Do conspiracy theorists think too much or too little?

N.M. Brashier

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 49, February 2023, 101504

Abstract

Conspiracy theories explain distressing events as malevolent actions by powerful groups. Why do people believe in secret plots when other explanations are more probable? On the one hand, conspiracy theorists seem to disregard accuracy; they tend to endorse mutually incompatible conspiracies, think intuitively, use heuristics, and hold other irrational beliefs. But by definition, conspiracy theorists reject the mainstream explanation for an event, often in favor of a more complex account. They exhibit a general distrust of others and expend considerable effort to find ‘evidence’ supporting their beliefs. In searching for answers, conspiracy theorists likely expose themselves to misleading information online and overestimate their own knowledge. Understanding when elaboration and cognitive effort might backfire is crucial, as conspiracy beliefs lead to political disengagement, environmental inaction, prejudice, and support for violence.

Implications

People who are drawn to conspiracy theories exhibit other stable traits – like lower cognitive ability, intuitive thinking, and proneness to cognitive biases – that suggest they are ‘lazy thinkers.’ On the other hand, conspiracy theorists also exhibit extreme levels of skepticism and expend energy justifying their beliefs; this effortful processing can ironically reinforce conspiracy beliefs. Thus, people carelessly fall down rabbit holes at some points (e.g., when reading repetitive conspiratorial claims) and methodically climb down at others (e.g., when initiating searches online). Conspiracy theories undermine elections, threaten the environment, and harm human health, so it is vitally important that interventions aimed at increasing evaluation and reducing these beliefs do not inadvertently backfire.

The research is here.

Institutional Courage Buffers Against Institutional Betrayal, Protects Employee Health, and Fosters Organizational Commitment Following Workplace Sexual Harassment

Smidt, A. M., Adams-Clark, A. A., & Freyd, J. J. (2023).

PLOS ONE, 18(1), e0278830. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278830

Abstract

Workplace sexual harassment is associated with negative psychological and physical outcomes. Recent research suggests that harmful institutional responses to reports of wrongdoing–called institutional betrayal—are associated with additional psychological and physical harm. It has been theorized that supportive responses and an institutional climate characterized by transparency and proactiveness—called institutional courage—may buffer against these negative effects. The current study examined the association of institutional betrayal and institutional courage with workplace outcomes and psychological and physical health among employees reporting exposure to workplace sexual harassment. Adults who were employed full-time for at least six months were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform and completed an online survey (N = 805). Of the full sample, 317 participants reported experiences with workplace sexual harassment, and only this subset of participants were included in analyses. We used existing survey instruments and developed the Institutional Courage Questionnaire-Specific to assess individual experiences of institutional courage within the context of workplace sexual harassment. Of participants who experienced workplace sexual harassment, nearly 55% also experienced institutional betrayal, and 76% experienced institutional courage. Results of correlational analyses indicated that institutional betrayal was associated with decreased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and increased somatic symptoms. Institutional courage was associated with the reverse. Furthermore, results of multiple regression analyses indicated that institutional courage appeared to attenuate negative outcomes. Overall, our results suggest that institutional courage is important in the context of workplace sexual harassment. These results are in line with previous research on institutional betrayal, may inform policies and procedures related to workplace sexual harassment, and provide a starting point for research on institutional courage.

Conclusion

Underlying all research on institutional betrayal and institutional courage is the idea that how one responds to a negative event—whether sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other types of victimization—is often as important or more important for future outcomes as the original event itself. In other words, it’s not only about what happens; it’s also about what happens next. In this study, institutional betrayal and institutional courage appear to have a tangible association with employee workplace and health outcomes. Furthermore, institutional courage appears to attenuate negative outcomes in both the employee workplace and health domains.

While we once again find that institutional betrayal is harmful, this study indicates that institutional courage can buffer against those harms. The ultimate goal of this research is to eliminate institutional betrayal at all levels of institutions by replacing it with institutional courage. The current study provides a starting point to achieving that goal by introducing a new measure of institutional courage to be used in future investigations and by reporting findings that demonstrate the power of institutional courage with respect to workplace sexual harassment.

