Strong correlational but no causal evidence on the link between the perception of scientific consensus and support for vaccination

We examine the relationships between the perception of the scientific consensus regarding vaccines, and vaccine attitudes and intentions (N total = 2,362) in the context of COVID-19 disease. Based on the correlational evidence found (Study 1), perceived scientific consensus and vaccine attitudes are closely related. This association was stronger among people who trust (vs. distrust) scientists; however, political ideology did not moderate these effects. The experimental evidence (Studies 2-3) indicates that consensus messaging influences the perception of consensus; nonetheless, the effects on vaccine attitudes or intentions were non-significant. Furthermore, message aiming at reducing psychological reactance was similarly ineffective in changing attitudes as traditional consensus message.

The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Two is better than one: Using a single emotion lexicon can lead to unreliable conclusions

Emotion lexicons became a popular method for quantifying affect in large amounts of textual data (e.g., social media posts). There are multiple independently developed emotion lexicons which tend to correlate positively with one another but not entirely. Such differences between lexicons may not matter if they are just unsystematic noise, but if there are systematic differences this could affect conclusions of a study. The goal of this paper is to examine whether two extensively used, apparently domain-independent lexicons for emotion analysis would give the same answer to a theory-driven research question. Specifically, we use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon (NRC). As an example, we investigate whether older people have more positive expression through their language use. We examined nearly 5 million tweets created by 3,573 people between 18 to 78 years old and found that both methods show an increase in positive affect until age 50. After that age, however, according to LIWC, positive affect drops sharply, whereas according to NRC, the growth of positive affect increases steadily until age 65 and then levels off. Thus, using one or the other method would lead researchers to drastically different theoretical conclusions regarding affect in older age. We unpack why the two methods give inconsistent conclusions and show this was mostly due to a particular class of words: those related to politics. We conclude that using a single lexicon might lead to unreliable conclusions, so we suggest that researchers should routinely use at least two lexicons. If both lexicons come to the same conclusion then the research evidence is reliable, but if not then researchers should further examine the lexicons to find out what difference might be causing inconclusive result.

The Role of Political Ideology and Open-Minded Thinking Style in the (in)Accuracy of Factual Beliefs

The paper investigates the role of political ideology and an open-minded thinking style (i.e., the tendency to reason based on rules of inference rather than intuitive heuristics) with respect to the accuracy of factual beliefs. In line with political asymmetry theory, we assumed that right-wing beliefs, in contrast to left-wing beliefs, are associated with more inaccurate factual beliefs. We also expected that the open-minded thinking style acts as a buffer against inaccurate factual beliefs among people with right-wing (but not left-wing) political affinities. To test these hypotheses, we conducted three studies (total N = 1120) in which participants holding right- and left-wing beliefs, and displaying differing degrees of the open-minded thinking style (as measured by the Active Open-minded Thinking Style questionnaire), assessed policy-relevant facts congenial to left- as well as right-wing beliefs. The results of the study confirm the hypotheses proposed. The paper's findings contribute to the ongoing discussion around the ideological underpinnings of (un)biased cognition and the controversies concerning the role of cognitive factors in ideological polarization.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09789-z.

Ideology shapes trust in scientists and attitudes towards vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper investigates the influence of ideology on trust in scientists. We assume that during a pandemic, ideology is linked to levels of trust in scientists such that those espousing left- (vs. right-) wing beliefs trust the scientific profession more. We posit that the negative perception of scientists, a feature of right-wing narratives in the country of study, underlies this effect. Additionally, we argue that ideology has an indirect impact, via levels of trust in scientists, on beliefs and attitudes towards vaccines and vaccine policy. To test these hypotheses, we conducted three studies ( N = 1,155): one prepandemic study and two studies during a pandemic. The results confirmed the hypotheses; however, we observed varied effects at the outset of the pandemic versus later stages. The findings contribute to the ongoing discussion around the ideological underpinnings of trust in scientists and carry implications for public health measures.

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 12 May 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4878591.v1.

