February 16, 2023: Special In-House Session (OSU Social Psychology Graduate Students)

Courtney Moore

Gateway Conspiracy Theories: Predicting Increases in General Conspiracist Ideation

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.

Joe Siev

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Attitudinal ambivalence in political extremism

Americans’ support for partisan political violence has spiked recently, bringing a wave of new research attention to the topic. In this talk, I will introduce a novel predictor of partisans’ support for political violence¾political attitudinal ambivalence. Feeling ambivalent (i.e., mixed or conflicted) about one’s attitudes reduces intentions to act on them in ordinary ways (e.g., voting), but I will present evidence that this reverses for extreme attitude-consistent behaviors, including partisan violence. This effect emerges across a range of topics, specific extreme acts, and approaches to measuring ambivalence, and beyond effects of relevant psychological and demographic controls. I will discuss evidence suggesting this phenomenon is related to ambivalence “amplification” effects seen in the domain of prejudice, where a motivation to take a decisive stand for one side of the issue and against the other polarizes responses.

 

Kelly Amaddio

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Belief in Misinformation Correction: The Role of Attitudes and Correction Source Characteristics

Misinformation can influence attitudes and decision making even after it has been corrected, as found in research regarding the Continued Influence Effect (CIE). Over the course of three studies using a fictitious gun control paradigm, this research examines what characteristics of the correction source (specifically expertise and vested interest) people use when determining whether to believe corrections of misinformation when that correction is pro or counter attitudinal. We found that when misinformation corrections coming from an expert source are counter attitudinal, participants seek out other cues in order to discredit the corrections, specifically the correction source’s vested interest.