et al. 2016). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect, based on previous research, that self-reported levels of stress are correlated with conspiratorial thinking in relation with the current pandemic. ...
Public health policy measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have been hindered worldwide by widespread adherence to conspiracy theories, which can be broadly defined along the lines of previous definitions (Goreis & Voracek, 2019; Swami et al., 2010) that say conspiracy theory is a belief that one or several plots by maleficent agents are behind salient and threatening socio-political or political developments.
As shown by current research concerning holders of COVID-19 related CTBs, people who support such views are less likely to comply with public health regulations and more likely to protest against lockdown, mask-wearing, and quarantine (Allington & Dhavan, 2020; Bertin et al., 2020; Biddlestone, Cichocka, et al., 2020; Marinthe et al., 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020; Plohl & Musil, 2020; Ștefan et al., 2021; Swami & Barron, 2020) and, in this way, subverting the effectiveness of anti-COVID 19 policies. This motivated a surge of research into the correlates of support for CTBs, including the present article, which investigates the issue in the particular case of the Romanian adult population.
... Causal explanations of salient events based on conspiracy theories also contribute to the satisfaction of existential needs for security, safety, and control . Thus, during times when individuals are anxious and their existential needs are subjectively threatened, conspiracy beliefs provide a certain and conclusive narrative that satisfies such needs (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). Although conspiracy beliefs typically involve the idea that society is controlled by untrustworthy and malicious individuals (implying an existential threat), knowledge of these plots and an understanding of how the world works provide a sense of control (Douglas et al., 2019). ...
Due to rapid technological advances and the increasing diffusion of smart devices, public health applications (apps) have become an integral aspect of public health management. Yet, as governments introduce innovative public health apps (e.g., contact tracing apps, data donation apps, ehealth apps), they have to confront controversial debates that fuel conspiracy theories and face the fact that app adoption rates are often disappointing. This study explores how conspiracy theories affect the adoption of innovative public health apps as well as how policymakers can fight harmful conspiracy beliefs. Acknowledging the importance of word of mouth (WOM) in the context of conspiracy beliefs, the study focuses on the interplay between WOM and conspiracy beliefs and their effects on app adoption. Based on theories of social influence and conspiracy beliefs, substantiated by data derived from a multi-wave field study and confirmed by a controlled experiment, the results show that (1) changes in WOM concerning public health apps change conspiracy beliefs, (2) the effects of WOM on changes in conspiracy beliefs depend on both the sender (peer vs. expert) and the receiver's initial conspiracy beliefs, and (3) increases in conspiracy beliefs reduce public health app adoption and trigger more negative WOM regarding such apps. These results should inform health agencies about how to market innovative public health apps. For consumers with initially low levels of conspiracy beliefs, the distribution of expert WOM supporting the efficacy of public health apps effectively prevents the development of conspiracy beliefs and increases app adoption. However, expert WOM is ineffective in reducing conspiracy beliefs among firm conspiracy believers. These consumers should instead be targeted by campaigns distributing peer WOM that highlights an app's benefits and contradicts conspiracy theories.
... As an example, in front of a threatening, complex and global event-as the COVID-19 pandemic-people try to provide various explanations. In particular, people with a sense of lack of control in their lives, do not feel responsible and are more prone to think that the responsibility of a negative event relies on the social classes that they think have the control (Grzesiak-Feldman, 2013). Interestingly, conspiracy theories are often sustained by groups not feeling part of a community and feeling excluded by the society or outside it. ...
Vaccine confidence has emerged as one of the most relevant psychological factors implied in the worldwide affecting the fight against COVID-19—as well as public trust in doctors, medicine, and science. Indeed, the vaccine confidence is crucial to maximize the trust in vaccines and their use for prevention, with several implications for public health. This study aimed to analyse the relationships among between vaccine confidence, conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19, and satisfaction with science and medicine in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal observational survey was administered to a convenience sample (n = 544; mean age 52.76 y.o., SD = 15.11; females 46.69%) from the Italian general population. A two-waves mediation model—a structural equation model technique—was used. The survey was part of a larger international project ( https://osf.io/qy65b/ ). The model highlighted that the conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 had a negative effect on the satisfaction with medicine and science (β = − 0.13, se = 0.03, p < .001). The latter, in turn, had a positive effect on vaccine confidence (β = 0.10, se = .05, p < .001). Interestingly, the effect of conspiracy beliefs on vaccine confidence was completely mediated by the scientifical-medical satisfaction (β = − 0.02, se = 0.01, p < .05). These results highlight how the scientifical-medical satisfaction can fully mediate the relationship between conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and vaccine confidence. These findings about vaccine hesitancy and confidence and disclose have implications for psychological and social interventions that could promote vaccine confidence by targeting the satisfaction with science and medicine.
Conspiracy theories are alternative explanations of important events which attribute their cause to secret plots by powerful, malevolent forces and they are widespread in society. This discussion paper firstly outlines belief in conspiracy theories and how they can be detrimental for the smooth running of society, with a focus on Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs. Then, my PhD research is introduced which focuses on potential strategies for targeted interventions to be developed to reduce some of the potential negative consequences of conspiracy beliefs.
Angular direction estimation to landmarks of varying distance in the physical environment was utilised to investigate the ecological validity of the Santa Barbara sense of direction scale (SBSOD). Two- and three-dimensional MR measures were included to enable further the scale applicability. Results showed a moderate correlation between SBSOD and angular deviation from landmarks in the immediate landscape, but not with local or distant landmarks. Moreover, the findings suggest that skills which underlie three-dimensional MR better relate to pointing accuracy (PA) of distant landmarks and the cardinal direction, North. Results also showed a gender-related systematic biases in landmark estimation.
The Jews’ arrival to the archipelago began acquainted since the 13th to the 20th century, although, much earlier, history shows the Jews traffic in the Southeast Asian region had been eventuated. In this study, Jew accommodates several meanings, religion – Judaism and the adherents – Jewish or Jewish descendants. Practically, the beliefs’ differences are arduously accepted by a few Indonesians. Various stereotypes are imposed on this community as a form of othering. Moreover, radical ideological propaganda encompassing antisemitism incitement is presented conditionally. The absence of legal acknowledgment has impacted on limiting Jews’ precious wiggle room enforcing their religious freedom. As a further consequence, they will prefer to conceal their identity for hindering friction nor dispute with the oppositions. Misleading perceptions about Jews and Israel implicitly politicized identities. Aware of the rising negative sentiments, this paper provides an overview of the Jewish existence in Indonesia, from the historical journey, recognition, and prejudice to identity politics. Analysis of legislation and actual reality is carried out to find out the urgency of recognizing Jews’ identity. At the end, Indonesia endures the essential duty to fulfil religious freedom and nurture its diversity for peace.
The use of COVID-19vaccinations to prevent serious illness and infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been accepted by approximately two-thirds of the Canadian population, at the time that this article was completed. Although COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are widely accessible in North America, there remains a substantial portion of Canadians who demonstrate vaccine hesitancy. The objective of this study is to examine whether there exists a predictive relationship between one’s perceived stress-levels, general support for conspiracy theories, and antivaccination attitudes.
