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Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic not only led to chaos and uncertainty, it also brought about many conspiracy theories. In the last two decades, with considerable amount of research, social psychologists have begun to unravel the personality traits underlying conspiracy theories. One such trait is narcissism where the need to distinguish oneself from others might be satisfied by holding beliefs that are different from the general population. In this research, we focus, for the first time in the literature, on both collective and grandiose narcissism’s predictive effects on Covid-19 conspiracy theories and the possible moderation of need for uniqueness (feeling oneself to be special and different from others) and belonging (feeling oneself to be part of a larger and worthy whole). In a Turkish sample (N = 309), we found that both collective and grandiose narcissism were significant predictors of Covid-19 conspiracy. In addition, when the need to feel special was high, grandiose narcissists, but not collective narcissists, tended to believe in Covid-19 conspiracies. Finally, we found that generic conspiracy beliefs were also important predictors of Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Our research illuminates the link between narcissism and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Future research should look for other possible moderating factors between collective narcissism and conspiracy beliefs in the context of Covid-19.

El propósito de este artículo es analizar la presencia de Guinea en las ferias muestrario que se celebraron en Valencia durante la década de 1940. En ellas, de acuerdo con la doctrina de la Hispanidad, la colonia se delimitó como un territorio a civi­lizar –cristianizar y españolizar–, siendo de vital importancia en el discurso público la retórica nacionalcatolicista que entreveraba negocio y misión. Para ello, los organizadores optaron por la estrategia de poner en escena los recursos naturales de la colonia y a sus habitantes, especialmente a los fang de la Guinea continental. El interés del caso valenciano es doble. Por un lado, nos permite entender las dinámicas puestas en marcha por el gobierno franquista para despertar el interés de los españoles por los asuntos coloniales en los años inmediatamente posteriores al final de la Guerra Civil española y en plena Segunda Guerra Mundial. Por otro, es una pieza más de un rompecabezas que parecía haberse terminado en España con las exhibiciones etnológicas de los guineanos en la Exposición Iberoamericana de Sevilla de 1929.

The psychological correlates of utilitarian choices in sacrificial moral dilemmas are contentious. In the literature, some research (Greene, et al., 2001) suggested that utilitarianism requires analytic thinking while other research (Kahane et al., 2015) showed that utilitarianism is correlated with psychopathy. In the present research, we looked at the relation of several normative views with analytic cognitive style (ACS), psychopathy and real-world utilitarianism in three Turkish samples. In Study 1 (n = 269), we used four ethical dilemmas and asked participants to select one normative principle as the grounds for their judgment in the dilemma: fatalism, virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology and amoralism. The results showed that the majority selected the deontological principle. Additionally, there was a considerable amount of fatalistic and virtue ethical justifications. Utilitarianism and psychopathy had a significant positive correlation. In Study 2 (n = 246), we replicated Study 1 and showed a significant relation between ACS and moral minimalism (the view that the sacrificial act is permissible but not necessary). In Study 3, the results showed that the utilitarian option in the sacrificial dilemmas was positively correlated with both real-life utilitarianism and psychopathy, but the latter two variables were not correlated with each other. All in all, the results suggest that some people choose the utilitarian option in moral dilemmas from psychopathic tendencies (as Kahane argued), while others due to real-life utilitarian reasons (as Greene argued). The findings also indicate that virtue ethical and fatalistic justifications cannot be ignored in understanding lay people’s moral judgments.

The projected increase in energy demand coupled with concerns regarding present reliance on fossil fuel and associated environmental concerns had led to increased interest in exploiting renewable energy sources. Among different renewable energy sources, tidal energy is unique and most suitable because of its predictable nature and capability to ensure supply security. Tide consists of both kinetic and potential energy which can be converted to electricity using well-proven technology. The potential energy of tides - the principal focus of the study, is stored due to rise and fall of the sea level. Head difference created due to tidal variation between basin side and sea side of a barrage stores potential energy which is converted into fast-moving water that rotates turbine and generates electricity. Bangladesh with its long coastline has promising prospects of tidal energy resource development. The study focuses on tidal energy resource exploration and exploitation along several competent locations of the Bengal coastline. Tidal records of flood and ebb tide of these locations are analyzed to calculate the potential energy. Finally, available potential techniques of energy extraction are evaluated for annually generated energy estimation. This study investigates the prospect and utilization of tidal energy concept and reviews the possibilities and opportunities of employment of the technology for sustainable development and climate change mitigation in context of Bangladesh.

Scientific and religious thinking compete with each other on several levels. For example, activating one generally weakens the other. Since priming religion is known to increase moral behaviour and moral sensitivity, priming science might be expected to have the opposite effect. However, it was recently demonstrated that, on the contrary, science priming increases moral sensitivity as well. The present set of studies sought to replicate this effect and test two explanations for it. Study 1 used a sentence unscrambling task for implicitly priming the concept of science but failed to replicate its effect on moral sensitivity, presumably due to a ceiling effect. Study 2 replicated the effect with a new measure of moral sensitivity. Study 3 tested whether science-related words create this effect by activating the idea of secular authority or by activating analytic thinking. It was demonstrated that words related to secular authority, but not words related to analytic thinking, produced a similar increase in moral sensitivity. Religiosity level of the participants did not influence this basic finding. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that science as a secular institution has overtaken some of the functions of religion in modern societies.

Previous research suggests that conservatives (right-wingers) tend to show more negativity bias than liberals (left-wingers) in several tasks. However, the majority of these studies are based on correlational findings and do not provide information on the cognitive underpinnings of this tendency. The current research investigated whether intuition promotes negativity bias and mitigates the ideological asymmetry in this domain in three underrepresented, non-western samples (Turkey). In line with the previous literature, we defined negativity bias as the tendency to interpret ambiguous faces as threatening. The results of the lab experiment revealed that negativity bias increases under high-cognitive load overall. In addition, this effect was moderated by the participants' political orientation (Experiment 1). In other words, when their cognitive resources were depleted, liberals became more like conservatives in terms of negativity bias. However, we failed to conceptually replicate this effect using time-limit manipulations in two online preregistered experiments during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the baseline negativity bias is thought to be already at peak. Thus, the findings provide no strong evidence for the idea that intuition promotes negativity bias and that liberals use cognitive effort to avoid this perceptual bias., Author(s): Metin Ege Salter [sup.1] , Firat Yavuz Duymaç [sup.1] , Onurcan Yilmaz [sup.1] , Hasan G. Bahçekapili [sup.2] , Mehmet Harma [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.28455.3e, 0000 0001 2116 [...]