PSY1105 The Role of Conspiracist Ideation Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : PSY1105
• University : University of Southern Queensland My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : Psychology

Psychological Skills

Table of Contents

1 Introduction.

1.1 Research Question.

1.2 Aim..

1.3 Hypothesis.

2 Method.

2.1 Participants.

2.2 Materials.

2.3 Procedure.

2.4 Study design.

3 Result

4 Discussion.

5 References.

1 Introduction to The Role of Conspiracist Ideation

Conspiracy theories may be defined as "a type of false conviction where various players operate together with a specific purpose in mind, often illicit and private, to the ultimate motive for an occurrence" (Swami, 2014) For example, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan's conspiracy theory about the disappearance indicates that the Japanese military has shipwrecked their airplane instead of crashing at sea, while they were spying on the Japanese in the Pacific at the behest of the administration of Roosevelt. Such conspiracy theories are common: Oliver and Wood (2014a) estimated that half of the American public supported at least one conspiracy theory using four nationally representative polls from 2006 to 2011. From this angle, a conspiracy worldview tends to be a reasonably prevalent ideological phenomenon, not the aberrant manifestation of political extremism or psychopathological result.

People often witness distressing collective occurrences such as financial crises, conflicts, natural disasters, epidemics, and the sudden deaths of celebrities in our globalized world. Many average classes of people are susceptible to certain incidents by engaging in conspiracy theories (Oliver & Wood 2014). Conspiracy views are generally described as theory that a group of people meet secretly to try to accomplish aims that are often perceived as sinister. Such conspiracy theories also include prominent forces such as governments (e.g. reports that 9/11 was an inside job), massive corporations (e.g., insurance companies) or minority communities that are holding badly (e.g. Moslems Jews). Even if there are several distinct theories of conspiracy, belief in one theory of conspiracy predicts belief in conflicting theories of philosophical conspiracy (Swami, 2011, van Prooijen & Acker, 2015) or inconsistent theories of conspiracy (Douglas & Sutton, 2012). This means that citizens are typically able to describe social events by perceptions of deception. Research has identified a variety of socioeconomic, person and situational influences that predispose people to the conspiracy theory within this emerging area.

Training is a measure of the population's belief in conspiracy theories. Various research findings have found that high school averages suggest that conspiracy theories are less likely to be accepted (Douglas et al . 2016; Van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Pollet 2015). But why this interaction happens is unknown. Education is correlated with a combination of cognitive, physiological, and social effects, which may also clarify this association through different fundamental mechanisms. The creation of these systems presents new perspectives which can serve as the basis for potential strategies aimed at growing the population's conspiracy theories consistently. In view of the various adverse effects that conspiracy theories have on public health (Oliver & Wood, 2014), political engagement and radicalization (Goertzel, 1994; Jolley & Douglas, 2014), this is significant.

1.1 Research Question

Is there a role for higher education in mitigating conspiracies ideation, by promoting analytical thinking?

1.2 Aim

Our aim is to examine the relative effectiveness of British undergraduate university majors in mitigating levels of conspiracies ideation by promoting analytical thinking.

1.3 Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this research are

1. Science major will have a lower mean GCB score relative to non-science majors.
2. Science major will have a lower mean GCB score relative to humanities majors.
3. Science major will have a lower mean GCB score relative to ‘others’ majors

2 Method

2.1 Participants

I recruited a total of 1,014 students using an online portal known as Prolific to perform this research. The youngest person was 18 years old when it comes to demography, while the oldest was 75 years old. Moreover, the average age was 31.1 years in this online study, with a typical 13.4 year gap. With respect to the sexes, 533 participants were male, while 446 others said they were female. The remaining 35 suggested that the "other" sex was not male or female.

2.2 Materials

The conspiracy level was calculated with the GCB (Generic Conspiracy Belief), which tests an individual's level of confidence. In this system the magnitude of the attribute or ranking is calculated using a 15-point scale.

2.3 Procedure

Participants were asked to describe their age and sex with different choices to cover all relevant categories. In addition, the researcher asked interviewees to suggest their views about their opinion of conspiracy through the online questionnaire.

2.4 Study Design

A research design helps analysis to determine the framework of its sample on the basis of the form of variables it wants to investigate. I used the quasi-experiment between subject designs in this analysis. Such a pattern is used in previous classes of the attribute to compare entities. The independent variable consisted of the central college of three categories: research, civilization and other major institutions. The GCB performance of the participants was the dependent variable.

3 Result

The data have been analyzed with a hierarchic regression analysis which includes gender, age and income as control variables in stage one; the level of education are defined in step 2; and the four mediators expected in step three. Moreover, through a bootstrapping study, I tested the indirect impact of schooling on the belief of conspiracy theories.

The degrees of freedom differ due to attrition and missed values from the overall sample. Trust in conspiracy theories was not expected dramatically in the control variables (Phase 1) (R2 < .01), F < 1. Stage 2 was important (always R2 = 0.03), F (1, 2974) = 78.14, p < .001) in which the school level was applied to the model for regression. Higher education, as shown by the negative regression weight, saw, in line with previous conclusions, a reduced confidence in conspiracy theories. The next contribution to the regression model was the four possible mediators (Step 3). The step was very critical (this was R2 = .18), F (1) = 173.48, p < .001. This step was very critical. Three out of four mediators, as can be seen in Table 2, had major implications: feelings of impotence predicted growing confidence in conspiracy theories; subjective social status predicted a reduction in confidence in complicity and the assumption that simplistic remedies would lead them to accept conspiracy theories progressively.