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology provides a comprehensive review of the psychology of political behaviour from an international perspective. Its coverage spans from foundational approaches to political psychology, including the evolutionary, personality and developmental roots of political attitudes, to contemporary challenges to governance, including populism, hate speech, conspiracy beliefs, inequality, climate change and cyberterrorism. Each chapter features cutting-edge research from internationally renowned scholars who offer their unique insights into how people think, feel and act in different political contexts. By taking a distinctively international approach, this handbook highlights the nuances of political behaviour across cultures and geographical regions, as well as the truisms of political psychology that transcend context. Academics, graduate students and practitioners alike, as well as those generally interested in politics and human behaviour, will benefit from this definitive overview of how people shape – and are shaped by – their political environment in a rapidly changing twenty-first century.
Recent theoretical models view conspiracy beliefs as an individual reaction to threatening experiences, an assumption that is in line with empirical relationships between conspiracy beliefs and feelings of anxiety and distress. The purpose of this study was to examine whether these relationships can be explained by the frequent use of specific coping strategies. In two consecutive online studies (N1 = 589, N2 = 177), anxiety, coping, and conspiracy beliefs were measured using questionnaires (Study 1 and Study 2) as well as a behavior-based measure (Study 2). Conspiracy beliefs were linked to higher levels of dispositional, but not situational anxiety. With respect to coping with stressors, conspiracy beliefs were positively correlated with vigilance and unrelated to avoidance. No moderator or mediator effects of the individual coping style on the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and anxiety were found. These results imply that individuals who endorse conspiracy theories are rather more anxious and less tolerant to ambiguity. Given the weak effect sizes and the focus of the extant models, however, replications should target the links between coping, anxiety and fear.
The present research aims to identify unique characteristics of written conspiracy theories. In two pre‐registered quantitative human‐coded content analyses, we compared 36 pairs of conspiratorial and non‐conspiratorial online articles about various events. As predicted, conspiratorial articles—compared to non‐conspiratorial articles—contained less factual, more emotional and more threat‐related information. Also, we predicted and found that conspiratorial articles presented more argumentation against the opposing standpoint and that they provided explanations that were more dispositional and less falsifiable. Contrary to our predictions, we did not consistently observe that conspiratorial articles presented less argumentation for their own standpoint. Also, we did not find consistent support that conspiratorial articles provided less information about the specific process or more information about the underlying goals of the respective events, or that conspiratorial explanations attributed the events to a lesser extent to situational factors. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the understanding of conspiracy theories.
The review considers the results of a study implemented in 2020 — - early 2021, and reflected in the presented collective monograph. It is shown that the applied approach (macroeconomic analysis in combination with the mezzo-level analysis of each of the industries and at the level of individual firms) enabled showing an ambiguous reaction to the pandemic of different companies and the new risks and opportunities associated with it in six sectors of the Russian economy, and in the global context of the development of the relevant sectors in the world economy. In particular, the trends of the previous development, as well as the situation in the first period of the pandemic and after the initial recovery, as well as possible trajectories of further development in retail trade, IT, the tourism sector, pharmaceutical production, automotive industry and the chemical industry are considered.
The resulting picture allows us to better understand both the opportunities and limitations of further development, as well as the challenges and possible junctions the Russian state policy is facing. In the book they are presented as following: (1) the further increase in the already high internal and interregional divergence (regarding the technological development, productivity, profitability, etc.) in sectors with vertical coordination; (2) the further digitalization, which in sectors with developed horizontal ties will entail updating business models and formats; (3) the increased role of intangible assets of companies (knowledge, skills), growing competition both within and between industries for human capital; (4) health, safety, nutrition, and entertainment will become the core drivers of the economy..
In conclusion, critical remarks are formulated: underestimation of the specifics of the pandemic as an extra-economic shock, in comparison with typical economic crises (and models for overcoming them); the need to analyze the general trends in the global and Russian economies in the context of the downward wave of the current long economic cycle; compositional difficulties of the monograph.
Conspiracy theories are abundant in social and political discourse, with serious consequences for individuals, groups, and societies. However, psychological scientists have started paying close attention to them only in the past 20 years. We review the spectacular progress that has since been made and some of the limitations of research so far, and we consider the prospects for further progress. To this end, we take a step back to analyze the defining features that make conspiracy theories different in kind from other beliefs and different in degree from each other. We consider how these features determine the adoption, consequences, and transmission of belief in conspiracy theories, even though their role as causal or moderating variables has seldom been examined. We therefore advocate for a research agenda in the study of conspiracy theories that starts—as is routine in fields such as virology and toxicology—with a robust descriptive analysis of the ontology of the entity at its center.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 74 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
The present research aims to identify unique characteristics of written conspiracy theories. In two preregistered quantitative human-coded content analyses, we compared 36 pairs of conspiratorial and non-conspiratorial online articles about various events. As predicted, conspiratorial articles – compared to non-conspiratorial articles – contained less factual, more emotional, and more threat-related information. Also, we predicted and found that conspiratorial articles presented more argumentation against the opposing standpoint and that they provided explanations that were more dispositional and less falsifiable. Contrary to our predictions, we did not consistently observe that conspiratorial articles presented less argumentation for their own standpoint. Also, we did not find consistent support that conspiratorial articles provided less information about the specific process or more information about the underlying goals of the respective events, or that conspiratorial explanations attributed the events to a lesser extent to situational factors. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the understanding of conspiracy theories.
The Covid-19 pandemic not only led to chaos and uncertainty, it also brought about many conspiracy theories. In the last two decades, with considerable amount of research, social psychologists have begun to unravel the personality traits underlying conspiracy theories. One such trait is narcissism where the need to distinguish oneself from others might be satisfied by holding beliefs that are different from the general population. In this research, we focus, for the first time in the literature, on both collective and grandiose narcissism’s predictive effects on Covid-19 conspiracy theories and the possible moderation of need for uniqueness (feeling oneself to be special and different from others) and belonging (feeling oneself to be part of a larger and worthy whole). In a Turkish sample ( N = 309), we found that both collective and grandiose narcissism were significant predictors of Covid-19 conspiracy. In addition, when the need to feel special was high, grandiose narcissists, but not collective narcissists, tended to believe in Covid-19 conspiracies. Finally, we found that generic conspiracy beliefs were also important predictors of Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Our research illuminates the link between narcissism and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Future research should look for other possible moderating factors between collective narcissism and conspiracy beliefs in the context of Covid-19.
Experiences of bullying in the workplace can increase anxiety, paranoia, and hypervigilance to threat in victims. Such factors are also associated with conspiracy beliefs. Two pre-registered studies (cross-sectional and experimental) tested whether bullying experiences may be linked to the development of conspiracy beliefs. Study 1 (n = 273) demonstrated that experiences of workplace bullying were positively associated with conspiracy beliefs, an effect that could be explained by paranoia. In Study 2 (n = 206), participants who imagined being bullied (vs. supported) reported increased belief in conspiracy theories. Our research uncovers another antecedent of conspiracy beliefs: workplace bullying. Future research should endeavour to explore how best to support victims and avert the link between being bullied and conspiracy theorising emerging.
