Search

The present research examines the relationship between populist attitudes—that construe society as a struggle between the “corrupt elites” versus the “noble people”—and beliefs in unsubstantiated epistemic claims. We specifically sought to assess the often assumed link between conspiracy beliefs and populist attitudes; moreover, we examined if populist attitudes predict conspiracy beliefs in particular, or rather, credulity of unsubstantiated epistemic claims in general. Study 1 revealed that populist attitudes are robustly associated with conspiracy mentality in a large multination study, drawing samples from 13 European Union (EU) countries. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that besides conspiracy beliefs, populist attitudes also predict increased credulity of obscure and politically neutral news items (regardless of whether they were broadcasted by mainstream or alternative news sources), receptivity to bullshit statements, and supernatural beliefs. Furthermore, Study 3 revealed that these findings were mediated by increased faith in intuition. These studies support the notion of populist gullibility: An increased tendency of people who score high on populist attitudes to accept obscure or unsubstantiated epistemic claims as true, including nonpolitical ones.

Resumen La Inquisición novohispana, heredera de la española, tenía entre sus actividades la persecución de la brujería, por su carácter herético y supersticioso; sin embargo, a lo largo de sus tres siglos de funcionamiento son pocos los procesos llevados hasta la sentencia que se registran en la documentación inquisitorial. En este trabajo se mostrará un ejemplo de los "destellos de sano escepticismo y un honesto deseo de llegar a la verdad" que Henry Charles Lea (2020) ya detectaba en las autoridades de la Inquisición española del siglo XVI. Abstract The Inquisition in Nueva España, derived from Spanish Inquisition, had among its activities and due to its heretical and superstitious character, the persecution of witchcraft. Nevertheless, throughout its three centuries of operation, few processes carried out all the way to sentencing as recorded in the inquisitorial documentation. This work will show an example of the "gleams of wholesome scepticism and honest desire to reach the truth" attempted by authorities of the Spanish Inquisition even since the 16th century, detected by Henry Charles Lea (2020). Resumo A inquisicao ("Santo Oficio") na Nova Espanha, derivada da Inquisicao espanhola, com seu caráter herético e supersticioso, teve entre as suas funcoes a persecucao da bruxaria. Porém, ao longo dos seus tres séculos de funcionamento foram poucos os processos que foram levados até julgamento e que aparecem registrados. Neste trabalho se mostrará um exemplo dos "brilhos de saudável esteticismo e de um honesto desejo de chegar a verdade" das autoridades da Inquisicao espanhola, achados por Henry Charles Lea (2020) já presentes desde o século XVI.

A Systematic Literature Review of Gullibility, Credulity and Misplaced Trust.

Pierre-Daniel Huet’s (1630-1721) journey to Sweden in 1652 offered him the opportunity to observe the customs and habits of the peoples of the Far North. The young scholar’s zest for geographic discovery and his topographic surveys of places mingled with ancient borealist topoi, with which he had become familiar early on through his readings of Greek and Latin authors. This article shows how Huet’s borealist topoi, especially on the influence of climate on people’s credulity, carry more weight in his writings than his description of places and his knowledge of physics. They feed his disparaging views on the Swedes from whom he suffered much hardship during his stay at the court of Queen Christina.

L’histoire du mesmerisme est multiple et complexe. Elle traverse plus d’un siecle, depuis Mesmer jusqu’a Freud et meme au-dela, avec d’amples variations selon les temps et les lieux. Elle connait aussi des hybridations surprenantes, avec l’electrotherapie, la phrenologie, la psychologie, le spiritisme, etc., ainsi que des prolongements dans tous les domaines de la culture, de la science et de l’art. Si le sujet a ete profondement renouvele depuis environ trente ans, de nombreux aspects du phe...

In this paper I model a decision maker who forms beliefs and opinions using a dialectic heuristic that depends on their degree of skepticism or credulity. In an application to political spin, two competing parties choose how to frame commonly observed evidence. If the receiver is sufficiently credulous, equilibrium spin is maximally extreme and generates short, superficial news cycles. When receivers vary in their skepticism, there is partisan sorting by skepticism parameter: the more credulous group systematically favors one party and displays hostility to evidence and a media they see as biased. In behavioral applications in which the frames arise from the decision maker’s internal deliberation, a decision maker with the same credulous nature would display known behavioral anomalies in forming beliefs and forming decision weights from stated probabilities. The dialectic model therefore captures a simple psychological mechanism and matches closely some stylized facts across these three disparate applications.

