Leading through gaze: Enhanced social attention in high-rank members of a large-scale organization.

Human attention is naturally directed where others are looking. Primate research indicates that this phenomenon is influenced by the social rank of the gazer. Whether this applies to human societies remains underexplored.

Does Embodying a Divine Avatar Influence Moral Decisions? An Immersive Virtual Reality Study.

The term Proteus effect refers to the changes in attitudes and behavior induced by the characteristics of an embodied virtual agent. Whether the effect can extend to the moral sphere is currently unknown. To deal with this issue, we investigated if embodying virtual agents (i.

Attitudes towards Italian Mafias Scale (AIMS): development and validation.

In two studies we aimed at developing the Attitude towards Italian Mafias Scale (AIMS). In study 1 ( = 292) we used an Exploratory Factor Analysis to reduce the number of the items and explore their latent constructs. In study 2 ( = 393) we performed a Confirmatory Factor Analysis on the resulting 18-item questionnaire, whose latent structure was best identified by a general factor Mafia Attitude and three specific factors related to Behaviors, Cognitions and Emotions-Cognitions towards mafias.

Embodying the avatar of an omnipotent agent modulates the perception of one's own abilities and enhances feelings of invulnerability.

Immersive virtual reality can give people the illusion of owning artificial bodies (i.e., avatars) and controlling their actions.

Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries.

People differ in their general tendency to endorse conspiracy theories (that is, conspiracy mentality). Previous research yielded inconsistent findings on the relationship between conspiracy mentality and political orientation, showing a greater conspiracy mentality either among the political right (a linear relation) or amongst both the left and right extremes (a curvilinear relation). We revisited this relationship across two studies spanning 26 countries (combined N = 104,253) and found overall evidence for both linear and quadratic relations, albeit small and heterogeneous across countries.

Oculomotor behavior tracks the effect of ideological priming on deception.

The decision to lie to another person involves a conflict between one's own and others' interest. Political ideology may foster self-promoting or self-transcending values and thus may balance or fuel self vs. other related conflicts.

Left Threatened by Right: Political Intergroup Bias in the Contemporary Italian Context.

Using different evaluation targets (i.e., politicians' pictures, ideological words, items referring to features attributed to political ingroup/outgroup) we characterized the intergroup bias among political groups in the Italian context (Study 1-2-3) and tested a model that may account for the bias itself (Study 3).