Using survey and social network evidence from Southeast Europe, we advance the understanding of conspiracy theories and politics related to the coronavirus pandemic in three ways: (1) we show that beliefs in coronavirus conspiracy theories are related to ideological support for a nationalist vision of society and socialist vision of the economy; (2) we also show that both conspiracy believers and nonbelievers are living in bubbles of the like-minded; and (3) we use the tools of natural language processing to elucidate the unambiguous differences in the discourse related to the coronavirus used by conspiracy believers and nonbelievers.
Conspiracy beliefs are often viewed as a form of psychopathology, closely linked to anxiety, paranoia, and maladaptive traits. However, recent research has brought attention to adaptive and functional aspects of conspiracy theories. This article presents a framework for understanding conspiracy beliefs as a paradoxical adaptation to historical trauma. There is vast evidence that three essential aspects of historical trauma (loss of personal and collective control, status devaluation, and victimhood) constitute the key antecedents of conspiracy beliefs. Although conspiracy theories might be adaptive in times of shared trauma (e.g., war, colonization), they become maladaptive in times of peace and prosperity. The popularity of conspiracy theories in historically traumatized societies threatens individuals’ health and well-being, social trust, cohesiveness, and intergroup harmony.
Surveyed 348 residents of southwestern New Jersey and found that most believed that several of a list of 10 conspiracy theories were at least probably true. Ss who believed in 1 conspiracy were more likely also to believe in others. Belief in conspiracies was correlated with anomia, lack of interpersonal trust, and insecurity about employment. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than were Whites. Younger Ss were slightly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, but there were few significant correlations with gender, educational level, or occupational category. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Anxiety states are associated with increasedattention to threat and a greater likelihood of reachinga pessimistic interpretation of ambiguous events.Existing models of this selective processing possess features that are difficult to reconcile withcurrent experimental findings. In this paper we build onthese earlier ideas to develop a new model,incorporating adaptations that allow it to accountbetter for the accumulating data. Essential featuresare that attributes or meanings of stimuli are processedin parallel and compete for attentional resources. Inputfrom a threat evaluation system (TES) strengthens activation of threat-related attributes, to anextent influenced by anxiety level. Such activation canbe countered, within limits, by voluntary task-relatedeffort, and the balance between these opposing influences determines the extent of anyattentional or interpretative bias seen. Such a model isplausible from an evolutionary perspective and isconsistent with neurological evidence concerning theacquisition and extinction of aversiveconditioning.
Cumulative evidence has shown that four dimensions can be differentiated in the experience of test anxiety: worry, emotionality, interference, and lack of confidence. To investigate whether these dimensions show specific relationships with ways of coping, a study with 162 students (75 male, 87 female) examined how students cope with anxiety and uncertainty in the run-up to important exams. Coping strategies included task-orientation and preparation, seeking social support, and avoidance. Results showed that overall test anxiety was related to seeking social support. When dimensions of test anxiety were inspected individually while controlling for interdimensional overlap, however, results showed a specific pattern of relationships: (a) worry was related to task-orientation and preparation and inversely related to cognitive avoidance, (b) emotionality was related to task-orientation and preparation and seeking social support, and (c) interference was related to avoidance and inversely related to task-orientation and preparation, whereas (d) lack of confidence was related to avoidance only. Although some gender differences emerged, the findings indicate that the main components of test anxiety display different relationships with coping. Moreover, they confirm that it is important to differentiate between worry and interference because these dimensions, albeit closely related, may show opposite relationships with ways of coping.
A longitudinal study with three periods of data collection has been designed to test a model concerning the antecedents and consequences of coping in the anticipatory stage of an examination stress process. The model tested focuses on the role of positive and negative affect at an early stage as the main antecedents for coping. Primary and secondary appraisal, and dispositional variables (perceived personal competence and optimism) have been related to early affect. Moreover, the consequences of coping, considered as the affect measured after the deployment of coping strategies, and the grade obtained in the exam, are also tested. Results show that early affect is the main antecedent of displayed coping strategies. Dispositional variables and appraisal are related to affect, and differential effects of coping in later affect have been noticed. No relationship between coping and grade has been found. Implications for research on coping with examination stress are discussed.
This study used canonical correlation to examine the relationship of 11 individual difference variables to two measures of beliefs in conspiracies. Undergraduates were administered a questionnaire that included these two measures (beliefs in specific conspiracies and attitudes toward the existence of conspiracies) and scales assessing the 11 variables. High levels of anomie, authoritarianism, and powerlessness, along with a low level of self-esteem, were related to beliefs in specific conspiracies, whereas high levels of external locus of control and hostility, along with a low level of trust, were related to attitudes toward the existence of conspiracies in general. These findings support the idea that beliefs in conspiracies are related to feelings of alienation, powerlessness, hostility, and being disadvantaged. There was no support for the idea that people believe in conspiracies because they provide simplified explanations of complex events.
A model is presented that traces the origins of the anxiety people experience when interacting with outgroup members to fear of negative psychological or behavioral consequences for the self and fear of negative evaluations by ingroup or outgroup members. Prior relations between the groups, intergroup cognitions, the structure of the situation, and personal experience are hypothesized to determine the amount of anxiety that participants in intergroup interactions experience. It is proposed that high levels of intergroup anxiety amplify normative behavior patterns, cause cognitive and motivational information-processing biases, intensify self-awareness, lead to augmented emotional reactions, and polarize evaluations of outgroup members. Regression analyses of data from Hispanic students indicate that high levels of intergroup anxiety are associated with low levels of contact with outgroup members, stereotyping of outgroup members, and assumed dissimilarity to outgroup members.
Byford and Billig examine the emergence of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the Yugoslav media during the war with NATO. The analysis focuses mainly on Politika, a mainstream daily newspaper without a history of anti-Semitism. During the war, there was a proliferation of conspiratorial explanations of western policies both in the mainstream Serbian media and in statements by the Yugoslav political establishment. For the most part such conspiracy theories were not overtly anti-Semitic, but rather focused on the alleged aims of organizations such as the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. However, these conspiracy theories were not created de novo; writers in the Yugoslav media were drawing on an established tradition of conspiratorial explanations. The tradition has a strong anti-Semitic component that seems to have affected some of the Yugoslav writings. Byford and Billig analyze anti-Semitic themes in the book The Trilateral by Smilja Avramov and in a series of articles published in Politika. They suggest that the proliferation of conspiracy theories during the war led to a shifting of the boundary between acceptable and non-acceptable political explanations, with the result that formerly unacceptable anti-Semitic themes became respectable. This can be seen in the writings of Nikolaj Velimirović, the Serbian bishop whose mystical anti-Semitic ideas had previously been beyond the bounds of political respectability. During the war, his ideas found a wider audience, indicating a weakening of political constraints against such notions.