Niniejsza praca ukazuje zjawisko przestępstwa „na wnuczka” w latach 2018 – 2020 w oparciu o dane Komendy Wojewódzkiej Policji w Krakowie. W różnych publikacjach występują różne pojęcia przestępstwa „na wnuczka”, nie miej jednak wszystkie są do siebie podobne. Można wyróżnić między innymi przestępstwa „na policjanta”, „na prokuratora”. Społeczeństwo polskie starzej się, wyłudzanie pieniędzy od osób starszych nie traci na popularności. Marginalizację problemów osób starszych wykorzystują oszuści dla własnych celów aby wzbogacić się czyimś kosztem. Za pomocą metody „na wnuczka”, „na policjanta” oraz „na prokuratora” oszuści wykorzystując łatwowierność, pragnienie bycia potrzebnym, opieki nad rodziną i zaufanie do autorytetu doprowadzają swoje ofiary do powierzenia im oszczędności życia. Na oszustwa najbardziej narażeni są ludzie mieszkający samotnie, bez rodziny oraz w podeszłym wieku. Ludzie w podeszłym wieku najczęściej nie zdają sobie sprawy z zagrożenia i z typową dla siebie otwartością chętnie nawiązują kontakty z obcymi. Policja nigdy nie prosi o przekazywanie pieniędzy lub kosztowności obcym osobom ani policjantom. This work shows the phenomenon of the "granddaughter" crime in 2018-2020 based on the data of District Police in Krakow. In various publications there are different concepts of the "granddaughter" crime, however, they are all similar to each other. We can distinguish, inter alia, crimes "against the policeman", "against the prosecutor". The Polish society is getting older, extorting money from the elderly people is still popular. The marginalization of this problem is used by fraudsters for their own purposes to enrich themselves at someone's expense. Using the "granddaughter", "policeman" and "prosecutor" methods, fraudsters take advantage of credulity, the desire to be useful, taking care of the family and trust in authority and lead their victims to give them life savings. People who live alone, without a family and in the elderly age are most at risk of being scammed. Elderly people are most often unaware of the threat and are eager to establish contacts with strangers with their usual openness. The police will never ask you to transfer money or valuables to strangers or police officers.

Synthesizing the metaethical aspects of George Lakoff’s conception of Strict Father Morality (SFM) and Divine Command Theory (DCT) helps us to have a better understanding of the Trump phenomenon, US President Trump regularly deviating from accepted facts and his supporters having no problem with this practice. We misunderstand the situation if we presume that Trump’s mendacity and his supporters’ credulity fully account for this situation. More specifically, I argue that the authoritarian thread that runs through SFM/DCT provides Trump with the justification, in his view as well as in the eyes of his supporters, to dictate the meaning of key concepts, for example, truth, fairness, and justice. As a result, when Trump says something that seems plainly false, I argue that we better understand the situation if we regard Trump as taking himself to be defining what the term in question means. This situation has far-reaching ramifications, from destabilizing the meaning of key moral terms to all issues becoming partisan issues to the loss of expertise.

This article examines the role of place—specifically the place of Silicon Valley in California—in the emerging economic geographies of alternative proteins (APs), including cellular and plant-based substitutes. Drawing on original fieldwork data and existing economic geography debates on food, place, and innovation, I develop the concept of innovation terroir to examine the key role Silicon Valley has played in shaping the spatial trajectories and political possibilities of the AP sector. I first illustrate the power of Silicon Valley’s place-myth in (re)producing the importance for AP founders to be physically in place within the region, in part to access its renowned industrial resources but also to provide a protective niche of credibility and credulity for these nascent ventures. Second, I outline that to be there in spatial terms has also involved an encountering with a specific culture of logics and practices of the technoindustrial region of Silicon Valley. To succeed at doing protein food in this region has required a choice by AP ventures to become culturally in place and thereby reimagine food through the Valley’s image of high-tech entrepreneurial innovation; in short, it has required food to become software. This exploration of cultural emplacement builds directly on recent work in geography and related fields on alternative food economies, geographies of innovation, and the ontological politics of APs. It offers timely contributions for considering how AP development might be done otherwise and what it means to look to Silicon Valley for solutions to global food security and broader planetary challenges.

Truth-default theory posits that absent a trigger, people passively accept communication content as truthful and honest. Most often, the idea that some communication might be deceptive does not com...