The Effects of Needs for Security and Certainty on Economic Beliefs: The Role of Political Engagement and the Welfare State Model

We suggest that the effects of needs for security and certainty (NSC) on economic beliefs result from potentially competing dispositional (political engagement) and contextual (the country-level political narrative around the welfare state) influences. An analysis of data from the 2016 European Social Survey ( N = 40,870) showed that at low levels of political engagement, NSC is associated with left-wing beliefs. However, at high levels of political engagement, the NSC effects are conditional on a country’s welfare state model: NSC is related to right-wing beliefs in Liberal, Continental, and Southern types, but the effects are nonsignificant in the Nordic type and the reverse under the Eastern type. Analysis of 2018 round of the same survey ( N = 45,575) corroborated the main findings (except the Southern type for which NSC effects were nonsignificant). This study advances knowledge on the psychological roots of economic beliefs and contributes to the understanding of people’s political choices.

Cardiac sympathetic activity during recovery as an indicator of sympathetic activity during task performance

The goals of this research were to analyze cardiac sympathetic recovery patterns and evaluate whether sympathetic cardiac responses to a task challenge can be predicted using residual cardiac activity measured directly after the task (that is, during the recovery period). In two studies (total N = 181), we measured cardiac sympathetic activity, quantified as pre-ejection period and RB interval, during both task performance and the 2-min recovery period following the task. Additional analyses examined effects on the RZ interval. We found that sympathetic recovery from a task was rather quick: Cardiovascular recovery occurred within the first 30 s of the recovery period. Nevertheless, residual cardiac activity during the recovery period had predictive power for task-related cardiac activity. This suggests that sympathetic cardiac activity during recovery may serve as a useful indicator of task-related cardiac sympathetic activity. We discuss the implications of these findings for practical applications and the design of future studies.

Religious Fundamentalism Modulates Neural Responses to Error-Related Words: The Role of Motivation Toward Closure

Examining the relationship between brain activity and religious fundamentalism, this study explores whether fundamentalist religious beliefs increase responses to error-related words among participants intolerant to uncertainty (i.e., high in the need for closure) in comparison to those who have a high degree of toleration for uncertainty (i.e., those who are low in the need for closure). We examine a negative-going event-related brain potentials occurring 400 ms after stimulus onset (the N400) due to its well-understood association with the reactions to emotional conflict. Religious fundamentalism and tolerance of uncertainty were measured on self-report measures, and electroencephalographic neural reactivity was recorded as participants were performing an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants read neutral words and words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the word is written. The results confirm that among people who are intolerant of uncertainty (i.e., those high in the need for closure), religious fundamentalism is associated with an increased N400 on error-related words compared with people who tolerate uncertainty well (i.e., those low in the need for closure).

The influence of aging on outgroup stereotypes: the mediating role of cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The current study was designed to examine previously reported findings about age-related changes in drawing stereotypic inferences; specifically, that older adults are more likely than younger adults to stereotype outgroup members. The study replicates previous research and extends it by exploring the cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility underlying this effect and comparing stereotypes towards ingroup and outgroup members.

METHODS

In the experiment, younger and older adults read stories that allowed for stereotypic inferences. They also completed the Trail Making Test (TMT) and Need for Closure Scale (NFC) as cognitive and motivational measures of deficient flexibility.

RESULTS

The results of the experiment revealed that, compared to younger participants, older adults were more likely to rely upon stereotypic inferences when they read a story about outgroup members; however, there were no age-group differences in using stereotypes when they read a story about ingroup members. In addition, the findings showed that making more stereotypical inferences by older versus younger adults in relation to outgroup members was mediated by cognitive (TMT) and motivational (NFC) facets of deficient flexibility.

CONCLUSION

A major implication of these findings is that both cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility contribute to the reliance of older adults on stereotypes compared with younger adults. However, this is only true when older adults process information about outgroup members, but not about ingroup members. Thus, the current research goes beyond previous results by providing direct evidence that ingroup-outgroup perception contributes to stereotyping among older participants.

Individual differences in epistemic motivation and brain conflict monitoring activity

It is well documented that motivation toward closure (NFC), defined as a desire for a quick and unambiguous answer to a question and an aversion to uncertainty, is linked to more structured, rigid, and persistent cognitive styles. However, the neurocognitive correlates of NFC have never been tested. Thus, using event-related potentials, we examined the hypothesis that NFC is associated with the neurocognitive process for detecting discrepancies between response tendencies and higher level intentions. We found that greater NFC is associated with lower conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting lower sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern and lower sensitivity to committing errors. This study provides evidence that high NFC acts as a bulwark against anxiety-producing uncertainty and minimizes the experience of error.