Although research has consistently revealed the presence of a general attentional bias towards threat, empirical and theoretical ambiguity exists in determining whether attentional biases are comprised of facilitated attention to threat, difficulty in disengagement from threat, or both, as well as whether attentional biases reflect automatic or strategic processes. This paper reviews empirical investigations across 4 common assessment tasks: the Stroop (masked and unmasked), dot probe, visual search, and the Posner tasks. Although the review finds inconsistencies both within and between assessment tasks, the evidence suggests that attentional biases towards threat are comprised of each of the phenomenological characteristics addressed in this paper. Contemporary theoretical models of attentional biases in anxiety are summarized and critically reviewed in light of the current evidence. Suggestions for future research are addressed, including a need to investigate the psychometric properties of the assessment tasks, to utilize consistent theoretically driven operationalizations of attentional biases, and to provide a temporal description of the characteristics of attentional biases towards threat.
Perceiving oneself as having powerful enemies, although superficially disagreeable, may serve an important psychological function. On the basis of E. Becker's (1969) existential theorizing, the authors argue that people attribute exaggerated influence to enemies as a means of compensating for perceptions of reduced control over their environment. In Study 1, individuals dispositionally low in perceived control responded to a reminder of external hazards by attributing more influence to a personal enemy. In Study 2, a situational threat to control over external hazard strengthened participants' belief in the conspiratorial power of a political enemy. Examining moderators and outcomes of this process, Study 3 showed that participants were especially likely to attribute influence over life events to an enemy when the broader social system appeared disordered, and Study 4 showed that perceiving an ambiguously powerful enemy under conditions of control threat decreased perceptions of external risk and bolstered feelings of personal control.
We sought to determine the prevalence of HIV conspiracy beliefs in patients with HIV and how those beliefs correlate with access and adherence to HIV care and health outcomes. From March to December 2005, 113 patients at four public facilities in Houston, Texas, diagnosed with HIV for 3 years or less, participated in a cross-sectional survey. Conspiracy beliefs were assessed with five items that dealt with HIV origin, cure, and vaccine. Medical records were reviewed for CD4 cell counts, HAART use, and appointment dates. Statistical analyses (including analysis of variance [ANOVA], chi(2) testing, and regression) determined the predictors of conspiracy beliefs and correlated them with outcomes. Sixty-three percent of the participants endorsed 1 or more conspiracy beliefs. African American patients more often held HIV conspiracy beliefs than white and other/mixed race patients (73%, 52%, 47%; p = 0.045). Persons holding 1 or more conspiracy beliefs had higher CD4 cell counts at diagnosis (254 cells/mm(3) versus 92, p = 0.03); and similar rates of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) use (73% versus 71%), 100% adherence to HAART by self-report (53% versus 45%,), mean adherence by pharmacy refill (83% versus 87%), and gaps in care greater than 120 days (49% versus 53%), compared to subjects who did not hold any conspiracy beliefs (all p > 0.40). Since recruitment focused on patients in care, patients with extreme conspiracy beliefs may be underrepresented. Despite this, more than 50% of the study population endorsed 1 or more conspiracy belief. However, these beliefs did not negatively impact access or adherence to HIV care. Efforts to improve adherence to HIV care may not need to focus on eliminating conspiracy beliefs.
Was AIDS intentionally inflicted upon blacks by whites? Was JFK assassinated as part of an intricate conspiracy? Daniel Pipes traces conspiracy theories through history and convincingly shows how they have been used as common tools of mass manipulation in the West and have more recently cropped up in the Third World and among disempowered fringe groups.
Human beings are continually getting into situations wherein they can no longer understand the world around them. Something happens to them that they feel they did not deserve. Their suffering is described as an injustice, a wrong, an evil, bad luck, a catastrophe. Because they themselves live correctly, act in an upright, just manner, go to the right church, belong to a superior culture, they feel that this suffering is undeserved. In the search for a reason why such evil things happen to them, they soon come upon another group, an opponent group to which they then attribute certain characteristics: This group obviously causes them to suffer by effecting dark, evil, and secretly worked out plans against them. Thus the world around them is no longer as it should be. It becomes more and more an illusion, a semblance, while at the same time the evil that has occurred, or is occurring and is becoming more and more essential, takes place behind reality. Their world becomes unhinged, is turned upside down, in order to prevent damage to or destruction of their own group (religion, culture, nation, race) they must drive out, render harmless, or even destroy those—called “conspirators”—carrying out their evil plans in secret. Such orgies of persecution and annihilation against imagined or imaginary enemies accompany the history of Europe from, at the latest, the era of the persecution of the Jews and the Inquisition of the High Middle Ages up through the genocides of the recent past. In comparison to the belief in conspiracies—which is called the theory of conspiracy—belief in magic and witches associated with the so-called primitive cultures and with the European folk-culture seems harmless, especially in regard to the consequences for the conspirators.
Social connectedness and its relationship with anxiety, self-esteem, and social identity was explored in the lives of women. Social connectedness was negatively related to trait anxiety and made a larger unique contribution to trait anxiety than social support or collective self-esteem. Women with high connectedness also reported greater social identification in high, as compared with low, cohesion conditions. Women with low connectedness exhibited no difference in either condition. Social connectedness was also positively related to state self-esteem across both conditions but did not have an effect on state anxiety. Future research in gender and cultural differences, self-evaluation process, and intervention strategies are discussed in light of the findings.
The transition to this empirical section is made with the question: To which historical situation is research into conspiracy theory indebted? One would perhaps expect that due to the fact that the core or decisive moment in the national-socialist world view was of a conspiratorial-theoretical nature, namely the thesis of the Jewish world conspiracy, this would have elicted a boom in scientific research after World War II. Yet in the first decades after 1945 there was little evidence of this. Mter more-or-less partial preparatory works, as far as I can see, Norman Cohn was the first to publish a scientifically adequate presentation of the genesis of the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy and the fabrication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in his book Warrant for Genocide in 1967. A year later, Leon Poliakov followed suit in Volume 3 of his History of Antisemitism (1968, pp. 289–298) with a summary ofthe genesis ofthe modern conspiracy theory before and after the French Revolution, above all, of the thesis of the Freemason-Jewish world conspiracy. Then, in 1970, the works of Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723–1939 and of Seymor Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason. Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970 appeared. In 1976, Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein published a book in Germany with the promising title, The Thesis of Conspiracy, 1776–1945. However, basically he only dealt with one single conspiracy theory—that put forward by Abbe Barruel (1797/1798) and others after the French Revolution: Freemasons and Jews, Illuminati and Jacobins had conspired to bring about the revolution.