Pasteur calviniste, Jacques Basnage de Beauval est l’auteur d’une Histoire des juifs, où la pratique d’une méthode historique permet d’effectuer une analyse anthropologique de la religion en recourant à des arguments qui rappellent ceux des libertins érudits. Il dénonce la crédulité humaine, les jeux des passions qui se dissimulent sous la piété, et met en évidence les ressorts théologico-politiques de bien des religions. Il peut ainsi critiquer l’intolérance et justifier la liberté de conscience., A Calvinist pastor, Jacques Basnage de Beauval was the author of a History of the Jews wherein the use of a historical method allows him to offer an anthropological analysis of religion by means of arguments reminiscent of those of the erudite libertines. He denounces human credulity and the play of passions underlying piety, and uncovers the theologico-political mechanisms of several religions. He can thereby criticise intolerance and justify freedom of conscience.

As rightly pointed out by the international literature on the topic, one of the main visual (and ideological) focuses of the mondo genre was the exploration of the exotic, with various movies devoted to African rites and tradition. It is interesting to notice, by the way, that in various of the mondo movies produced during the ‘60s we can detect a peculiar interest for Italy as well. As the paper will try to demonstrate this intriguing recurrence of scene can be understood if considered within the wider “anti-humanistic” ideological project of mondo guru Gualtiero Jacopetti. In his movies the scenes that take place in Italy show us a degraded nation, still corrupted by anachronistic rites and beliefs. In this sense we can consider this kind of images as a very personal counter- narrative of the economic Miracle and – at the same time – as a precise strategic move that helped to strengthen the stereotypical reading of Italian South as a poor and underdeveloped region, inhabited by an obscure religious credulity.

In this thesis, I explore the issue of epistemic responsibility. I start by examining an argument against the use of critical thinking made by Michael Huemer. Huemer argues that critical thinking is not epistemically responsible, because it is not as truth conducive as credulity. Huemer instead argues that credulity should be the default approach taken by non-experts. After dissecting this argument, I go on to examine one of the critics to Huemer’s argument: David Kary. Kary argues that critical thinking and credulity are not mutually exclusive and can therefore be combined in an epistemically responsible way. Kary further argues that one must consider the social components of epistemic responsibility, and that when one does so, it is evident that truth conduciveness is not the only component of epistemic responsibility. I extend Huemer and Kary’s discussion by arguing that epistemic responsibility is even more complex. Epistemic superiority, equality and inferiority are fluid positions that change depending on context, and this must be considered when evaluating epistemic responsibility. The consequence of this approach is that a combination of critical thinking and credulity is the most responsible alternative. I end by arguing for the intellectual virtues and benefits of embracing this argument.

Was the Constitution an inherently pro-slavery document? Answering that question depends, in part, on correctly understanding the mysterious Pinckney Plan. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina proposed his plan of government when the Constitutional Convention opened, but no authentic copy of the original survives. Three decades later, Pinckney circulated a plan which he claimed was the one he offered in 1787. He also claimed that he was the author of most of the Constitution and that the Privileges and Immunities Clause he proposed was conceived with a racist and pro-slavery understanding. Most experts, beginning with James Madison, determined that the 1818 Plan was far too close to the final Constitution to be genuine, and for many years Pinckney’s constitutional con was thoroughly discredited. But in 1903, John Franklin Jameson discovered a manuscript and wrongly identified it as an extract of the Lost Plan. That error sparked a surprising surge of credulity in Pinckney’s fraudulent claims. Today, a vast accumulation of errors on the Pinckney Plan can be found throughout the scholarly and popular literature on the Constitution’s formation. Today’s Supreme Court wrongly attributes the Privileges and Immunities Clause to Pinckney. Getting the story right requires overturning more than a hundred years of faulty scholarship on the Pinckney Plan. The true story will cast some doubt on the thesis that the Constitution was conceived as a racist and pro-slavery document.

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 (N = 965), analytic thinking was induced and the source of fake profile (astrological reading vs. psychological testing) was manipulated and participants’ prior paranormal beliefs, anomalous explanation, cognitive reflection, and depression were measured. Although analytic thinking was proved to be hard to induce experimentally, the results showed that analytic thinking predicts credulity and belief in the paranormal was linked with experiencing more anomalous experiences and more paranormal explanations. The more people were able to think analytically, the less credulous they were as reflected in the lower acceptance of fake profile as accurate.