The info is here.

Houston Christian U Sues Tim Clinton & American Assoc of Christian Counselors for Fraud & Breach of Contract

Rebecca Hopkins

The Roys Report

Originally posted 21 MAR 23

Houston Christian University (HCU) once planned to name its mental health program after Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC)—the world’s leading Christian counseling organization. Now HCU is suing Clinton, the AACC, and their related organizations for $1 million, accusing them of fraud, breach of contract, and concealing Clinton’s alleged plagiarism.

AACC “knew of Dr. Clinton’s practice of plagiarizing but failed to disclose the same to Plaintiff, knowing of the importance of academic honesty to any institution of higher learning,” the suit says. “. . . Yet, AACC still entered into several agreements with Plaintiff while not disclosing the academic honesty.”

In 2016-17, HCU (then named Houston Baptist University) hired Tim Clinton and the 50,000-member AACC for more than $5 million, multiple agreements show.

As part of the agreements, Clinton and the AACC promised to deliver new enrollments to the private Baptist school and to develop 50 new courses for HCU’s counseling program. The school also contracted with Clinton to help start, lead, and promote a global mental health center at HCU for an additional payment of $26,000 per month.

However, according to the lawsuit filed March 3 in Harris County District Court in Texas, Clinton and the AACC failed to deliver “on the expressed scope of the contracts.”

The contract expressed a goal of 133 new enrollments, but AACC delivered only one student, the suit says. Plus, the new courses were supposed to be written by the AACC, the suit adds, but instead AACC outsourced the courses to a third party.

Additionally, during the time of the agreement, Clinton was accused of plagiarism. In 2018, Grove City College psychology professor Warren Throckmorton accused Clinton of plagiarism in articles Clinton posted on Medium.

Clinton attributed the issues to the use of research assistants and graduate students, as well as a former employee’s poor standards, and third-party partners’ mistakes.

The info is here.

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD): Ethical considerations for psychologists

Koocher, G. P., Benjamin, G. A. H.,  et al. (2023). 

Professional Psychology: 

Research and Practice, 54(1), 2–13.

Abstract

Significant ethical challenges arise when mental health practitioners care for patients who seek to accelerate their own dying for rational medically valid reasons. Current and proposed laws provide for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in several U.S. jurisdictions, all of Canada, and several other nations. Differing provisions of these laws complicate their utility for some patients who seek aid in dying. Some extant laws include roles that mental health professionals might play in assessing patients’ competence or capacity to consent, mental illness, or other cognitive and behavioral factors. Practitioners who choose to accept roles in the MAiD process must consider and resolve a number of ethical challenges including potential conflicts between and among laws, ethical standards, third-party requests, personal values, and patients’ wishes. These include becoming aware of patients who may wish to act independently to end their lives when MAiD laws might otherwise exclude them. Examples from actual cases and the resultant discussion will form a basis for exploration of the ethical and legal complexities confronted when psychologists become engaged in the process either intentionally or incidentally. The lead article (Koocher) is not intended to comprehensively address MAiD in all of its complexity but rather to trigger a thoughtful discussion among the accompanying commentaries.

Impact Statement

Public Significance Statement—Current and proposed laws provide for medical assistance in dying (MAiD), sometimes described as physician-assisted suicide, in several U.S. jurisdictions, all of Canada, and in several other nations. Some such laws require psychological input, usually from either a psychologist or a psychiatrist. The limited scope of existing laws may result in some patients suffering with debilitating, painful, chronic, and fatal illnesses to consider suicide without medical assistance. With or without MAiD legislation, mental health professionals will come in contact with such patients and must consider the potentially complex ethical ramifications of caring for such patients. 