Periodically, people are accused of conspiring against their country, against their religion, or against the party of which they are members. Now, a conspiracy is, by definition, the work of a minority. One of the most pronounced, if not the most pronounced, aspects of this accusation becomes immediately apparent: The minority is alien; either it is composed of foreigners or it is financed by and in league with foreign powers. One always seems to detect what one calls “the hand of the stranger” behind the beliefs and actions of the minority. An event will trigger this habitual thought process that one has recourse to, as if by reflex. A few examples will enable us to give our ideas more concrete form. A few years ago Indira Ghandi, India’s prime minister, was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards. The murder occurred at the same time the Sikh minority was claiming its independence, and the Indian Army had been called in to intervene against it. A few days after the assassination, Rajiv Ghandi, who had succeeded his mother, proclaimed in front of an audience of 100, 000 in New Delhi: “The assassination of Indira Ghandi is the doing of a vast conspiracy whose object is to weaken and divide India” (LeMonde, 1984). He added that the assassins were aided and abetted by foreign accomplices. Also recently, an event had great repercussions in France. Agents of the French secret service sank the Rainbow Warrior, a ship belonging to the ecological organization Greenpeace, in the port of Auckland. The ship was to take part in a demonstration against French nuclear experiments in the Pacific. Without awaiting the results of the official nuclear experiments in the Pacific.
An examination of anti-Semitic themes in the thinking of the contemporary far left cannot proceed without controversy, for the very concept of “anti-Semitism” is itself a matter of intense debate. At the root of this debate lie the relations between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and whether, either in practice or in theory, the articulation of an anti-Zionist position collapses into an anti-Semitic one, or whether anti-Zionism is separate from anti-Semitism. The present strategy is not to offer firm definitions of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, in order to separate or link the two concepts by definition, but to see whether anti-Semitic themes emerge in the way that the anti-Zionist position is articulated in sections of the far left in Britain.
I certainly have little to add to the presentations of my predecessors in general, and to the one by Professor Zukier in particular, but I would, however, like to point out that the Judeophobic tradition, and the tales that grew out of it, were much more virulent in the Greek-Orthodox than in the Roman Catholic realm. The Greek church fathers, natives of a region in which diaspora Jews were numerous, and, thus, more aggressive, were already portraying the Jew as diabolical in a much more systematic way than the Latin fathers. These Judeophobic foundations were transmitted, via Byzantium, to Russia, at the time of her Christianization. Of greater importance was the reform movement that emerged in Novgorod in northwestern Russia, in the age of Luther and Calvin. This movement came to be known as the “Heresy of the Judaizers.” More extreme than Western reformers, its proponents questioned the divinity of Jesus, and translated Maimonides and other Jewish doctors. It was politically expedient for Grand Duke Ivan III to be amenable to their teachings, since he coveted church properties. A long and confused struggle ensued, which led to the total defeat of the “Judaizers.” Following these events, the Russian tsars decided that Jews would no longer be admitted to Muscovy. This tradition was maintained, in principle, until 1917. Nonetheless, due to successive annexations of territories—the Ukraine in the 17th century, the Baltic countries and Poland in the 18th—more than half of the European Jews became Russian subjects. They were, however, not allowed to reside in Russia itself, unless they were “merchants of the first guild” or university graduates. They were, thus, subject to special legislation. However, when Alexander II, the tsar who was to liberate the serfs, was crowned, Russia experienced an initial thaw. The majority of the young Russian intellectuals pleaded for the emancipation of the Jews.
1. The Age of Anxiety: Jane Parish (School of Social Relations, Keele University). 2. Iloveyou: Viruses, Paranoia and the Environment of Risk: Peter Knight (Staffordshire University). 3. The Obscure Politics of Conspiracy Theory: Mark Featherstone (Staffordshire University). 4. Conjuring Order: the new world order and conspiracy theories of globalization: Alisdair Spark (King Alfreda s College, Winchester, UK). 5. Militias, the Patriot Movement, and the Internet: Nigel Woodcock (Manchester University). 6. Taking conspiracy seriously: fantastic narratives and Mr Grey the Pan--Afrikanist on Monserrat: Jonathan Skinner (University of Abertay, Dundee). 7. Tout est Lie: The Front National and Media Conspiracy Theories: Adrian Quinn (Liverpool John Moores University). 8. The Popular Culture of Conspiracy/The Conspiracy of Popular Culture: David Bell & Lee--Jane Bennion--Nixon (Staffordshire University). 9. Conspiracy, corporate culture and criticism: Warren Smith (University of Leicester). 10. Conspiracy, What Conspiracy? Social Science, Funding, and the Politics of Accusation: Simon Lilley (Keele University). 11. Human science as conspiracy theory: Martin Parker (Keele University). Notes on contributors. Index.
Conspiracy thinking is defined as a pattern of explanatory reasoning about events and situations of personal, social, and historical significance in which a "conspiracy" is the dominant or operative actor. While conspiracy thinking exists to some extent probably in every society, the authors note the special prevalence of this type of thinking in the Arab-Iranian-Muslim Middle East, and offer a psychoanalytically based approach to conspiracy thinking based on theories of the paranoid process. The authors also attempt to identify aspects of Arab-Iranian-Muslim culture that may predispose individuals from that culture to conspiracy thinking, especially child-rearing practices, attitudes toward sexuality, and the role of secrecy.
Scholars and intellectuals often fail to pay sufficient attention to the historical and political importance of conspiratorial politics, that is, real-world covert and clandestine activities. This is primarily because they rarely make an effort to distinguish conceptually between such activities, which are a regular if not omnipresent feature of national and international politics, and bogus 'conspiracy theories', elaborate fantasies that purport to show that various sinister, powerful groups with evil intentions, operating behind the scenes, are secretly controlling the course of world events. Bale's purpose is to provide a clear analytical distinction between actual conspiratorial politics and 'conspiracy theories' in the pejorative sense of that term, and to suggest that research methods appropriate to investigating and analysing the former have long been available. In a world full of secret services, surreptitious pressure groups, criminal cartels and terrorist organizations, academics can no longer afford to ignore bona fide conspiratorial activities of various types, which have often had considerable historical significance in the past and are likely to continue to exert an impact on events in the future.
Examination stress is thought to prevent some individuals from reaching their academic potential. Explanations of this relationship include a proneness to ruminate and worry about examinations, as well as a tendency to be more susceptible to distraction. We therefore examined the relative roles that worry and distraction, assessed three months prior to examinations, have in predicting the academic grades of undergraduate students. Test–anxious worry was related to susceptibility to distraction, but not exactly as predicted. However, both worry and a proneness to be distracted by non-threatening, examination-irrelevant material were found to predict academic performance. These results are discussed in light of theories of test anxiety, as well as the potential for further research and interventions to manage examination stress.
After briefly describing the nature of emotional processing biases associated with vulnerability to anxiety, and a model of how they may be produced, we review new data on the experimental induction of attentional and interpretative biases. We show that these biases can be readily induced in the laboratory, in the absence of mood changes. However, induced biases exert effects on the processing of new information and cause congruent changes in state anxiety when they influence how emotionally significant information is encoded. We can therefore conclude that biases have causal effects on vulnerability to anxiety via their influence on how significant events are processed. Finally, we discuss how our model might account for the acquisition of processing bias and for when they can influence anxiety.