If auto estimates are not strongly associated with the conviction of conspiracy theories and were not a major indicator of the regression model, I concluded that the evidence did not help Hypothesis 3. I evaluated a model with an educational standard as an indigenous variable, a conspiracy variable and powerlessness, a subjective social status and the trust in simplistic solutions as the parallel mediators by means of a study boot-strapping (5000 samples) based on the MEDIATE macro (Hayes & Preacher, 2014). Again, as control variables, ethnicity, age and income were used.

4 Discussion on The Role of Conspiracist Ideation

Prior study has found that conspiracy theories are less popular for people at high education than for people at low educational level (Douglas 2016; Prooijen 2015).). The association between conspiracy theories and intellectual views has been negative. The purpose of the present thesis is to analyses the mechanisms behind this relationship. In Study 1, three neutral mediators are provided with evidence. Persons with a high degree of education are less likely to think of simplistic solutions for complicated problems; they feel less powerful (and thus more controlled) within their social context. All three aspects lead together to the relationship between knowledge and trust in theory of conspiracy. It should be remembered that the association between schooling and confidence in complot theories has not been identified in all previous research. For example, the association between education and conspiratorship does not appear in samples from African Americans and Muslim countries (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2004).

I think that feelings of community domination and marginalization are crucial to understanding this difference. Many African-Americans feel oppressed by a US society; as a West group in general and, more precisely, the United States, many of Muslim-American people feel disadvantaged. The level of influence can be estimated personally by education but the presumed victimization of the community one associates with is unlikely to be alleviated by education. A community under pressure is a key indicator of conviction in theory of deception (Van Prooijen & Van Dijk, 2014) and could well overrun all educational impact. Whereas current studies aimed at identifying the mediators of the ties entre education and conspiracy theory, the moderators of this partnership will also offer a fruitful way for future study.

There are some remarkable strengths and limits in the latest research. The benefits are that the two analyses are heavily powered and that the Research 2 sample was stratified to be representative at national level when calculating mediators separately from the participant. This indicates that the effects shown here are stable and likely to be repeated in subsequent research. In addition, this research is the first to research the mediating mechanisms that underlie the relation of education with trust in complicity theories and to establish support for at least two theoretical mediators. One drawback of the current study is the association between methodological relations observed here and the triggers.

Another way that critical thought styles can shape conspiracy is by creating space and tools for resolving some prior conspiracy ideation. That is, triggering forms of critical thought may help individuals reevaluate proof against a general scheme or conspiracy theory. One way of checking this in prospective studies will be to see if analytic reasoning causing a measure of conspiracy is a longer response time. In addition, we should not say that the sole or perhaps most significant element in the belief in conspiracy theories is thought dispositions. Conspiracy theories are related to different cultural, social, cognitive and person influences while the current work indicates a potential cognitive source, the relation between thought patterns and other established variables to form belief in conspiracy is important to the future study. Similarly, the median answers to our conspiracy ideation tests indicate that conspiracy theories are relatively in alignment among our studies. In these respondents, critical reasoning may have had a calming impact on potentially illogical arguments, leading to the resulting skepticism.

In conclusion, this study reveals that the development of critical thought, at least in the short term, decreases the confidence of conspiracy theories. While it is commonly accepted that believing in conspirator theories is immune to modification, recent papers have demonstrated that it can be achieved by using critical, rational and empirical arguments to minimize illusions in conspiratorial theories (Banas & Miller 2013; Swami et al . 2013). Our results tend to demonstrate that an analytic style of thought will lead to a decline in conspiratorial thinking. In general, our work shows that promoting the growth of critical reasoning skills may be a helpful approach if decision makers are worried about the negative effects of engaging in conspiracy theories. To academics, understanding these association can be an important step in developing more complex theoretical models which explain the widespread acceptance in contemporary society of conspiracy theorists.

5 References for The Role of Conspiracist Ideation

Aarnio, K. ,. (2015). Paranormal beliefs, education, and thinking styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 1227–1236.

Cichocka, A. ,. (2016). Does self‐love or self‐hate predict conspiracy beliefs? Narcissism, self‐esteem, and the endorsement of conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 157–166.

Douglas, K. M. (2016). Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking and Reasoning, 22, 57–77.

Lewandowsky, S. (2013). The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science. PubMed, 8(10).

Mashuri, A. &. (2014). The role of social identification, intergroup threat, and out-group derogation in explaining belief in conspiracy theory about terrorism in Indonesia. International Journal of Research Studies in Psychology, 3, 35–50.

Prooijen, J.‐W. v. (2017). Why Education Predicts Decreased Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Appl Cogn Psychol., 31(1), 50–58.

Song, H. &. (2008a). Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion. Social Cognition, 26, 791–799.

Swami, V. (2014). Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572-585.

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