Drawing from the conceptual-historical transformations endured by the concept of the “lie”, as well as its relationship with that of “truth” and especially with that of “veracity”, this article aims to examine the construction of lying as a relevant, historiographic act, especially in its more intentional version, that will only be deconstructed if it is dully belied by the confession of the mendacious, or by the investigating and critical judgement of others. Furthermore, we will emphasize that the history of both is indissociable from the confl icts that have arisen (and are still arising) due to communal living and languages that institute it. Simultaneously, this article will aim to disclose that, in regard to the public effects, the struggle for veracity (in fact, including the struggle for truth) is much more difficult than the attachment to lie disguised as truth., Tendo como pano de fundo as transformações histórico-conceptuais sofridas pelo conceito de “mentira”, bem como a sua relação com o de “verdade” e, sobretudo, com o de “veracidade”, pretende-se salientar que a mendacidade, sobretudo na sua versão mais intencional, só será desconstruída se, entretanto, for comprovadamente des-mentida pela confissão do mentiroso, ou pelo juízo crítico e investigador de outros, e sublinhar que a história entre ambas é indissociável dos confl itos que nasceram (e nascem) do viver em comum e da linguagem que o institui. Simultaneamente, também se procurará mostrar que, ao nível dos efeitos públicos, a luta pela veracidade (incluindo pela verdade de facto) é bem mais difícil do que a adesão pística à mentira travestida de verdade.

This essay explores the historical process by which the birth and expansion of information systems transformed the relationship between “faith” and “fact.” The existence of recurring forms of credulity and conversely denial—from holocaust denial to climate change denial—suggests that patterns of belief and disbelief will not be easily resolved either with fact-checking or with the regulation of the press.

В последние годы число учащихся гиперактивного типа по разным причинам неумолимо растет. Непросвещенность учителя в вопросе заболевания синдрома дефицита внимания с гиперактивностью (СДВГ), незнание природы этой патологии приводят к трудностям в работе учителя. Синдром дефицита внимания с гиперактивностью (СДВГ) у детей является актуальной психолого-педагогической проблемой. Статья будет интересна учителям начальной школы, школьным психологам., The number of students of the hyperactive type has been growing inexorably for various reasons in recent years. The teachers lack of education on the issue of hyperkinetic behavior syndrome (HBS), ignorance of the nature of this pathology leads to difficulties in the teachers work. Hyperkinetic behavior syndrome (HBS) in children is an urgent psychological and pedagogical problem. The paper will be interesting primary to school teachers, and school psychologists., №3(93) (2020)

In debates about trust and testimony, epistemologists have traditionally been divided into two groups: those who hold that accepting the testimony of other people should be a kind of credulity without evidence (anti- reductivism) and those who assert that we shouldn’t recognize any testimony as true or justified without appropriate evidence (reductivism). I will argue in favour of the evidentialist position about trust, or the stance that epistemically responsible trust is a matter of evidence, but also in favour of the thesis that the position assumed by anti- reductivists is not necessarily an anti- evidentialist posi tion. The crucial difference between anti-reductivism and reductivism does not pertain to the question of evidence, but to epistemic agency. Finally, I will argue against anti reductivism and in favour of agency evidentialism, wherein it is assumed that accepting testimony is a kind of agency where our (reflective) control is strong enough to ensure that our trust is responsible. The version of agency evidentialism which I here support presumes: (i) doxastic voluntarism, or the existence of intellectual freedom in the sense that we have to be capable of certain intellectual choices or decisions, and (ii) virtue epistemology, or the normative approach according to which the target of epistemic evaluation is an epistemic agent to whom we ascribe epistemic or intellectual virtues or vices (epistemic responsibility, epistemic conscientiousness or like.)

International audience; This paper argues that, beginning with the Euripidean deus ex machina, dramatic festivals introduced a new standard into epiphanic rituals and experience. Through the scenic double énonciation, gods are seen by mythical heroes as gods, but by the Athenian spectators as costumed actors and fictive entities. People could scarcely believe these were 'real' gods, but would have no doubt been impressed by the scenic machinery. Thus the Homeric theme of a hero's likeness to the gods developed into the Hellenistic theme of the godlike ruler's (or actor's) theatrical success (or deceit). So in the Athenians' Hymn to Demetrius Poliorcetes, a victorious ruler entering a city is welcomed as a better god than the gods themselves. The simultaneous rise in popularity of paradoxical stories and experiences in the Hellenistic period was grounded not in believing, but in disbelieving-a phenomenon associated with antiquarian interests, the self-publicity of religious sanctuaries, or amazed credulity. People were increasingly drawn to 'real' gods, leading to long pilgrimages and extensive financial outlay (in the mysteries) in order to see them. I investigate this phenomenon by focusing upon fragments of the 'mimetic' or 'tragic' Greek historians that survive from this period. This paper explores whats seems to be a growing internal change in Greek religion between the fifth and third centuries BC-a progressive shift from performance (when ritual acts by itself, its spectacular character remaining optional) to spectacle (when people put emphasis on impressive delusion, in order to strengthen the reliability of ritual acting), or from ritual drama to the mimetic spectacle of lifelike, plausible appearances. Our aim is to identify a kind of terminus post quem of this change by looking to epiphanic ritual, theatrical mise en scène and individual experience. We argue that while godlike men and women-as well as gods in human form-feature in texts from archaic poetry to the Roman novel, earlier texts emphasize the role of divine grandeur, gods' trickery or ritual performance¹ in such manifestations, while Hellenistic and Greek Imperial texts emphasize the role of illusion, or, conversely , the enduring nature of the divine.