When an unforgettable event rocks our world, why do we so often mistrust the official explanation? Psychologist Patrick Leman has a theory
This paper proposes that understanding the causes of anti-Semitic hate crime requires the recognition of the cultural specificity of anti-Semitism, reflected in its unique mythical and conspiratorial nature. By neglecting to consider the idiosyncrasies of anti-Semitic rhetoric, general theories of hate crime often fail to provide an adequate explanation for the persistence of anti-Jewish violence, especially in cultures where Jews do not constitute a conspicuous minority, or where there is no noticeable tradition of anti-Jewish sentiment. This point is illustrated using as an example the emergence of anti-Semitic hate crime in Serbia in the aftermath of political changes in October 2000. The paper explores this development in the context of Serbia's recent past, arguing that the onset of violent incidents towards Jews entailed two distinct but related stages, both of which are linked to the conspiratorial nature of anti-Semitic ideology. The first phase - which culminated at the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia - involved the proliferation of the belief in Jewish conspiracy. At this stage, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which were to be found even in the mainstream media, retained an 'abstract' quality and their proliferation did not, in itself, lead to anti-Jewish hate crime. The onset of anti-Semitic violence is associated with the second phase, which followed Milošević's downfall, when, with the marginalisation of conspiratorial culture, the belief in Jewish conspiracy, as an abstract ideological position, became reified and transformed into concrete instances of violence against the local Jewish population. In exploring this two-stage process, the paper highlights the way in which a closer examination of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and other anti-Semitic texts can help shed some light on the dynamic underpinning the persistence of anti-Jewish hate crime in modern society.
Potentially traumatic events evoke a wide range of responses and outcomes. From a motivated so- cial cognitive approach to ideology, system-threatening events such as 9/11 should increase psy- chological needs to manage uncertainty and threat and, therefore, the appeal of politically conser- vative opinions. We investigated "conservative shift" among high-exposure survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (n = 45) and its relationship to coping and adjustment. Results indicated that Democrats and Independents (as well as Republicans) were more likely to shift toward conserva- tism and away from liberalism following 9/11. Despite its prevalence, we found relatively little evidence that embracing conservatism was related to improved well-being as measured either in terms of survivors' mental health symptoms or friends-relatives' ratings of their psychological adjustment. On the contrary, political conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, and conserva- tive shift were generally associated with the following: chronically elevated levels of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, desire for revenge and militarism, cyni- cism, and decreased use of humor. Conservative shift was also associated with increased religios- ity, patriotism, and the perception that the events of 9/11 created new interests and opportunities, suggesting that it may contain some adaptive (as well as maladaptive) features.
Vitriolic debate surrounds John F. Kennedy's (JFK's) death more than 30 years after the assassination. Whereas some endorse the official government conclusion that Oswald acted alone, others allege that some form of a conspiracy is responsible for Kennedy's death. The central thesis of this article is that due to the processes of biased assimilation and attitude polarization, personal theories about the perpetrator(s) of the assassination are essentially immutable, and therefore that the debate surrounding JFK's assassination will continue endlessly. Due to the process of biased assimilation, proponents of both the Oswald and conspiracy theories perceive the same body of evidence as supportive of their position. Biased assimilation leads to attitude polarization rather than to a moderation or reversal of existing attitudes. The results of the present study strongly support this line of reasoning. The study also examined the formation of assassination attitudes among subjects with no initial opinion. The majority of these subjects embraced the conspiracy theory at the conclusion of the study. However, authoritarianism was indirectly associated with the development of an Oswald theory stance via an increased endorsement of evidence consistent with the Oswald theory.
The authors argue that self-image maintenance processes play an important role in stereotyping and prejudice. Three studies demonstrated that when individuals evaluated a member of a stereotyped group, they were less likely to evaluate that person negatively if their self-images had been bolstered through a self-affirmation procedure, and they were more likely to evaluate that person stereotypically if their self-images had been threatened by negative feedback. Moreover, among those individuals whose self-image had been threatened, derogating a stereotyped target mediated an increase in their self-esteem. The authors suggest that stereotyping and prejudice may be a common means to maintain one's self-image, and they discuss the role of self-image-maintenance processes in the context of motivational, sociocultural, and cognitive approaches to stereotyping and prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Social connectedness and its relationship with anxiety, self-esteem, and social identity was explored in the lives of women. Social connectedness was negatively related to trait anxiety and made a larger unique contribution to trait anxiety than social support or collective self-esteem. Women with high connectedness also reported greater social identification in high, as compared with low, cohesion conditions. Women with low connectedness exhibited no difference in either condition. Social connectedness was also positively related to state self-esteem across both conditions but did not have an effect on state anxiety. Future research in gender and cultural differences, self-evaluation process, and intervention strategies are discussed in light of the findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses the role of diabolic causation schema in the theory of group-soul stereotype. It is argued that people develop a holistic representation of an outgroup as a threatening agent characterized by obsessive striving for power, high degree of group solidarity and egoism, and conspiracy. Holders of the group-soul stereotype apply a diabolic causation scheme: The outgroup is viewed as an intentional source of bad events undermining the moral order of society. The group-as-a-devil has high propensity to produce bad events, acts in highly integrative fashion, operates at a distance, and acts in an invisible way. This schema partly explains the origins of collective responsibility, suspiciousness toward assimilated minorities, or the tendency to approach weak minorities as strong and influential. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The article uses available survey data to depict the depth and spread of anti-Semitic attitudes across Europe. The main assumption is that European anti-Semitism, both currently and historically, is closely tied to issues and crises of national self-identification; for this reason, social identity theory is employed to study the varying configurations of anti-Semitic prejudice. In most European countries, Jews are a small and socially integrated minority. Attitudes toward them are determined less by concrete experiences of cultural differences, or conflicts over scarce resources, but rather by a perceived threat to the national self-image. This leads to an accentuation of the pertinent prejudices that blame Jews to be responsible for that threat. This perspective brings to light considerable differences between Eastern and Western Europe and the continuing influence of national traditions.
The authors argue that self-image maintenance processes play an important role in stereotyping and prejudice. Three studies demonstrated that when individuals evaluated a member of a stereotyped group, they were less likely to evaluate that person negatively if their self-images had been bolstered through a self-affirmation procedure, and they were more likely to evaluate that person stereotypically if their self-images had been threatened by negative feedback.' Moreover, among those individuals whose self-image had been threatened, derogating a stereotyped target mediated an increase in their self-esteem. The authors suggest that stereotyping and prejudice may be a common means to maintain one's self-image, and they discuss the role of self-image-maintenance processes in the context of motivational, sociocultural, and cognitive approaches to stereotyping and prejudice. A most striking testament to the social nature of the human psyche is the extent to which the self-concept—that which is the very essence of one's individuality—is integrally linked with interpersonal dynamics. Since the earliest days of the for-mal discipline of psychology, the significant influences of a number of social factors on the self-concept have been recog-nized. A central focus of sociocultural and social-cognitive approaches to psychology has concerned the ways in which individuals' self-concepts are defined and refined by the people around them. This is evident in early discussions of the social nature of individuals' self-concepts (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934) and of social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), and it contin-ues to be evident in more recent work, such as that concerning self-fulfilling prophecies (e.g. The converse focus—the self-concept's influence on percep-tions of and reactions toward others—has been recognized more fully within the last two decades, through, for example, research on self-schemas (H.
