The COVID -19 pandemic represents a global health crisis, so adherence to government guidelines and public health advice is critical in reducing transmission rates. Despite this, it has been reported ...that a minority of people do not comply with the governmental guidelines. When considering the reasons why some people do not comply with preventive measures, previous studies have shown that beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories negatively predict responsible pandemic-related behaviour. This, in turn, could seriously undermine success in combating the pandemic. Our aim was, therefore, to further investigate the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and adherence to official COVID-19 medical guidelines by including mediating roles of beliefs in pseudoscientific information and trust in government officials. A total of 1882 adults from Croatia provided sociodemographic information and completed several scales related to COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, beliefs in pseudoscientific information, trust in government officials, and adherence to official COVID-19 guidelines. A multiple mediation analysis revealed a direct negative effect of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on compliance with the preventive measures. In addition, conspiracy beliefs were indirectly related to compliance via trust in government officials. The present study builds upon emerging research showing that conspiracy beliefs may have significant social consequences and pose a potential risk to public health. Practical implications of these findings are discussed further.
The rise of nationalism and populism in Europe has created significant political and policy challenges. Understanding and addressing these challenges will require attention to the psychological ...mechanisms and social dynamics that have engendered and promoted these societal shifts. This article presents the results of two new empirical studies that attempt to shed light on the relationships between nationalism, religiosity, national and religious identification, threat perception, and sentiment toward different groups. Informed by identity fusion theory and moral foundations theory, Study 1 collected and analysed survey data on these topics. Study 2 utilized the results of Study 1 to construct a system dynamics model in which causal propositions and links are added to the variables, creating an artificial society within which hypotheses about these dynamics can be tested. Both the survey and the simulation suggest that nationalism and religion are affected by the same variables. As such, religion might not be a cause of nationalism (or nationalism the cause of religion), but they could be correlated because of mutual causation.
Uses the Supernatural Belief Scale SBS) to present a primer on how to verify the strong assumptions of measurement invariance required in research on religion. Compares two independent samples, ...Croatians and New Zealanders, to show that, despite a sophisticated psychometric model, measurement invariance could be demonstrated for the SBS except for two noninvariant intercepts. Presents a new approach for inspecting measurement invariance across self- and peer-reports as two dependent samples. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
In recent years, researchers have discovered much about how disgust works, its neural basis, its relationship with immune function, its connection with mating, and some of its antecedents and ...consequents. Despite these advances in our understanding, an under-explored area is how disgust may be used to serve a communicative function, including how individuals might strategically downplay or exaggerate the disgust display in front of different audiences. Here, we generated two hypotheses about potential communicative functions of disgust, and tested these hypotheses in four countries (Turkey, Croatia, Germany, and Norway). We found no evidence in support of either hypothesis in any country. Discussion focuses on the likely falsity of the two central hypotheses, alternative interpretations of our findings, and directions for future research.
Abstract In this study we examined the applicability of personality measures to assessing God representations, and we explored how the overlap between personality judgments of self and God relate to ...strength of (dis)belief and closeness to God among atheists and agnostics. Using sample of 1,088 atheists/agnostics, we applied Goldberg’s Big Five bipolar markers as a standardized measure of personality dimensions, along with measures of identity fusion with God, belief strength, and sociosexuality, as this trait has been shown to be relevant in predicting religiosity. Our study revealed that personality measures can be used for research on the personality of supernatural agents. We also found that personality self-assessments were related to the assessments of God personality. Agreeableness was positively related to the perception of emotional stability of God, while conscientiousness and surgency were negatively related to perceived intellect and surgency of god, respectively. Also, intellect of the participants was related negatively to perceptions of God’s emotional stability and intellect. Perceived distance between the assessment of one’s own personality and the personality of God predicted the strength of (dis)belief, thus opening new interpretations into possible sources of belief and disbelief. Finally, echoing previous studies, we found that conscientiousness of God had a negative effect on SOI-R score.