espanolEstas paginas proponen una comparacion entre Jean Bodin, demonologo frances del siglo XVI, y don Quijote como personaje de ficcion. Al igual que el heroe de la novela de Cervantes, Bodin da credibilidad a todo aquello que lee y, en consecuencia, con-vierte su propia disciplina, la demonologia, en una forma de novela que desdibuja de manera consciente las fronteras entre hecho y ficcion. Ambas formas de credulidad pueden compararse de manera productiva a las ideas de Michel de Montaigne acerca de la imaginacion y a su incursion filosofica en el dominio de lo posible. EnglishThis article proposes a comparison between the French Renaissance demonologist Jean Bodin and the fictional character Don Quijote. Like the hero of Cervantes’ novel, Bodin believes everything he reads. Consequently, Bodin makes his own discipline of demonology a species of romance that eagerly blurs the boundary of fact and fiction. This type of credulity can be usefully juxtaposed to Michel de Montaigne’s understanding of the imagination and to his more philosophical exploration of the realm of possibility.

This national online survey (N = 493) examined the political organization-public relationship (POPR) that voters perceived with their own political party and their opposing political party, as well as voters’ assessment of the credibility of candidates running for president during the primary season of the 2016 election. Results indicated that although credibility assessment of one’s own party’s candidate was much as expected, POPR with the Democratic Party was generally stronger than that with the Republican Party. Data showed no evidence that a poor POPR with one’s own party would drive voters to support interloper candidates. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of POPR with the opposing party and what weak relationships may mean for parties in the long term.

"All I know about Mormonism I learned from South Park ." This is a statement familiar to many professors of religious studies and American history, and it has yielded countless groans among them. But there are good reasons not only for why South Park has come to such authoritative status among students but also for why it might be useful-rather than limiting, frustrating, or embarrassing-as a starting point for classroom discussions about religion and the media of cultural familiarity. South Park's utility for Latter-day Saints and their historians alike can be explained by way of exploring Mormon-Hollywood relations-and representative concerns in polygamy, melodrama, and satire-from the makings of the film Brigham Young (20th Century-Fox, 1940) to the 2000s. LDS Church and Hollywood personnel have struggled together to and through the revelation that Mormon history is sometimes most intelligible through satire. This means not merely that Mormon origin stories and developmental practices have been subject to mockery in early media and film, although this is undoubtedly a point of real concern, but also that they may only be understandable via a kind of winking portrayal that allows for the possibilities of winking in portrayal and of the knowing incorporation of critique.ISouth Park, the wildly popular animated series about adolescent life in a small Colorado town, has several times featured Mormon themes and characters, and it devoted one episode-"All About Mormons" (2003)-entirely to the subject of Mormonism.1 In this episode, South Park resident (and perpetually acerbic manchild) Stan visits the home of a new classmate named Gary, whereupon he is enveloped by the saccharine rituals of a Family Home Evening: pleasant dinner conversations, noncompetitive board games, Rice Krispies squares, affirming songs, and scripture readings from the Book of Mormon. ("The... Book of Mormon? What's that?," asked Stan. "You know... the book that Joseph Smith found," Gary answered. "Who's Joseph Smith?" "Only the most important person in the world.") The episode plot then unfolds in a series of flashbacks showing Mormon prophet Joseph Smith discovering (buried in a hill) and translating (with a magical seer stone) the text of the Book of Mormon; and it depicts Joseph founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the basis of its sacred existence and of Joseph's claims to visitation by God and Jesus. These flashbacks- themselves featuring the soundtrack refrain "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb" for anyone who accepts Joseph's accounts and "smart, smart, smart, smart, smart" for anyone who challenges them-are interspersed with present-day scenes depicting Stan and his family's sometimesappalled and sometimes-enthralled reactions to the story and the tenor of Gary's home life. By the end of the half-hour episode, Stan has grown increasingly upset by (what he takes to be) the lunacy of the LDS Church's origins tale and the doe-eyed credulity of his new neighbors, and he lashes out against them. "You're right: the new kid's a douche," Stan reports to his South Park friends."All About Mormons" does not end on this condemnatory note, however. The writers belie the apparent anti-Mormon feel of the episode at several points and in several ways, not least of these being the tenor of their satire itself. Humor here is derived not from outright ridicule, nor from egregious misrepresentation, but by combining historical correctness with political incorrectness (as when "dumb, dumb, dumb" sounds behind an accurate voicing of an accepted testimony), and also by oscillating between-and thus holding in tension-an ostensibly ludicrous past and a nevertheless laudable present, a world of seer stones and a world of familial nicety.2 Near the end of the episode, immediately following Stan's "douche" statement, Gary-the-Mormon enters the scene with an obscenity-capped retort of his own:Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. …

