Illusory perception of visual patterns in pure noise is associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs.

Just as perceptual heuristics can lead to visual illusions, cognitive heuristics can lead to biased judgements, such as "illusory pattern perception" (i.e., seeing patterns in unrelated events). Here we further investigated the common underlying mechanism behind irrational beliefs and illusory pattern perception in visual images. For trials in which no object was present in the noise, we found that the tendency to report seeing an object was positively correlated with the endorsement of both COVID-19 specific conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs. The present results suggest that the cognitive bias to see meaningful connections in noise can have an impact on socio-political cognition as well as on perceptual decision making

Befragungen in Anwesenheit des Partners

'Eine der grundlegenden Regeln zum Interview besagt, daß Befragungen mit der Zielperson allein durchgeführt werden sollen. Die Wirklichkeit sieht jedoch etwas anders aus: bei vielen Interviews sind sogenannte Dritte zugegen. Damit erhebt sich die Frage, ob die Anwesenheit Dritter Auswirkungen auf die Datenqualität hat oder nicht. Der vorliegende Artikel liefert einen Beitrag zur methodologischen Diskussion dieser Frage.' (Autorenreferat)'One of the basic rules of interviewing says, that respondents should be interviewed alone. Reality, however, looks somewhat different: many interviews are conducted with socalled third parties present. This raises the question whether the presence of others affects data quality. The present article contributes to the methodological discussion of this issue.' (author's abstract)