Who agrees more? The role of age, education, and the ability to solve verbal analogies in acquiescence.

Background: Acquiescence as one of the response styles is the participant's tendency to shift answers to agreement rather than to disagreement regardless of the items' content. Acquiescence together with other response styles could be a serious threat to the results of research. It can be affected by several individual characteristics including cognitive abilities.

Seeing past the tip of your own nose? How outward and self-centred orientations could contribute to closing the green gap despite helplessness.

Background: The present study explored moderators of the relation between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour that could help close the green gap.

Methods: A sample of 500 individuals (250 women) participated in the study. Apart from socio-demographic characteristics, participants answered questions about their environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour, collectivism and individualism, time orientation and emotional responses to climate change.

Emotional drivers of the vaccination hesitancy and refusal: A dataset from Slovakia.

The dataset comprises responses provided by 500 individuals (250 women) recruited by an external agency to be representative of the Slovak population concerning age and gender. Participants gave written consent to participate in the study by confirming that they are over 18 and have read all the information about the study before agreeing to participate in an online survey hosted on Qualtrics. Along with socio-demographic characteristics and vaccination hesitancy and refusal, the dataset contains variables that could explain variation in dependant variables: horizontal-vertical individualism-collectivism, consideration of future consequences, prosocial motivations, helplessness, and the sense of threat caused by vaccination but also the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate change.

Scientific reasoning is associated with rejection of unfounded health beliefs and adherence to evidence-based regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Unlabelled: Scientific reasoning and trust in science are two facets of science understanding. This paper examines the contribution of science understanding, over and above analytic thinking, to the endorsement of conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs about COVID-19 and behavioral intentions to engage in the recommended preventive behavior. We examined the direct and indirect effects of science understanding on normative health behavior in a representative sample of the Slovak population ( 1024).

Superlatives, clickbaits, appeals to authority, poor grammar, or boldface: Is editorial style related to the credibility of online health messages?

Adolescents, as active online searchers, have easy access to health information. Much health information they encounter online is of poor quality and even contains potentially harmful health information. The ability to identify the quality of health messages disseminated online technologies is needed in terms of health attitudes and behaviors.

Fear trumps the common good: Psychological antecedents of vaccination attitudes and behaviour.

The study investigated antecedents of attitudes towards vaccines against COVID-19 and vaccination behaviour, and sought to identify areas where interventions aimed at increasing vaccination rates would be most effective. A sample of 500 Slovaks (250 women) responded to questions concerning their socio-demographic and personality characteristics, collectivism and individualism, consciousness of future consequences, and emotional responses to both vaccination and the pandemic. The study indicates that helplessness related to the vaccine efficacy evaluation and fear of its potential risks are the strongest antecedents of vaccination behaviour and anti-vaccination attitudes.

Antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs: A systematic review.

Rationale: Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories can have severe consequences; it is therefore crucial to understand this phenomenon, in its similarities with general conspiracy belief, but also in how it is context-dependent.

Objective: The aim of this systematic review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the available research on COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and to synthesise this research to make it widely accessible.

Methods: We present a synthesis of COVID-19 conspiracy belief research from 85 international articles, identified and appraised through a systematic review, in line with contemporary protocols and guidelines for systematic reviews.

You before me: How vertical collectivism and feelings of threat predicted more socially desirable behaviour during COVID-19 pandemic.

The present study investigated the relationship between outward orientation and COVID-related prosocial behavior, including adherence to containment measures, caring for others and providing support, limiting one's social life and responsible purchasing behavior. A sample of 500 Slovaks (250 women) aged between 18 and 86 ( = 44.32,  = 15.

Finding Someone to Blame: The Link Between COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs, Prejudice, Support for Violence, and Other Negative Social Outcomes.

One of the appeals of conspiracy theories in times of crises is that they provide someone to blame for what has happened. Thereby, they increase distrust, negative feelings, and hostility toward implicated actors, whether those are powerful social outgroups or one's own government representatives. Two studies reported here examine associations of COVID-19 conspiracy theories with prejudice, support for violence, and other and negative social outcomes.

How are you holding up? Personality, cognitive and social predictors of a perceived shift in subjective well-being during COVID-19 pandemic.

While well-being is known to be mainly predicted by relatively stable personality traits and demographic factors, under circumstances of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the role of these predictors may be attenuated, and more situational factors may come into play. In the present study, we examined those relatively stable predictors of well-being along with COVID-19 specific factors, such as the perception of health and economic threat, unrealistic optimism, lack of control, trust in government regulations, and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. The data collection took place in early November 2020, when the second wave in Slovakia started to gain momentum and a strict lockdown was issued.

Corrigendum: The Effect of Analytic Cognitive Style on Credulity.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.

Does Concrete Content Help People to Reason Scientifically?: Adaptation of Scientific Reasoning Scale.

Unlabelled: In this paper, we explored the scientific literacy of a general sample of the Slovak adult population and examined factors that might help or inhibit scientific reasoning, namely the content of the problems. In doing so, we also verified the assumption that when faced with real-life scientific problems, people do not necessarily apply decontextualized knowledge of methodological principles, but reason from the bottom up, i.e.

When we are worried, what are we thinking? Anxiety, lack of control, and conspiracy beliefs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Societal crises and stressful events are associated with an upsurge of conspiracy beliefs that may help people to tackle feelings of lack of control. In our study ( = 783), we examined whether people with higher feelings of anxiety and lack of control early in the COVID-19 pandemic endorse more conspiracy theories. Our results show that a higher perception of risk of COVID-19 and lower trust in institutions' response to the pandemic were related to feelings of anxiety and lack of control.

The Effect of Analytic Cognitive Style on Credulity.

Belief in astrology remains strong even today, and one of the explanations why some people endorse paranormal explanations is the individual differences in analytical thinking. Therefore, the main aim of this paper was to determine the effects of priming an analytical or intuitive thinking style on the credulity of participants. In two experiments ( = 965), analytic thinking was induced and the source of fake profile (astrological reading vs.

How scientific reasoning correlates with health-related beliefs and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We examined whether scientific reasoning is associated with health-related beliefs and behaviors over and above general analytic thinking ability in the general public ( = 783, aged 18-84). Health-related beliefs included: anti-vaccination attitudes, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and generic health-related epistemically suspect beliefs. Scientific reasoning correlated with generic pseudoscientific and health-related conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs.

The role of scientific reasoning and religious beliefs in use of complementary and alternative medicine.

Background: While previous research has shown that trust in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is linked with other unfounded beliefs (e.g. paranormal phenomena or pharmaceutical conspiracies) and that analytic thinking can help alter these beliefs, the role of the ability to evaluate evidence as a protective factor has not been established yet.