I discuss the role of religious experience in Richard Swinburne's probabilistic case for theism. Swinburne draws on his principle of credulity to argue that, if in addition to other evidence we consider that many people have theistic religious experiences, theism comes out as more probable than not. However, on many plausible probability assignments for the relevant non-experiential evidence, the conditional probability of theism already converges towards 1. Moreover, an argument analogous to a general Bayesian argument against phenomenal conservatism suggests that, after we take account of evidence from religious experience, the probability of theism cannot be greater than the prior probability that the best rival hypothesis is false. I conclude that these observations are compatible with what Swinburne would call ‘weak rational belief’ in theism and that such weak belief can be strong enough for rational faith.

In a recent paper in this journal, Jelly and Nash (2016) present evidence for what they interpret as the ‘Christianisation’ of the human figure which is engraved on the underside of one of the caps...

To benefit from information provided by other people, people must be somewhat credulous. However, credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing misinformation and failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, given that disregarding accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no equivalent asymmetry exists for information concerning benefits, people should generally be more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general and is more prominent among people who believe the world to be more dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and beliefs about the dangerousness of the world differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively correlate with negatively biased credulity. Two online studies of Americans supported this prediction, potentially illuminating how politicians’ alarmist claims affect different portions of the electorate.

Item does not contain fulltext Although manipulations of visual and auditory media are as old as the media themselves, the recent entrance of deepfakes has marked a turning point in the creation of fake content. Powered by latest technological advances in AI and machine learning, they offer automated procedures to create fake content that is harder and harder to detect to human observers. The possibilities to deceive are endless, including manipulated pictures, videos and audio, that will have large societal impact. Because of this, organizations need to understand the inner workings of the underlying techniques, as well as their strengths and limitations. This article provides a working definition of deepfakes together with an overview of the underlying technology. We classify different deepfake types: photo (face- and body-swapping), audio (voice-swapping, text to speech), video (face-swapping, face-morphing, full body puppetry) and audio and video (lip-synching), and identify risks and opportunities to help organizations think about the future of deepfakes. Finally, we propose the R.E.A.L. framework to manage deepfake risks: Record original content to assure deniability, Expose deepfakes early, Advocate for legal protection and Leverage trust to counter credulity. Following these principles, we hope that our society can be more prepared to counter the deepfake tricks as we appreciate its treats. 12 p.

Phishing attack is a type of social engineering attack and often used as the initial stage of a larger campaign. It is dangerous as users might inadvertently reveal to the attackers personal data or sensitive corporate information. Therefore, inability to recognize and properly react to phishing attacks must be treated as one of the main security risks in the enterprise. In this paper, we present a methodology for evaluating employees’ resistance to phishing attacks. We also analyze the changes to the situation after the employees participated in information security training. Experiments with employees of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University were carried out within a period of one year to gather information on how credulous they are to phishing attacks before and after security training. Results of the experiment reveal the benefit of security training, however there is still room for improvement and need to pay attention in the future.