Two studies examined the role of temporal-based social categorizations for attitude change during intergroup contact between Polish and Jewish students. In Study 1 (N = 190 Polish students), a cross-sectional analysis showed that contact focused on contemporary issues had positive effects on both outgroup attitudes and perceived similarity to the outgroup. No such effects were observed when groups talked about past issues. Study 2 (N = 97 Jewish students) demonstrated this effect experimentally when 'historical' and 'contemporary' issues were discussed during contact. Contact about the present generated more positive attitudes toward contact partners and (unlike contact about the past) toward the generalized outgroup. The present fi ndings are discussed in the context of common ingroup identity model and collective guilt research. 'Every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of their fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors', wrote philosopher Hannah Arendt in the postscript to her famous book about Eichmann's trial (Arendt, 1994, p. 298). Indeed, historical events often shape current intergroup perceptions by framing the social categorizations employed. This article presents two studies examining perceptions of history as constraints on successful contact between two groups with a confl icted past.
Previous research has shown that students asked to recall the anxiety levels they reported prior to an exam exaggerate how anxious they had been. The present study investigated the effect of current emotions on this memory bias by comparing the recall of pre-exam anxiety in students who either achieved or failed to achieve their target grades. Participants rated their anxiety levels 48 hours prior to the exam and were asked to recall these levels after receiving their exam results. The exaggerated recall of pre-exam anxiety was observed only in students who surpassed their target grade. Students who failed to achieve their target grade significantly underestimated their pre-exam anxiety levels. The findings are attributed to self-enhancement motives that bias the recall of pre-exam anxiety in the direction that maximizes self-esteem. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that a mortality salience induction would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. In late September 2004, following a mortality salience or control induction, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush's re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
The article reports the numbers and types of anti-Semitic incidents, attacks, media reports, and public opinion against Jews
in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Western and Eastern European countries, the Middle East, and Australia. It also
reports responses to these actions by police and local and national government officials. The period for which the data are
reported is from 2000 to mid-2007. For each country, the size of the Jewish community is reported. What is manifestly clear
from the data presented is that anti-Semitism is on the rise in most countries of the world. The data show a dramatic increase
in anti-Semitism in Western Europe notably, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and The Netherlands. Of those countries,
France has the worse record.
The Soviets provided Cuba with the model of attacking human rights activities and organizations as a necessary extension of
the Jewish Zionist conspiracy. The identification of Castro with forces dedicated to the destruction of Israel was made plain
in proclamation and practice. The Cuban position is that the war on terrorism is actually an example of “Liberation Imperialism.”
Cubans make no reference to the repeated assaults on Israel, or the actual causes of the Middle East conflict—the denial of
the right of Israel to exist as a Nation-State in that region. Anti-Semitism is so powerfully rooted as a cultural element
in authoritarian cultures that even when, as in the case of Cuban communism, it entails the tortured twisting of doctrinal
elements within Marxism–Leninism, such as doctrinal claims about the “materialist foundations of society,” its leaders will
sacrifice the ideology to the reality. Part of the Castro attachment to communism is an overall contempt for the Jewish mini-Diaspora
within the larger flight of Cubans to the United States and other places where the practice of free speech remain unimpeded.
The regime of Fidel Castro has changed little in the past 49 years, compared to the rest of the world.
In the early modern period (16–18th centuries), churches and state administrations alike strove to eradicate Evil. Neither they nor society at large accepted a conceptual differentiation between crime and sin.The two worst kinds of Evil early modern societies could imagine were organized arson and witchcraft. Although both of them were delusions, they nevertheless promoted state building. Networks of itinerant street beggars were supposed to have been paid by foreign powers to set fire in towns and villages. These vagrant arsonists can be regarded as the terrorists of the early modern period. Witches were persons who had allegedly made a compact with the devil. They were thought to randomly use maleficent magic to harm individuals as well as whole regions.When law enforcement agencies and suspicious peasants or townspeople tried to identify persons who might be arsonist terrorists or witches they used the category ‘Evil’. Anyone who ignored the behavioral standards of society ever so slightly could be suspected of being utterly evil. The concept of Evil linked petty, commonplace immorality and the worst crimes imaginable to each other and to the mindless hatred of demons. This pre-modern concept of the banality of Evil was called into question by the legal reforms of the 17th century. It was finally rejected by the enlightenment that negated the imagined continuum of Evil.Witches and arsonist terrorists shared a number of characteristics. They were both said to form conspiracies that mirrored everyday society like an evil twin. The crimes they perpetrated lacked any purpose or reason, they were motivated by sheer malice. The worst forms of Evil had certain qualities of an epidemic: Witchcraft and terrorism were supposed to be always on the rise. The evil people were victimizers as well as victims. The imagery of Evil even implied that the evildoers resembled those they were supposed to have harmed.The fear of terrorist vagrants and witches as well as other conspiracy theories can be traced back to the Black Death. The plague of the 14th century not only sparked anti-Semitism. It lend force and credibility to the idea of an irrationally destructive, ever-growing secret organization as the epitome of Evil.
In this article we review two theories in which anxiety and its relationship to intergroup relations play a central role: anxiety/uncertainty management (AUM) theory and the integrated threat theory (ITT) of prejudice. The antecedents and consequences of anxiety in each theory are presented and comparisons between the theories are drawn. AUM specifies a greater range of antecedents, while ITT specifies a greater range of threats. The theories differ in the conceptualizations of the effects of anxiety with AUM holding that anxiety often has beneficial effects on intergroup relations and ITT arguing that anxiety typically has detrimental effects. AUM examines communication as the primary effect of anxiety whereas ITT focuses on prejudice. Possible reconciliations between the theories are discussed along with directions for future research.
Three studies tested the integrated threat theory by examining the causal role that threats play in attitudes toward immigrants. In Study I, students were presented with information about an immigrant group indicating that it posed realistic threats, symbolic threats, both types of threat or no threats to the ingroup. Attitudes toward the immigrant group were most negative when it posed both realistic and symbolic threats to the ingroup. In Study II, information was presented indicating that an immigrant group possessed negative traits, positive traits, or a combination of positive and negative traits. The results indicated that the negative stereotypes led to significantly more negative attitudes toward the immigrant group than the other types of stereotypes. In the third study, group descriptions leading to high levels of intergroup anxiety led to negative attitudes toward foreign exchange students. Empathizing with the foreign exchange students reduced these negative attitudes. The implications of the results of these studies for theory and practice are discussed.
