A gateway conspiracy? Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories prospectively predicts greater 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.

Contracting COVID-19: a longitudinal investigation of the impact of beliefs and knowledge.

Recent work has found that an individual's beliefs and personal characteristics can impact perceptions of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain individuals-such as those who are politically conservative or who endorse conspiracy theories-are less likely to engage in preventative behaviors like social distancing. The current research aims to address whether these individual differences not only affect people's reactions to the pandemic, but also their actual likelihood of contracting COVID-19.

Who is (not) complying with the U. S. social distancing directive and why? Testing a general framework of compliance with virtual measures of social distancing.

A study involving over 2000 online participants (US residents) tested a general framework regarding compliance with a directive in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study featured not only a self-report measure of social distancing but also virtual behavior measures-simulations that presented participants with graphical depictions mirroring multiple real-world scenarios and asked them to position themselves in relation to others in the scene. The conceptual framework highlights three essential components of a directive: (1) the source, some entity is advocating for a behavioral change; (2) the surrounding context, the directive is in response to some challenge; and (3) the target, the persons to whom the directive is addressed.

Social distancing decreases an individual's likelihood of contracting COVID-19.

Past research has established the value of social distancing as a means of deterring the spread of COVID-19 largely by examining aggregate level data. Locales in which efforts were undertaken to encourage distancing experienced reductions in their rate of transmission. However, these aggregate results tell us little about the effectiveness of social distancing at the level of the individual, which is the question addressed by the current research.

Sexism, racism, and nationalism: Factors associated with the 2016 U.S. presidential election results?

After the generally unexpected outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many explanations were proposed to account for the results.