The article is devoted to the main approaches to the concept of femininity in psychology. The concept of "femininity" in various areas of psychological thought was analyzed. A modern understanding of the phenomenon of femininity was described. Conceptual approaches to the concept of "femininity" are discussed. The role of mass media in shaping the image of femininity is emphasized. Representations of the female image in world culture are revealed. Female archetypes of the "emotional cold" syndrome are described in Russian folk tales. Criteria for the structure of the concept of femininity in psychology are highlighted. Many different approaches to understanding femininity are analyzed. For example, the evolutionary-biological and psychoanalytic paradigms justify femininity by Innate anatomical and physiological factors. In the theory of cognitive development, a person, in the process of self-knowledge and self-actualization, introduces himself to representatives of a certain sex. Proponents of the theory of femininity refer to the latter the following characteristics: care, benevolence in relationships, high emotional sensitivity, compliance, developed intuition, credulity, ability to negotiate with the interlocutor, the ability to compromise, the direction to maintain psychological and emotional intimacy, inconsistency, emotional speech, talkativeness, smooth movements, openness, flexibility in relationships, attentiveness to socially accepted norms, naivety, vulnerability, low self-control, taking into account the opinions of others about themselves, unstable self-esteem, demonstrativeness, tendency to self-embellish, frivolity, superficiality in judgments, impulsiveness in decision-making. A systematic holistic approach provides a model of criteria for femininity, which is convenient to represent in the form of a pyramid. It will be based on physical manifestations of femininity, inside - psychological, and at the top - spiritual. Each of these criteria is important, but it is necessary to invent an individual optimal manifestation of the physical, psychological and spiritual criteria of femininity. The media identifies three fragmentary inharmonious images of femininity (a single careerist, an unhappy housewife mother, and a sexual consumer of material goods).

The use of emotion in climate change appeals is a hotly debated topic. Warning about the perils of imminent mass extinction, climate change communicators are often accused of being unnecessarily ‘doomsday’ in their attempts to foster a sense of urgency and action among the public. Pessimistic messaging, the thinking goes, undermines engagement efforts, straining credulity and fostering a sense of helplessness, rather than concern. Widespread calls for more optimistic climate change messaging punctuate public discourse. This research puts these claims to the test, investigating how affective endings (optimistic vs. pessimistic vs. fatalistic) of climate change appeals impact individual risk perception and outcome efficacy (i.e., the sense that one’s behavior matters). The findings of three online experiments presented in this paper suggest that climate change appeals with pessimistic affective endings increase risk perception (Studies 1 and 2) and outcome efficacy (Study 3), which is the result of heightened emotional arousal (Studies 1–3). Moreover, the results indicate that the mediating effect of emotional arousal is more prevalent among political moderates and conservatives, as well as those who hold either individualistic or hierarchical world views. Given that these audiences generally exhibit lower risk perception and outcome efficacy in relation to climate change, the results suggest that climate change appeals with pessimistic endings could trigger higher engagement with the issue than optimistic endings. These findings are interpreted in light of recent research findings, which suggest that differences in threat-reactivity and emotional arousal may be attributable to brain functions/anatomy mappable to basic motivations for safety and survival. Implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

The term “quack” has always been synonymous with shouting about one’s dubious medical remedies in the public marketplace; however, modern quacks amplify their aggressive and deceptive advertising campaigns worldwide using social media and internet-based mechanisms. While many in the United States have suffered significant illness and economic hardship as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, purveyors of pseudoscientific therapies have enriched themselves. The United States Food and Drug Administration has taken steps to mitigate the claims of over 65 individuals or companies claiming to prevent or treat SARS-CoV2, but this effort has been eclipsed by the sheer number of individuals who continue to surface and exploit public credulity. Moreover, those selling the same types of products and making the same types of claims received FDA warning letters during previous public health crises. The majority of letter recipients were selling products in five categories: colloidal silver, cannabis or related products, essential oils, vitamins, and minerals. Those in the rapidly expanding self-care industry will continue to spread medical caveat emptor both now and during the next pandemic unless the medical community begins directly opposing the normalization of unproven and misleading advertising claims.

In both the United Kindom and in India, no tax can be imposed without the authority of a statute. This principle has lead to what some might consider an unhealthy obsession with statutory language. The idea that a statute’s language has to account for any tax imposed was taken by judges initially to mean only taxes that come within the literal language of the statute would be allowed. As one would have expected, some taxpayers took their cues from this and concocted schemes that stretched the statutory language and eventually the credulity of judges.

Although prior research documents that analysts sometimes herd their forecasts, very few studies investigate how investors’ judgments are influenced by their perceptions of the likelihood of analyst herding. I conduct an experimental study to investigate the conditions under which investors’ assessments of uncertainty about future earnings are influenced by their perceptions of the likelihood of analyst herding. As expected, and consistent with motivated reasoning, the results show that the temporal order of analyst forecasts influences investors’ estimates of the likelihood of analyst herding and investors’ uncertainty judgments when analyst forecasts are preference-inconsistent but not when analyst forecasts are preference-consistent. This study provides a potential explanation for the mixed findings of prior research in regard to investors’ reactions to the likelihood of analyst herding. In addition, this study extends research on investors’ credulity by providing evidence that motivated reasoning and skepticism may serve as a mechanism that contributes to that credulity.

