Choosing a short-form measure of conspiracist ideation is fraught. Despite there being numerous scales to choose from, little work has been done to compare their psychometric properties. To address this shortcoming, we compared the internal consistency, two-week test-retest reliability, criterion validity, and construct validity of five short-form conspiracist ideation measures: the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale – 5 (GCB-5), Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ), General Measure of Conspiracism (GMC), American Conspiracy Thinking Scale (ACTS), and One-Item Conspiracy Measure (1CM). The results of our investigation indicated that all five of the scales are reliable and valid measures of conspiracist ideation. That said, the GCB-5 tended to perform the best while the 1CM tended to perform the worst. We conclude our investigation by discussing trade-offs among the five scales, as well as providing recommendations for future research.
No abstract is provided for this article.
This chapter introduces a theoretical framework that describes the importance of affect in guiding judgments and decisions. As used here, affect means the specific quality of goodness or badness (a) experienced as a feeling state (with or without consciousness) and (b) demarcating a positive or negative quality of a stimulus. Affective responses occur rapidly and automatically – note how quickly you sense the feelings associated with the stimulus word “treasure” or the word “hate.” We shall argue that reliance on such feelings can be characterized as the affect heuristic. In this chapter we trace the development of the affect heuristic across a variety of research paths followed by ourselves and many others. We also discuss some of the important practical implications resulting from ways that this heuristic affects our daily lives.
According to the normative theory of prediction, prior probabilities (base rates), which summarize what we know before receiving any specific evidence, should remain relevant even after such evidence is obtained. In the present study, subjects were asked to estimate the probability that one of two states was true on the basis of (a) information about the prior probabilities of the states (b) information specific to the case at hand and known to be accurate with probability p. Subject's responses were determined predominantly by the specific evidence; the prior probabilities were neglected, causing the judgments to deviate markedly from the normative response. Theoretical and practical implications of this results are discussed.
Significance Two surveys of United States public opinion found that support for killing enemy civilians and combatants disproportionately with nuclear or conventional weapons was deeply divided along partisan political lines. Those approving such excessively lethal attacks tended to be Republican and conservative. They felt socially distant from the enemy, dehumanized them, and believed that the victims were to blame for their fate. These same individuals also tended to support domestic policies that protect gun owners, restrict abortion, and punish immigrants and criminals (excessively). Understanding the origins and motives underlying the widespread support for such punitive behaviors is essential to mitigating violence that threatens millions of people and our democracy.
This paper presents a technique–diagnostic strategy analysis–for describing a physician's reliance on signs when making a diagnostic judgment. Use of the technique is demonstrated by a study in which nine radiologists judged the malignancy of gastric ulcers on the basis of seven roentgenologic signs. The technique proved capable of describing each radiologist's use of signs in a precise quantitative way. These descriptions enabled disagreements among radiologists to be traced to individual differences in the use of signs. In addition, each radiologist's use of signs was compared with statistical evidence pertaining to the validity of these signs. The present technique seems to have promise as a teaching device that would enable students to see precisely why their judgments differ from those of their expert instructor. It even may provide the expert with new insight into his own inferential processes.
Young adults were shown hypothetical stimulus vignettes describing mental patients and were asked to judge (a) the probability that the patient would harm someone else, (b) whether or not the patient should be categorized as “dangerous,” and (c) whether coercion should be used to ensure treatment. Probability and dangerousness judgments were systematically related and were predictive of the judged necessity for coercion. However, judged probability was strongly dependent on the form of the response scale, suggesting that probability was not represented consistently and quantitatively in participants' minds. Study 2 replicated these findings with forensic clinicians as participants. These results underscore the importance of violence to others in mental health law and have important implications for the manner in which risk assessments are formulated for use by the legal system.
The chapter on framing by Tversky and Kahneman (1982) demonstrates that normatively inconsequential changes in the formulation of choice problems significantly affect preferences. These effects are noteworthy because they are sizable (sometimes complete reversals of preference), because they violate important tenets of rationality, and because they influence not only behavior but how the consequences of behavior are experienced. These perturbations are traced (in prospect theory; see Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) to the interaction between the manner in which acts, contingencies, and outcomes are framed in decision problems and general propensities for treating values and uncertainty in nonlinear ways.
No abstract is provided for this article.
The Feeling of Risk brings together the work of Paul Slovic, one of the world's leading analysts of risk, to describe the extension of risk perception research
Purpose: To examine the ways in which perceived risks and benefits relate to health-threatening and health-enhancing behaviors by adolescents. Method: The study used a word association methodology to explore adolescents' thoughts and affective feelings associated with five health-threatening behaviors (e.g., drinking beer, smoking cigarettes) and three health-enhancing behaviors (e.g., exercising, using a seat belt). Results: Each behavior elicited a mix of positive and negative associations. Health-threatening behaviors had many positive associations in common, such as having fun, social facilitation, and physiological arousal. Health-enhancing behaviors had much less commonality in their positive associations. Patterns of negative associations were not highly similar across behaviors. The content and affective tone of the associations were closely linked to participation in health-threatening behaviors and health-enhancing behaviors. Participants in an activity were far more likely than nonparticipants to associate that activity with positive outcomes, concepts, and affect and less likely to produce negative associations. Conclusions: The word association methodology provides a useful technique for exploring adolescents' cognitions and affective reactions with regard to health-related behaviors. The data provided by this method have implications for prevention and intervention programs, as well as for future research.