Does self-image threatening feedback make perceivers more likely to activate stereotypes when confronted by members of a minority group? Participants in Study 1 saw an Asian American or European American woman for several minutes, and participants in Studies 2 and 3 were exposed to drawings of an African American or European American male face for fractions of a second. These experiments found no evidence of automatic stereotype activation when perceivers were cognitively busy and when they had not received negative feedback. When perceivers had received negative feedback, however, evidence of stereotype activation emerged even when perceivers were cognitively busy. The theoretical implications of these results for stereotype activation and the relationship of motivation, affect, and cognition are discussed. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68770/2/10.1177_01461672982411001.pdf
Over the past five years, the Serbian Orthodox Church has been criticized by liberal public opinion in Serbia for maintaining organizational and ideological links with Christian right-wing groups whose political discourse includes antisemitic themes. Byford looks at two specific responses to this public criticism, one from the Serbian Orthodox Church and the other from the Christian right, and examines the rhetoric employed to counter the allegations of antisemitism. The dominant discourse in these responses is denial, stating that there is, and never has been, any antisemitism in Serbia or within Orthodox Christianity In examining various aspects of this denial, Byford demonstrates that generalized statements about Serbian and Orthodox tolerance manage the moral accountability of those who find themselves under criticism by turning public attention away from the ongoing controversy and by confining the problem to a small number of individual extremists on the far right. He also argues that, by helping to generate a consensus about Serbian tolerance, the denial implicitly perpetuates the very same xenophobic and antisemitic elements of Serbian nationalist discourse that it is meant to negate and refute.
JFK, Karl Marx, the Pope, Aristotle Onassis, Queen Elizabeth II, Howard Hughes, Fox Mulder, Bill Clintonââ¬âall have been linked to vastly complicated global (or even galactic) intrigues. In this enlightening tour of conspiracy theories, Mark Fenster guides readers through this shadowy world and analyzes its complex role in American culture and politics. Fenster argues that conspiracy theories are a form of popular political interpretation and contends that understanding how they circulate through mass culture helps us better understand our society as a whole. To that end, he discusses Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the militia movement, The X-Files, popular Christian apocalyptic thought, and such artifacts of suspicion as The Turner Diaries, the Illuminatus! trilogy, and the novels of Richard Condon. Fenster analyzes the "conspiracy community" of radio shows, magazine and book publishers, Internet resources, and role-playing games that promote these theories. In this world, the very denial of a conspiracy's existence becomes proof that it exists, and the truth is always "out there." He believes conspiracy theory has become a thrill for a bored subculture, one characterized by its members' reinterpretation of "accepted" history, their deep cynicism about contemporary politics, and their longing for a utopian future. Fenster's progressive critique of conspiracy theories both recognizes the secrecy and inequities of power in contemporary politics and economics and works toward effective political engagement. Probing conspiracy theory's tendencies toward scapegoating, racism, and fascism, as well as Hofstadter's centrist acceptance of a postwar American "consensus," he advocates what conspiracy theory wants but cannot articulate: a more inclusive, engaging political culture. "Fenster, a lone writer (the literary equivalent of a lone gunman, perhaps), segues from the novels of Thomas Pynchon to the Clinton Death List. . . . Conspiracy Theories is a dangerous book. I suspect 'they' (and you know who I mean, of course) will take care of this lone writer any day now."ââ¬âBookforum ââ¬ÅFenster makes a powerful argument for regarding conspiracism as an integral product of the political system, reflecting inadequacies the establishment itself is blind to and expressing strong desires for the realization of frustrated ideals. Conspiracy Theories is a fascinating look at an important, little-studied topic. Informative and thought-provoking.ââ¬? ââ¬âPhiladelphia City Paper "Fenster culls the liveliest counterintelligences out thereââ¬âthe Michigan Militia, religious millennialists, Chris Carter, even Oliver Stoneââ¬âand sets them up as the last idealists. They might be obsessive and maniacal, but they're after a transparent political system, where big business and the government can be held accountable. Their 'paranoid style,' according to Fenster, is just old-school populism refitted for the media age." ââ¬âVoice Literary Supplement "Fenster makes a powerful argument for regarding conspiracism as an integral product of the political system, reflecting inadequacies the establishment itself is blind to and expressing strong desires for the realization of frustrated ideals. Conspiracy Theories is a fascinating look at an important, little-studied topic. Informative and thought-provoking." Philadelphia City Paper "Fenster's careful examination of conspiratorial beliefs as evidence by right-wing groups, by various media, and even by those who devise such theories as a form of ludic or satiric endeavor (like Robert Anton Wilson) is revealing. And his articulation of the set of political-rather than pathological-reasons for their behavior is salutary." ââ¬âAmerican Book Review ââ¬ÅFensterââ¬â¢s extensive and impressive research provided a means of coming to terms with the radical disjunction between the interpretive framework which I used to understand events such as the one at Littleton, and a framework at odds with my own which was now confronting me on a daily basis.ââ¬? ââ¬âCanadian Journal of Communication ââ¬ÅIn this lively and wide-ranging critique, Fenster argues that conspiracy theories are attempts to engage in a more inclusive political culture.ââ¬? ââ¬âReligious Studies Review "Mark Fenster has provided a solid and illuminating study of the public's fascination with conspiracy theories and sets forth a stimulating correlation between the popularity of such theories and the social and political values of our society. This is a comprehensive and intriguing analysis of our often obsessive interest in conspiracy theories." ââ¬âGerald Posner, author of Killing the Dream : James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Case Closed : Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK "I find the issue of conspiracy theory compelling and appreciate Fenster's fruitful approach to what has been mysteriously ignored by the academy." ââ¬âBarbie Zelizer, author of Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory "Fenster shines a powerful light on the fantasies of secrecy that pervade American culture, illuminating both the way they originate and how they work. His analysis is theoretically acute, his criticism of previous scholarly studies is compelling, and he offers razor-sharp readings of an impressive array of movements, events, and cultural practices. He stands out, above all, for his ability to capture the power and appeal of conspiratorial understandings of politics even as he explains their fundamental political limitations. The only thing that can keep this book from having the impact it deserves is a vast, academic conspiracy." ââ¬âMark T. Reinhardt, Williams College Mark Fenster received his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois and his law degree from Yale University. He currently lives in Denver.
Threat-related stimuli are strong competitors for attention, particularly in anxious individuals. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with healthy human volunteers to study how the processing of threat-related distractors is controlled and whether this alters as anxiety levels increase. Our work builds upon prior analyses of the cognitive control functions of lateral prefrontal cortex (lateral PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We found that rostral ACC was strongly activated by infrequent threat-related distractors, consistent with a role for this area in responding to unexpected processing conflict caused by salient emotional stimuli. Participants with higher anxiety levels showed both less rostral ACC activity overall and reduced recruitment of lateral PFC as expectancy of threat-related distractors was established. This supports the proposal that anxiety is associated with reduced top-down control over threat-related distractors. Our results suggest distinct roles for rostral ACC and lateral PFC in governing the processing of task-irrelevant, threat-related stimuli, and indicate reduced recruitment of this circuitry in anxiety.