Gullibility seems to be a fundamental characteristic of human beings. Although the ability to share information with others is one the major evolutionary achievements of our species, this symbolic ability can also be a major source of gullibility. Understanding the processes that lead to gullibility is of growing importance in public life. This introductory chapter will discuss the nature, functions, and social and cultural history of human gullibility. In particular, the evolutionary significance and contemporary relevance of gullibility will be considered, and the psychological processes that contribute to credulity will be reviewed. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the book.

Gullibility, whether we like it or not, is a fundamental characteristic of human beings. In The Social Psychology of Gullibility, Forgas and Baumeister explore what we know about the causes, functions, and consequences of gullibility, and the social psychological processes that promote or inhibit it. With contributions from leading international researchers, the book reveals what social and cognitive psychology contribute to our understanding of how human judgments and decisions can be distorted and undermined. The chapters discuss the nature and functions of gullibility, the role of cognitive processes in gullibility, the influence of emotion and motivation on gullibility, and social and cultural aspects of gullibility. Underpinned by a wealth of empirical research, contributors explore captivating issues such as the psychology of conspiracy theories, the role of political gullibility, gullibility in science, the role of the internet in fostering gullibility, and the failures of reasoning that contribute to human credulity. Gullibility has become a dominant topic of interest in public discourse. The Social Psychology of Gullibility is essential reading for researchers, social science students, professionals and practitioners and all those interested in understanding human credulity and the role of gullibility in contemporary public affairs.

Phishing is an attack where the attacker creates the fake object (e-mail, web site, etc) to fool an online user into eliciting personal information. This is a base for a big variety of other security attacks as during this social engineering attack user provides sensitive personal information. In order to protect against phishing attacks a variety of tools are proposed; however, the majority agrees that the best countermeasure is user training and education rather than hardware or software solutions. In this paper, we analyze how credulous to phishing attacks are educated persons (people with no less than bachelor degree). The real-world study was executed to inspect how personnel of higher education organization react to phishing email, how credulous, suspicious they are and how far they will go in revealing their personal data.

Epistemic trust (ET) refers to trust in communicated knowledge. This paper describes the development and validation of a new self-report questionnaire, the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ). We report on two studies (Study 1, n = 500; Study 2, n = 705) examining the psychometric properties of the ETMCQ and the relationship between EMTCQ scores (i.e., an individual's epistemic stance) and exposure to adverse childhood experiences, mental health symptoms, attachment, mentalizing and general self-efficacy. The factor structure of the ETMCQ was examined using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses, and its reliability and test-retest reliability were tested. Both studies yielded three correlated yet distinct factors-Trust, Mistrust and Credulity-and confirmed the reliability and validity of the ETMCQ. Preregistered hypotheses were confirmed and replicated across both studies. Main findings suggest intriguing links between the ETMCQ and developmental psychopathology constructs and are consistent with thinking on the role of epistemic stance in undermining adaptation and increasing the developmental risk of mental health problems. Mistrust and Credulity scores were associated with childhood adversity and higher scores on the global psychopathology severity index and both factors partially mediated the link between early adversity and mental health symptoms. Mistrust and Credulity were positively associated with difficulties in understanding mental states and insecure attachment styles. Post-hoc analysis identified that different attachment styles were associated with differences in epistemic stance. In addition, Trust was not associated with reduced levels of mental health symptoms and did not moderate the impact of childhood adversity-findings are congruent with the suggestion that the reduction of mistrust and credulity may be crucial common factors in promoting resilience and the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions. This investigation and the ETMCQ provide an empirical measure of what until now has been largely a theoretical concept and open new avenues for future research. ispartof: PLOS ONE vol:16 issue:4 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Haunting in literary fiction is often interpreted psychologically as a sign of suppressed psychic content or as nostalgia or mourning for the loss. Yet, it may also be used allegorically as a manifestation of hidden social conflicts, and hence mark a political agenda of thus constructed works. In the novels by Sarah Waters spectres, poltergeists and haunting appear not as a sign of or a contact with an outer reality; to the contrary, they may be seen as perfectly human—though eccentric—expressions of class and economic inferiority. In Affinity spectres and spiritual seances are presented as a means of earning money by lower classes and the latter’s cunning use of the upper classes’ credulity. In The Little Stranger the poltergeist may be interpreted as an accumulated anger and desire of the servants long ignored by the masters of the emblematic country house. In both, haunting and ghosts manifest vengeance of the underprivileged taken on the socially superior. The essay shows how fictional haunting and spectrality, far from marking a supernatural reality or introducing extrasensory concepts, may function as an allegorical method to discuss political and social problems such as class inequality or social justice.