✔️This research was supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, #Grant 7739597, Irrational mindset as a conceptual bridge from psychological dispositions to questionable health practices—REASON4HEALTH @reason4health.bsky.social
📂The data and analytic codes that support the findings of this study are openly available on the Open Science Framework at: osf.io/cybqa
💡 Irrational beliefs — whether about ESP or pseudoscience — share the same information processing style, and also relate to broader social worldviews. We argue that these relationships are important for understanding how public policies get politicized
🔍Both belief types also predicted similar patterns of non-evidence based behaviour, including past use of questionable health practices, ESP experiences, and even civic activism
🔍 Key findings: Both ESP and pseudoscientific beliefs are associated with a more intuitive, less analytical thinking style — including a tendency toward contradictions and fatalistic thinking
🔍However, they were also similarly predicted by authoritarian and, to a lesser extent, ethnocentric views.
✨Across three studies (two preregistered) in two post-conflict countries (total N = 1,042), we tested whether these belief types relate to superficial thinking style, worldview, and real-world behaviours like non-evidence-based health practices in different ways
✨Some of these beliefs are easier to politicize
✨We focus on two types of irrational beliefs (extrasensory perception (ESP) and pseudoscientific beliefs ) and explore if they share the same superifical approach to information processing, but are differently embedded in a conservative worldview
✨While irrational beliefs tend to cluster together, their content can differ widely e.g. belief in ancient and elusive techniques such as dowsing can be seen as different from a fascination with claims that DNA cells can enhance beauty products
✨NEW PAPER ✨ Universal threads: Shared sociopolitical roots and consequences of extrasensory perception and pseudoscientific beliefs” out now in the British Journal of Psychology!
🧐Read here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...
📣NEW paper! Cultivating new ways to trust science amid the rise of questionable health practices by Iris Žeželj & @marijapetrovic.bsky.social is now out as a part of the special issue Trust in science and beyond in Current Opinion in Psychology!
🔗Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3L9,rU~O...
📣NEW PAPER: "Are quantum medicine proponents more likely to practice yoga? An empirical taxonomy of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine practices" is now out in Current Psychology!
Read the postprint version here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
🌍Do all nations believe they’re superior—or do some feel inferior?
Western social sciences claimed the first. But Fanon & Memmi argued colonization by the West left many in the Global South with colonial mentality—internalized oppression.
🧵Findings from our 45-country study:
⌛This has been over 2 years in the making, and we call for (1) a more clear and careful labelling of political beliefs, and (2) the reassessment of the term authoritarianism and the need to not use it as a synonym for radical left-wing beliefs
📂Our data is available here: osf.io/fmkvx/
🗒️Our Stage 1 Registered Report is here: doi.org/10.17605/OSF...
✨In line with other authors, we suggest that ideological labeling of authoritarianism might hinder instead of help our understanding of it and that if we really want to assess authoritarianism across the ideological spectrum, we need a different approach than LWA and the way it is operationalized
✨While LWA as a construct captures dogmatic, rigid, and sometimes radical left-wing beliefs, it does assess authoritarianism
✨ In other words, our results indicate that while SLAV and established LWA measures assess left-wing beliefs, they DO NOT capture authoritarianism - in our samples, left-wing authoritarianism would be a misnomer for this cluster of beliefs, and it would be so because of the authoritarianism part
✨HOWEVER, and most crucially, we find almost no significant correlations to established measures of authoritarianism (whether they are right-wing or more neutral ones). When we find correlations, they are almost always negative rather than positive
✨...and related expectedly to previous operationalizations of LWA. Moreover, we found expected correlations of SLAV domains to variables of political and social beliefs, and cognitive style
✨The newly developed SLAV scale showed good factorial validity (with four interrelated but distinct domains of Anticapitalist Sentiment, Anticonventionalism, Antihierarhical aggression, and Censorship of right-wing ideas)...
✨We aimed to develop a scale that is not as US-centric as some previous operationalizations, and that is (1) more universally left-wing, (2) more directly authoritarian, and that it (3) includes a more direct tie to the economic axis
✨As a large majority of research on left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) was done in WEIRD countries, and countries with no legacy of left-wing regimes, we set out to develop a new LWA scale that would be more broadly applicable and validate in a post-communist country
📣Fresh out the slammer - our Registered Report on the so-called LWA - "A specter is haunting political psychology—a specter of left-wing authoritarianism" with @milicaninkovic.bsky.social out now in Political Psychology! @ispp-pops.bsky.social !
doi.org/10.1111/pops...
🎉 Just published in Nature Human Behavior 🎉
Do liberals or conservatives in the US trust scientists more? You might assume it's liberals, but studies often fail to consider the diversity of scientific disciplines! 🔬
nature.com/articles/s41...
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Attitudes towards and uses of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicines are predicted by irrational beliefs and cognitive biases, especially magical health beliefs and naturalness bias. With @marijapetrovic.bsky.social @alelazic.bsky.social @iriszez.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/coll...
Analytic thinking is related to lower belief in conspiracies. So can analytic thinking decrease belief in conspiracy theories? We don’t really know, as the one set of studies in support of this does not seem to replicate.
With @marijapetrovic.bsky.social, @vukasin.bsky.social
#socialpsyc #PsychSci