Building on the proposition of the Sexual Strategies Theory that sex differences in mating strategies and intrasexual competition will be reflected in sexual signaling behavior towards possible ...mates, we sought to examine if such strategies would be observable on social networking sites.For the purpose of the study, ten male and ten female public profile pictures were randomly selected from a large pool of users (N = 1386) who chose to participate in the study and subscribed to a Facebook page created in order to aggregate users with an interest in Evolutionary psychology. Selected profile photos were then included in an online evaluation protocol, filled out by 31 independent raters, resulting in a total of 620 ratings. The protocol addressed nine evolutionarily relevant partner choice characteristics; 1) physical strength or athleticism, (2) access to resources or material possessions, (3) ambition or industriousness, (4) social status, (5) intelligence, (6) features of physical appearance, (7) features accentuating youthfulness, (8) high activity level, and (9) flirtatious behavior.Males more frequently emphasized cues of social status, ambition and access to material resources, whereas females tended to emphasize features of physical appearance and of youthfulness. Furthermore, the perception of masculinity was mostly tied to the display of resources and physical strength, as was femininity to physical appearance and flirtatious behavior.The Sexual Strategies Theory predictions of mating display behaviors were confirmed in online settings, demonstrating the robustness of sex differences in mating-related behaviors.
► Research on media violence remains inconsistent and politicized. ► Aggressive personality, but not media violence predicts violent crime among Mexican Americans and English. ► Among Croatians, ...violent video game use predicted fewer violent crimes, but television predicted slightly more violent crimes. ► Depression is predicted by neurotic personality but not media violence exposure. ► Theories linking violent media with violent acts are likely mistaken.
The issue of potential media effects on psychological health of youth and young adults has been debated for decades. Research on media effects has not always been consistent. One issue that has been raised regards whether the relatively modest media effects found in some research might be explained through mediating personality variables. This hypothesis was examined in three samples of young adults: Mexican–Americans (
n
=
232), Croatians (
n
=
455) and English (
n
=
150). Results indicated that trait aggression was a consistent predictor of both violent crimes and depression across samples. General personality variables were less consistent predictors of violence, although neuroticism consistently predicted depression across samples. Media violence exposure did not predict negative outcomes except among Croatians for whom exposure to violent video games predicted fewer violent crimes, and exposure to television violence predicted increased violent crimes.
In this article, we describe the construct validation of a General Social Attitudes Scale
(SAS_G), designed to measure the basic dimensions of social attitudes in both self-reports and
peer-ratings. ...A large sample of Croatian university students (N = 452) used the
SAS_G to describe their own social attitudes, which were also described by 452 of their
acquaintances using the same instrument. All SAS_G subscales showed reasonably high internal
consistency reliability estimates as well as appropriate convergent and discriminant validity based
on self/peer correlations. Separate Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) of both self-reports and
peer ratings yielded five replicable factors and acceptable indices of fit. However, the validation
analyses against lexically based Saucier's
(2008) ISMS instrument showed little convergence, indicating that these two
approaches to general social attitudes scale construction can lead to the identification of
different basic constructs.
The goal of this study was to assess the relationship between the Five Factor Model of personality and the belief in the paranormal. Participants (N=307) were students from the University of Zagreb, ...Croatia. The measures used were the IPIP version of the Five Factor Model questionnaire (Goldberg et al., 2006) along with the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk, 1988). The factor analysis of the latter yielded three previously unreported paranormal belief dimensions named: General paranormal belief, Traditional religious belief and Rituals and practices. The most significant personality correlations with all three factors were found for Openness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism, respectively. Results to an extent confirmed previous findings, suggesting that open individuals accept more General paranormal beliefs, while rejecting Traditional religious belief. Conscientiousness displayed an opposite trend being positively related to Traditional religious beliefs and negatively to General paranormal beliefs. Finally, Neuroticism was related to Rituals and practices, i.e. superstitions, divinations and occult control of life outcomes. The relations are however modest ranging from 0.11 to 0.25. Both the novel paranormal belief structure and its significance to personality are discussed within an evolutionary perspective, with guidelines for further research highlighted in the end.
The rise of nationalism and populism in Europe has created significant political and policy challenges. Understanding and addressing these challenges will require attention to the psychological ...mechanisms and social dynamics that have engendered and promoted these societal shifts. This article presents the results of two new empirical studies that attempt to shed light on the relationships between nationalism, religiosity, national and religious identification, threat perception, and sentiment toward different groups. Informed by identity fusion theory and moral foundations theory, Study 1 collected and analysed survey data on these topics. Study 2 utilized the results of Study 1 to construct a system dynamics model in which causal propositions and links are added to the variables, creating an artificial society within which hypotheses about these dynamics can be tested. Both the survey and the simulation suggest that nationalism and religion are affected by the same variables. As such, religion might not be a cause of nationalism (or nationalism the cause of religion), but they could be correlated because of mutual causation.
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