Conclusion

The culture of dying in America too often involves end-of-life care provided by strangers in institutional settings. Government and professional regulators often assume a parentalistic stance that effectively diminishes personal control of the dying process. Legalized MAiD offers an important option to those suffer from an irremediable medical condition and desire access to medical procedures to hasten death in a peaceful and dignified manner. Patients confronting chronic terminal illness have legitimate interests in controlling their own dying with quality care and support. Perhaps the most valuable and meaningful aspect of dying would include the presence of a community of care that demonstrates to the dying person that they will not feel abandoned (Campbell, 2019). Psychologists can play a significant role in making this happen. Ethical, professional, and legal controversies will abound as MAiD becomes more socially prevalent, and it will.

The info is here.

White Supremacist Networks Gab and 8Kun Are Training Their Own AI Now

David Gilbert

Vice News

Originally posted 22 FEB 23

Here are two excerpts:

Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now, and many are questioning the safety and morality of the AI systems released by some of the world’s biggest companies, including Open AI’s ChatGPT, Bing’s Sydney, and Google’s Bard. It was only a matter of time until the online spaces where extremists gather became interested in the technology.

Gab is a social network filled with homophobic, christian nationalist and white supremacist content. On Tuesday its CEO Andrew Torba announced the launch of its AI image generator, Gabby.

“At Gab, we have been experimenting with different AI systems that have popped up over the past year,” Torba wrote in a statement. “Every single one is skewed with a liberal/globalist/talmudic/satanic worldview. What if Gab AI Inc builds a Gab .ai (see what I did there?) that is based, has no ‘hate speech” filters and doesn’t obfuscate and distort historical and Biblical Truth?”

Gabby is currently live on Gab’s site and available to all members. Like Midjourney and DALL-E, it is an image generator that users interact with by sending it a prompt, and within seconds it will generate entirely new images based on that prompt.

Echoing his past criticisms of Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Torba claims that mainstream platforms are now “censoring” their AI systems to prevent people from discussing right-wing topics such as Christian nationalism. Torba’s AI, by contrast, will have ”the ability to speak freely without the constraints of liberal propaganda wrapped tightly around its neck.”

(cut)

8chan, which was founded to support the Gamergate movement, became the home of QAnon in early 2018 and was taken offline in August 2019 after the man who killed 20 people at an El Paso Walmart posted an anti-immigrant screed on the site.

Watkins has been speaking about his AI system for a few weeks now, but has yet to reveal how it will work or when it will launch. Watkins’ central selling point, like Torba’s, appears to be that his system will be “uncensored.”

“So that we can compete against these people that are putting up all of these false flags and illusions,” Watkins said on Feb. 13 when he was asked why he was creating an AI system.  “We are working on our own AI that is going to give you an uncensored look at the way things are going,” Watkins said in a video interview at the end of January.But based on some of the images the engine is churning out, Watkins still has a long way to go to perfect his AI image generator.

The info is here.

State medical board chair Dr. Brian Hyatt resigns, faces Medicaid fraud allegations

Ashley Savage

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Originally published 3 MAR 23

Dr. Brian Hyatt stepped down as chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board Thursday in a special meeting following "credible allegations of fraud," noted in a letter from the state's office of Medicaid inspector general.

Members of the board met remotely Thursday with only one item on the agenda: "Discussion of Arkansas State Board's leadership."

The motion to approve Hyatt's request to step down as chairman and out of an executive role on the board was approved unanimously.

Board members also decided that Dr. Rhys Branman will take over as the interim chairman until an election to fill the seat is held in April.

According to the board Thursday, the vacant seats for vice chair and chair of the board will be voted on separate ballots in the April elections.

The Medicaid letter states "red flags" were discovered in Hyatt's use of Medicaid claims and process of billing for medical services. In Arkansas, Medicaid fraud resulting in an overpayment over $2,500 is a felony.

"Dr. Hyatt is a clear outlier, and his claims are so high they skew the averages on certain codes for the entire Medicaid program in Arkansas," the affidavit states.

"The suspension is temporary and there's a right to appeal. I see only allegations and I don't see any actual charges and I haven't dealt with this a lot," said Branman.

Hyatt has 30 days to appeal his suspension from the Medicaid program.

Other information from the letter shows that Hyatt is alleged to have billed more Medicaid patients at the 99233 code than any other doctor billed for all of their Medicaid patients between January of 2019 and June 30, 2022.

The info is here.

A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline

Ryan Gabrielson & J. David McSwane

ProPublic.org

Originally published 25 FEB 23

Here is an excerpt:

Four years after its launch in 2014, the ministry enrolled members in almost every state and collected $300 million in annual revenue. Liberty used the money to pay at least $140 million to businesses owned and operated by Beers family members and friends over a seven-year period, the investigation found. The family then funneled the money through a network of shell companies to buy a private airline in Ohio, more than $20 million in real estate holdings and scores of other businesses, including a winery in Oregon that they turned into a marijuana farm. The family calls this collection of enterprises “the conglomerate.”

Beers has disguised his involvement in Liberty. He has never been listed as a Liberty executive or board member, and none of the family’s 50-plus companies or assets are in his name, records show.

From the family’s 700-acre ranch north of Canton, however, Beers acts as the shadow lord of a financial empire. It was built from money that people paid to Liberty, Beers’ top lieutenant confirmed to ProPublica. He plays in high-stakes poker tournaments around the country, travels to the Caribbean and leads big-game hunts at a vast hunting property in Canada, which the family partly owns. He is a man, said one former Liberty executive, with all the “trappings of large money coming his way.”

Despite abundant evidence of fraud, much of it detailed in court records and law enforcement files obtained by ProPublica, members of the Beers family have flourished in the health care industry and have never been prevented from running a nonprofit. Instead, the family’s long and lucrative history illustrates how health care sharing ministries thrive in a regulatory no man’s land where state insurance commissioners are barred from investigating, federal agencies turn a blind eye and law enforcement settles for paltry civil settlements.

The Ohio attorney general has twice investigated Beers for activities that financial crimes investigators said were probable felonies. Instead, the office settled for civil fines, most recently in 2021. It also required Liberty to sever its ties to some Beers family members.

The IRS has pursued individual family members for underreporting their income and failing to pay million-dollar tax bills. But there’s no indication that the IRS has investigated how several members of one family amassed such substantial wealth in just seven years by running a Christian nonprofit.

The agencies’ failure to move decisively against the Beers family has left Liberty members struggling with millions of dollars in medical debt. Many have joined a class-action lawsuit accusing the nonprofit of fraud.

After years of complaints, health care sharing ministries are now attracting more scrutiny. Sharity Ministries, once among the largest organizations in the industry, filed for bankruptcy and then dissolved in 2021 as regulators in multiple states investigated its failure to pay members’ bills. In January, the Justice Department seized the assets of a small Missouri-based ministry, Medical Cost Sharing Inc., and those of its founders, accusing them of fraud and self-enrichment. The founders have denied the government’s allegations.

The info is here.

Psychological Features of Extreme Political Ideologies

van Prooijen, J.-W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2019).

Current Directions in Psychological Science, 

28(2), 159–163. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418817755

Abstract

In this article, we examine psychological features of extreme political ideologies. In what ways are political left- and right-wing extremists similar to one another and different from moderates? We propose and review four interrelated propositions that explain adherence to extreme political ideologies from a psychological perspective. We argue that (a) psychological distress stimulates adopting an extreme ideological outlook; (b) extreme ideologies are characterized by a relatively simplistic, black-and-white perception of the social world; (c) because of such mental simplicity, political extremists are overconfident in their judgments; and (d) political extremists are less tolerant of different groups and opinions than political moderates. In closing, we discuss how these psychological features of political extremists increase the likelihood of conflict among groups in society.

Discussion

The four psychological features discussed here suggest that political extremism is fueled by feelings of distress and is reflected in cognitive simplicity, overconfidence, and intolerance. These insights are important to understanding how political polarization increases political instability and the likelihood of conflict between groups in society. Excessive confidence in the moral superiority of one’s own ideological beliefs impedes meaningful interaction and cooperation with different ideological groups and structures political decision making as a zero-sum game with winners and losers. Strong moral convictions consistently decrease people’s ability to compromise and even increase a willingness to use violence to reach ideological goals (Skitka, 2010). These processes are exacerbated by people’s tendency to selectively expose themselves to people and ideas that validate their own convictions. For instance, both information and misinformation selectively spread in online echo chambers of like-minded people (Del Vicario et al., 2016).

This article extends current insights in at least three ways. First, the features proposed here help to explain why throughout the past century not only extreme-right but also extreme-left movements (e.g., socialism, communism) have thrived in times of crisis (Midlarsky, 2011). Second, understanding the mind-set of extremists in all corners of the political spectrum is important in times of polarization and populist rhetoric. The current propositions provide insights into why traditionally moderate parties in the EU have suffered substantial electoral losses. In particular, the support for well-established parties on the moderate left (e.g., social democrats) and moderate right (e.g., Christian democrats) has dropped in recent years, whereas the support for left- and right-wing populist parties has increased (Krouwel, 2012). Third, the present arguments are based on evidence from multiple countries with different political systems (van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2017), which suggests that they apply to both two-party systems (e.g., the United States) and multiparty systems (e.g., many European countries).

The info is here.

Are there really so many moral emotions? Carving morality at its functional joints

Fitouchi L., André J., & Baumard N.

To appear in L. Al-Shawaf & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.)

The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract

In recent decades, a large body of work has highlighted the importance of emotional processes in moral cognition. Since then, a heterogeneous bundle of emotions as varied as anger, guilt, shame, contempt, empathy, gratitude, and disgust have been proposed to play an essential role in moral psychology.  However, the inclusion of these emotions in the moral domain often lacks a clear functional rationale, generating conflations between merely social and properly moral emotions. Here, we build on (i) evolutionary theories of morality as an adaptation for attracting others’ cooperative investments, and on (ii) specifications of the distinctive form and content of moral cognitive representations. On this basis, we argue that only indignation (“moral anger”) and guilt can be rigorously characterized as moral emotions, operating on distinctively moral representations. Indignation functions to reclaim benefits to which one is morally entitled, without exceeding the limits of justice. Guilt functions to motivate individuals to compensate their violations of moral contracts. By contrast, other proposed moral emotions (e.g. empathy, shame, disgust) appear only superficially associated with moral cognitive contents and adaptive challenges. Shame doesn’t track, by design, the respect of moral obligations, but rather social valuation, the two being not necessarily aligned. Empathy functions to motivate prosocial behavior between interdependent individuals, independently of, and sometimes even in contradiction with the prescriptions of moral intuitions. While disgust is often hypothesized to have acquired a moral role beyond its pathogen-avoidance function, we argue that both evolutionary rationales and psychological evidence for this claim remain inconclusive for now.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have suggested that a specification of the form and function of moral representations leads to a clearer picture of moral emotions. In particular, it enables a principled distinction between moral and non-moral emotions, based on the particular types of cognitive representations they process. Moral representations have a specific content: they represent a precise quantity of benefits that cooperative partners owe each other, a legitimate allocation of costs and benefits that ought to be, irrespective of whether it is achieved by people’s actual behaviors. Humans intuit that they have a duty not to betray their coalition, that innocent people do not deserve to be harmed, that their partner has a right not to be cheated on. Moral emotions can thus be defined as superordinate programs orchestrating cognition, physiology and behavior in accordance with the specific information encoded in these moral representations.    On this basis, indignation and guilt appear as prototypical moral emotions. Indignation (“moral anger”) is activated when one receives fewer benefits than one deserves, and recruits bargaining mechanisms to enforce the violated moral contract. Guilt, symmetrically, is sensitive to one’s failure to honor one’s obligations toward others, and motivates compensation to provide them the missing benefits they deserve. By contrast, often-proposed “moral” emotions – shame, empathy, disgust – seem not to function to compute distinctively moral representations of cooperative obligations, but serve other, non-moral functions – social status management, interdependence, and pathogen avoidance (Figure 2). 

A pdf is here.