Don't believe it! A global perspective on cognitive reflection and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the saliency of an old phenomenon – conspiracy theories. In times of a global crisis and an unprecedented access to information, fake news seems to spread as fast as the virus. A global pandemic requires more than ever self-compliance. Only behavior change and vaccination on a large scale can bring us to normality. Yet believing in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 is expected to undermine such compliance. What determines susceptibility to believing in misinformation? In this study, using data on mostly representative samples of 45 countries around the world (38,113 participants), we found evidence that people with more deliberate thinking are less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Furthermore, on the individual level people who are more prone to believe in conspiracy theories are less likely to comply with behavior change. We are in the midst of the biggest coordination game and such insights in social psychology can inform policymakers

Any-Where Any-Time: Ambiguity and the Perceived Probability of Apprehension

Enforcement is a costly endeavor. Thus, governments ought to be innovative in designing less costly policies, yet, effective in preventing crime. To this end, this paper suggests using insights from behavioral law and economics. Empirical evidence demonstrates that police have an important effect in deterring crime. However, increasing the number of policemen is a costly policy. Therefore, this paper explores policy changes, which exploit offender’s ambiguity aversion in order to reduce crime without increasing the police force. Namely, empirical evidence suggests that criminals are better deterred by ambiguous detection. Thus, this paper analyzes the ways to randomize the apprehension strategies to meet this end. Furthermore, it provides new evidence, based on a survey carried out for the purpose of this paper, that potential violators are largely not aware of policy changes. Inasmuch as the information regarding the intensified uncertainty is essential to its success, this paper discusses the possibility to increase criminals’ awareness through the “availability heuristic.

Can Imprisonment Be Cheaper? The Law and Economics of Private Prisons

Custody is the most expensive method of punishment in the western world, as compared to other alternatives. Although expensive, prison is an indispensible instrument to deal with judgment proof or dangerous offenders. Hence, by using the law and economics approach, this paper explores prison privatization as an instrument for less expensive incarceration. This method has the potential to reduce the prison costs without hampering its quality. However, a restructuring of the current contracts is needed to achieve this purpose. The attention given to the topic of private prisons by the law and economics scholars, especially in the European context, is limited and this paper attempts to fill this gap. The present paper applies arguments from the bureaucracy and political science literature to explain the inefficiencies of public prisons. Subsequently, the potential problems of private prisons are presented through the principle-agent model and solutions are offered

Day fines: asymmetric information and the secondary enforcement system

The most common pecuniary sanction, i.e. fixed-fines, places an emphasis on the severity of the crime. This fine has the problem of being either too high for poorer offenders to pay or too low for the richer offenders to be deterred. Day-fines, on the other hand, systematically account for the financial situation of the offender as well as for the severity of his offense. Consequently, it imposes equivalent burden of punishment on offenders who committed similar crimes, regardless of their wealth. However, a problem of asymmetric information is raised. Accurate financial information is essential for the efficiency of day-fines, yet its collection is costly. Day-fines receive increasing attention from policy-makers around the world. Nonetheless, it is under-researched in the law and economics literature. Therefore, this article is the first to formally analyze the problem of asymmetric information in the context of day-fines and to develop an optimal secondary enforcement system that would incentivize criminals to provide accurate information regarding their wealth

Wait Up!: Attachment and Sovereign Power.

Sociologists and feminist scholars have, over many decades, characterised attachment as a social construction that functions to support political and gender conservatism. We accept that attachment theory has seen use to these ends and consider recent deployments of attachment theory as justification for a minimal State within conservative political discourse in the UK since 2009. However, we contest that attachment is reducible to its discursive construction. We consider Judith Butler's depiction of the infant attached to an abusive caregiver as a foundation and parallel to the position of the adult citizen subjected to punitive cultural norms and political institutions. We develop and qualify Butler's account, drawing on the insights offered by the work of Lauren Berlant. We also return to Foucault's Psychiatric Power lectures, in which familial relations are situated as an island of sovereign power within the sea of modern disciplinary institutions. These reflections help advance analysis of three important issues: the social and political implications of attachment research; the relationship between disciplinary and sovereign power in the affective dynamic of subjection; and the political and ethical status of professional activity within the psy disciplines.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-014-9192-

Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics