While conspiracy beliefs are often linked to democratic backsliding, their role in mobilizing or attenuating political engagement remains unclear. This study investigates the social realities of individuals who adhere to conspiracy beliefs, focusing on how their tendencies toward distinction and distrust associate with conspiracy beliefs to shape both normative and non-normative political engagement. A total of 712 participants completed self-report measures assessing their conspiracy beliefs (adherence to conspiracy theories, conspiracy mentality), tendencies for distinction (need for uniqueness, psychological reactance, collective narcissism), distrust (Dark Triad, paranoia, propensity to trust, institutional trust), and levels of normative and non-normative political engagement. Our findings indicate that the conspiracy beliefs, along with tendencies for distinction and distrust, provide only limited explanatory power for both normative and non-normative political engagement. Crucially, conspiracy beliefs exhibit a non-linear relationship with political engagement, underscoring the need for a more refined understanding of how conspiracy beliefs shape political behavior. Contrary to concerns about its radicalizing potential, our results suggest that conspiracy beliefs, despite being weaponized by populist politicians, do not necessarily translate into immediate or unlawful political action. Thus, our study challenges alarmist narratives and highlights the complexity of the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and political engagement.

The current preregistered study experimentally and longitudinally tested two interventions targeting psychological barriers to pro-environmental behavior (PEB). A total of 1,802 Slovak adults (53.6% women) were randomly assigned to a control condition, awareness-empowerment intervention, or a social norms intervention. They reported psychological barriers, PEB intentions, and environmental self-efficacy. One month later, 1,308 participants (51.6% women) completed follow-up measures, including past PEB engagement, perceived psychological barriers and perceptions of social and personal environmental norms. Results showed that the awareness-empowerment intervention significantly reduced perceived barriers but did not directly affect PEB intentions (wave 1) or engagement (wave 2). The social norms intervention had no effect on barriers or PEB but increased perceptions of environmental norms. Both interventions increased environmental self-efficacy, reinforcing the idea that psychological barriers are crucial obstacles to PEB. These findings highlight the need for comprehensive approaches, as reducing barriers alone may not be sufficient to drive meaningful behavioral change.

Societal gender role norms play a crucial role in shaping men's and women's career aspirations. However, prior research documenting this key role of gendered norms has primarily focused on heterosexual women and men in the global North-West. Previous studies documenting differences in career interests by sexual orientation suggest that gender role norms might affect lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) women and men less strongly than heterosexuals. This large-scale, preregistered study sought to document group differences in norm perceptions, career interests and their relationship. To this end, 18,351 university students (n = 3318 LGB, n = 15,033 heterosexual) from 46 countries completed a self-report survey about their gender, sexual orientation, perceptions of societal gender role norms, as well as their personal gender role beliefs and career interests. Analyses revealed that, compared to heterosexual individuals, LGB individuals reported significantly less stereotypical career interests and endorsed less traditional gender role beliefs about careers. As predicted, perceptions of societal gender role norms predicted career interests for heterosexual but not for LGB participants. Moreover, LGB participants showed a weaker relationship between societal gender role norms and own gender role beliefs than straight participants did. Interestingly, we found no evidence that this effect was conditional on the level of LGBT acceptance in different countries sampled. We discuss implications of this new evidence for understanding occupational gender segregation from an intersectional perspective.

In two cross-sectional and one longitudinal study conducted in Slovakia and Czechia (total N = 2339, 50,7% women; aged between 18 and 89 years), we tested whether gender ideology narratives are linked with conspiratorial thinking - operationalised as either specific conspiracy beliefs or conspiracy mentality - and pinpointed their most pronounced correlates as political ideologies and institutional distrust. The cross-sectional results show that support for gender ideology narratives is associated with conspiratorial thinking and, albeit unrelated to sociodemographic variables, shows systematic associations with institutional distrust and political stances as expressed by either collective narcissism or conservative political orientation. The preregistered Study 3 fine-tunes the findings by revealing some bidirectional temporal patterns at the within-participants level only with institutional distrust. The results point to a mutually reinforcing nexus between the gender ideology narratives and distrust thereby fostering the understanding of the narratives as embedded within a wider context of power challenging conspiracy theories. Finally, the paper offers insights into how–by exploiting and instilling the sense of distrust–gender ideology narratives can be instrumentalised to tilt political preferences towards anti-establishment, non-mainstream parties that present themselves as beacons of traditional values.

ABSTRACT Apart from their well‐established associations with individual characteristics, experiences of existential threats and either objective or perceived structural circumstances in which people live, conspiracy beliefs are now being increasingly recognised as a reflection of group‐related motivations, identity‐protective motives, prejudice and stereotypes. As conspiracy beliefs and intergroup attitudes share definitional characteristics as well as extensive networks of social, psychological and contextual correlates, their content and function allow us to see them as an intergroup phenomenon. To provide a more nuanced understanding of conspiracy beliefs, we situate them within the tripartite model of intergroup attitudes as an additional, metacognitive dimension. Drawing from their metacognitive character as often biased insights into outgroups’ intentions and actions, and expanding the socio‐functional model of prejudice, we propose an operational research roadmap that specifies when and for which conspiracy beliefs the intergroup‐based approach is likely to be effective.

The paper reports longitudinal analyses examining the extent to which institutional trust mediates the relationship between individuals' sense of precarity and their adherence to conspiracy beliefs. Across three waves, 925 participants (50.2% female) between the ages of 18 and 85 (M = 49.53; SD = 15.81) reported subjective appraisals of their financial situation (precarity), trust in institutions and adherence to conspiracy beliefs. The current study extends the previous analyses by including three‐wave longitudinal data. The preregistered autoregressive cross‐lagged panel model supports the notion that a sense of precarity follows adherence to conspiracy beliefs rather than preceding them, while institutional (dis)trust and conspiracy beliefs show a bidirectional pattern. However, the random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel model does not corroborate this, suggesting that the effects may be driven by stable between‐person differences rather than actual within‐person changes. Additionally, the latter model reveals two separate temporal patterns linking conspiracy beliefs with either the sense of precarity or institutional trust, opening the possibility that our results were driven by two distinct underlying mechanisms. The paper discusses the importance of longitudinal studies for a more accurate understanding of social‐psychological realities in which conspiracy beliefs and suspicions of institutions may flourish.

With this brief contribution, we would like to respond to a recently published paper by Marques et al. (2026) who conclude that their findings falsify the socio-functional model of conspiracy beliefs (Adam-Troian et al., 2023). However, their main analysis focuses on precarity as a predictor, without longitudinally testing the model’s proposed mediator—institutional distrust. This is a critical oversight, as institutional trust is a constitutional element of the socio-functional model and plays a central role in the relationship between precarity and conspiracy belief, as is demonstrated in our own longitudinal study (Adamus et al., 2026), published concurrently in the same issue of BJSP, (https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.70036. Unfortunately, Marques et al. (2026) do not refer to or acknowledge our paper, likely due to the simultaneous publication timing. This oversight is significant, as our findings directly address the limitations of their conclusions. Our response clarifies that: 1) Marques et al.’s (2026) null findings regarding precarity do not invalidate the socio-functional model, as they did not test its full architecture, including the critical mediator of institutional distrust. 2) Our data reveal a bidirectional relationship between institutional distrust and conspiracy beliefs, a dynamic absent from their analysis but essential to the model’s explanatory power. 3) These insights have direct implications for interventions, suggesting that efforts to mitigate conspiracy beliefs should focus on restoring institutional trust rather than solely addressing economic precarity.

This study investigates to what extent the 'green gap,' i.e., the disconnection between environmental values and pro-environmental behaviour, can be explained by various perceived psychological barriers. A large representative sample of Slovak participants (N = 1233) filled in several measures of environmental value orientation, perceived psychological barriers and self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. The parallel mediation models revealed that environmental value orientation predicts engagement in pro-environmental behaviour, and this relationship is partially mediated by certain psychological barriers, yet the role of the specific barriers varied substantially with different types of behaviour. Overall, however, the explained variance in pro-environmental behaviour was relatively modest (up to 31%), suggesting the presence of other important social, psychological, and structural variables as predictors in this regard. Our findings emphasize the intricate role of psychological barriers and demographic factors in shaping environmental actions. Understanding these complexities can help design targeted interventions to bridge the 'green gap' effectively.

The paper investigates gender biases and differential treatment of women and men in the business start-up phase. A sample of 498 entrepreneurs from Slovakia participated in an online experiment and evaluated three fictitious business plans in terms of the applicants’ competence, likeability, and business ability. Evaluators also indicated the survival chances of each planned business, the amount they would be willing to invest in each of the start-ups, and selected the most promising applicant. The start-ups were positioned in three different sectors—cosmetics production, services provision, and software development—where men’s and women’s chances of success may be viewed differently. Following Goldberg’s paradigm, half of the evaluators received business plans presented as written by female and half by male applicants; otherwise the plans were identical. Although our results show that, in general, female applicants are assessed similarly to male applicants, masculine evaluators assess women’s business plans and their potential in entrepreneurship more critically. Finally, the study shows that caution is advised when recommending to increase the number of female evaluators of business plans at various stages of the evaluation process. If women who become involved in entrepreneurship are excessively masculine and masculinity is associated with a less favourable evaluation of potential female entrepreneurs, such policies could backfire against women, putting them in a more disadvantaged position.

The study addresses limitations of the 4-Component Thinking Styles Questionnaire (4-CTSQ) measuring actively open-minded thinking (AOT), close-minded thinking (CMT), preference for effortful thinking (PET), and preference for intuitive thinking (PIT). The aim was to validate the 4-CTSQ in a non-U.S./Canadian population, to explore the nomological networks of thinking styles, and to test whether the 4-CTSQ predicts unfounded beliefs over and beyond analytic thinking. The secondary aim was to address the issue of acquiescence linked with the one-directional wording of the items and to develop a balanced version of the 4-CTSQ (4-CTSQ-B). In two studies (N1 = 1,233, N2 = 712), 4-factor models had an acceptable model fit, and both the 4-CTSQ and the 4-CTSQ-B predicted unfounded beliefs. Conceptual and psychometric issues with AOT and CMT were identified and possible solutions were discussed. The 4-CTSQ, and somewhat more so the 4-CTSQ-B, appear to be good scales sensitive to distinct thinking styles.

Despite the growing demand for care economy employees (e.g., nurses, teachers, and social workers), men remain underrepresented in these careers. While economically developed countries support more equal rights for women and men, their labor markets are highly gender segregated (Charles, 1992, 2003). We conducted a focused investigation of this paradoxical pattern in the care economy, testing whether gender gaps in care economy career interest are larger in more economically developed countries and, if so, what psychological and cultural factors underlie these patterns. We examined these questions with labor data from 70 countries (Study 1) and a preregistered study of career interests among 19,240 university students from 49 countries (Study 2). Although more economically developed countries tend to promote greater gender equality, our results reveal that the gender gap in care economy representation (Study 1) and interest (Study 2) is especially large in such countries. We did not observe parallel patterns for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics representation or interest. Results from Study 2 supported an integrated theoretical account of this development paradox in care economy interest: Cross-national variation in the gender gap in care economy interest was predicted by country-level variation in economic development and individualism/collectivism but not by self-expression values or country-level gender equality, countering prior (controversial) claims of a gender equality paradox. Furthermore, larger gender gaps in communal values (e.g., men's lower valuing of helping and caring for others) were a proximal predictor of larger gender gaps in care economy interest in highly economically developed countries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

The paper reports findings of a preregistered longitudinal replication examining the extent to which institutional trust mediates the relationship between individuals’ sense of precarity and their adherence to conspiracy beliefs. Across three waves, 925 participants (50.2% female) between the age of 18 and 85 (M = 49.53; SD = 15.81) reported subjective appraisals of their financial situation (precarity), trust in eight institutions (e.g., Slovak government and president, European Union), and adherence to conspiracy beliefs. The results point to a self-enhancing nature of the relationship between the variables which show to be intrinsically intertwined and, with time, reinforce their aversive effects on one another. Unlike cross-sectional studies replicated here, the current results support the view that the sense of precarity is an outcome of adherence to conspiracy beliefs rather than its cause, while institutional (dis)trust and conspiracy beliefs show a consistently bidirectional pattern jointly contributing to the formation of conspicious (conspiracist + suspicious) mindset. As a consequence, conspiracy theorists may fall into a trap of conspiracy beliefs, suspicions, and pessimistic appraisal of their living (economic and institutional) circumstances. The paper discusses theoretical and practical consequences of the bidirectionality as the findings may substantially contribute to our understanding of conspiracy beliefs and consideration of potential interventions aimed at mitigating their real-life ramifications.

The primary aim of the current study was to investigate whether moral disengagement and associated negative emotions (guilt, shame and anxiety) could explain the green gap, i.e. the disparity between environmental values or climate concerns and pro-environmental behavior. The secondary aim was to test potential interventions that could reduce the tendency to morally disengage from climate change and, consequently, enhance pro-environmental behavior. First, in a large cross-sectional study (N1 = 1233), we investigated moral disengagement and negative climate emotions as serial mediators in the relationship between climate concerns and pro-environmental behavior (Study 1). Then, we replicated these findings in a two-wave longitudinal study (N2 = 1308) and attempted to reduce moral disengagement with either an awareness-empowerment or social norms intervention (Study 2). The results corroborated our mediation model where climate concerns predicted pro-environmental behavior and this was partially mediated by lower moral disengagement and higher experienced negative emotions. Also, we found awareness-empowerment intervention to be effective in reducing moral disengagement and, indirectly, motivating pro-environmental behavior. The study thus provides persuasive evidence that moral disengagement contributes to the green gap and that interventions aimed at its reduction might constitute a fruitful way of motivating effortful but impactful pro-environmental behavior.

Previous research suggests that the conditions of poverty can create cycles in which economic strain and certain financial behaviours reinforce each other over time. According to the scarcity theory, this pattern arises because scarcity depletes cognitive resources and narrows individuals’ attention to poverty-related concerns. The present study introduces a third, previously unexplored mechanism, positing that subjective scarcity indirectly affects financial behaviour by impairing analytic thinking. A representative sample of 712 participants completed a self-report survey, providing information about appraisal of their current financial situation (subjective scarcity), completing a test on analytic thinking, and responding to scales measuring financial management behaviour and impulsive self-gifting financial behaviour. Whilst the results offer limited support for the proposed mechanism, subjective scarcity was found to be directly associated with diminished analytic thinking and lower engagement in both financial management and self-gifting behaviour. These findings suggest that experiencing scarcity is not necessarily linked to impulsive financial behaviour that exacerbates financial strain, but rather to a lower tendency to pursue adaptive financial actions that might help relieve it.

Climate change is among the most pressing challenges humanity is currently facing. Despite the large majority of people globally acknowledging this as a fact, many neglect or actively seek to avoid information about it. The present contribution reviews the psychological motivations that may underlie the choice to remain uninformed, delves into associated emotional, cognitive, and social-psychological mechanisms, and offers systematic methodological solutions applicable to scholarly research on deliberate ignorance in the environmental domain. The paper thus lays the foundations for a comprehensive understanding and systematisation of the diverse functions that deliberate ignorance may have in the context of climate change and proposes a research agenda to empirically test its presence, frequency, and long-term consequences.

In our study, participants (N = 672) were exposed to neutral, conspiracy or anti-conspiracy information about the purported link between COVID-19 vaccination among the Alaskan Natives and their opposition towards the US government's oil drilling projects. Afterward, they rated their agreement with conspiracy explanations of the presented information and filled in measures of sociopolitical behavioural intentions, institutional trust and powerlessness. We also controlled for differences in Dark Tetrad, paranoia, conspiracy mentality and distress. We found no difference in conspiracy explanations between neutral and conspiracy conditions, suggesting that the topic of COVID-19 vaccines was highly saturated with conspiracy theories. Importantly, the anti-conspiracy intervention led to decreased conspiracy explanations irrespective of an individual's conspiracy mentality. Although conspiracy explanations were correlated with reported sociopolitical behaviour and institutional distrust, we found no differences between the groups in these variables, highlighting the importance of further research on the effectiveness of interventions in this regard.

The article investigates whether and how adherence to conspiracy beliefs (CBs) about COVID-19 pandemic might be associated with (and cause) economic anxiety over various cultural settings and time. First, we examined the extent to which CBs predicted economic anxiety using the European Social Survey data, round 10, from 17 countries (Study 1). Second, using data from a balanced (in terms of age, gender, education, and region) Slovak sample, we employed a cross-lagged panel analysis to determine the direction of the association between adherence to CBs and economic anxiety (Study 2). Study 1 revealed that adherence to CBs was significantly associated with higher levels of economic anxiety across cultural contexts. Study 2 compellingly showed that adherence to CBs increased the sense of economic anxiety over time, whereas the reverse causal path from economic anxiety to CBs was consistently nonsignificant. This work provides evidence that adherence to CBs may be increasingly associated with adverse subjective appraisals of economic realities. We discuss how our results can contribute to the understanding that curbing adherence to CBs could also alleviate the sense of economic anxiety. Finally, we recommend a research agenda to better understand the psychological boundary mechanisms accounting for these effects.

The study experimentally tested an intervention that debunks epistemically suspect beliefs about vaccines. After answering questions about pre-existing epistemically suspect beliefs (irrational health beliefs and conspiracy mentality), 565 participants were randomly assigned into one of three conditions and exposed either to neutral information about domestic animals, salient epistemically suspect content about vaccination or an intervention that debunks epistemically suspect beliefs about vaccination. Afterwards, the participants answered questions about vaccination-related conspiracy narratives (manipulation check), vaccination attitudes, intentions to vaccinate against HPV, support for an HPV vaccination programme and intentions to seek health guidance. Although the intervention demonstrated the potential to inhibit the endorsement of conspiracy narratives, we found no differences in the other outcome variables. Nevertheless, across the conditions, pre-existing epistemically suspect beliefs were associated with less favourable attitudes towards vaccination, lower intentions to vaccinate against HPV, less support for the vaccination programme and lower intentions to seek health guidance. The results indicate that debunking may be futile in curbing long-term negative impacts associated with epistemically suspect beliefs, and they contribute to the debate about assessing the effectiveness of interventions related to highly controversial topics such as vaccination. The study enhances understanding of persistent adverse impacts that epistemically suspect beliefs may have on public health outcomes.

In the present work, we addressed the relationship between parental leave policies and social norms. Using a pre-registered, cross-national approach, we examined the relationship between parental leave policies and the perception of social norms for the gender division of childcare. In this study, 19,259 students (11,924 women) from 48 countries indicated the degree to which they believe childcare is (descriptive norm) and should be (prescriptive norm) equally divided among mothers and fathers. Policies were primarily operationalized as the existence of parental leave options in the respective country. The descriptive and prescriptive norms of equal division of childcare were stronger when parental leave was available in a country - also when controlling for potential confounding variables. Moreover, analyses of time since policy change suggested that policy change may initially affect prescriptive norms and then descriptive norms at a later point. However, due to the cross-sectional nature of the data, drawing causal inferences is difficult.