We examined the relations between antisemitism and general conspiracy belief and belief in Jewish conspiracy stereotypes in those who strongly endorse conspiracy theories (n = 655) and those who do not (n = 855). Belief in Jewish conspiracy stereotypes accounted for 26% (non-conspiracy theorists) to 43% (conspiracy theorists) of the variance in antisemitism above-and-beyond general conspiracy belief. In contrast, general conspiracy belief accounted for <1% of the variance in antisemitism above-and-beyond belief in Jewish conspiracy stereotypes across samples. Finally, the relations between Jewish conspiracy stereotypes and antisemitism were strengthened by threat sensitivity and emotional distress, especially in conspiracy theorists.

This study examines how mental models of the Human-Nature Relationship (HNR) predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions directly and mediated through anthropocentric and biocentric environmental attitudes. We found that behavioral intentions relevant to environmental protection were directly predicted by two aspects of HNR: human superiority beliefs (negatively) and perceived human impact on nature (positively). Protection intentions were also indirectly predicted by these variables, as well as perceived impact of nature on humans (positively) via their association with biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.040). In contrast, no component of HNR directly predicted behavioral intentions relevant to environmental investment, although all three showed the same pattern of indirect association via biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.036). Results suggest that mental models of the human-nature relationship provide a cognitive foundation for environmental behavioral intentions both directly and through their association with environmental attitudes. These findings have implications for pro-environmental interventions that deal with conceptual and attitudinal change.

News articles include personal interest stories to catch the reader’s attention and emphasize the importance of topics. We explored whether the content inherent in such stories influences people’s memory for basic statistics presented in the same article. Participants read novel articles about a low base-rate event, Long COVID, described from the perspective of a specific sufferer, a medical professional, or without a specific narrator. On a surprise recall test, all groups recalled the base rate as higher than stated despite showing accurate recognition for the same statistic. No memory differences were observed across the different versions of the article. Given that people are more likely to encounter situations in which they are trying to recall (vs. recognize) base rates, we conclude that people may generally overestimate the frequency of rare events. Interestingly, the presence of a personal narrative in the article did not influence people’s tendency to overestimate base-rates.

Recent research shows that self-reference boosts the misinformation effect, but its underlying mechanism remains unknown. We propose that self-referential memory reactivation leads to a more active, unstable, and editable state to incorporate misinformation. Using EEG, we introduced a memory reactivation phase before misinformation exposure to examine the misinformation effect when participants encoded events related to oneself versus others. Behaviorally, self-referential memory exhibited higher acceptance of misinformation. Event-related potentials revealed that both self-referential events and falsely-remembered events induced a larger parietal P200 effect during memory reactivation, suggesting that self-referential memory was more strongly reactivated. Furthermore, self-referential memory also led to a larger late positive component (LPC), indicating stronger recollection. Finally, for self-referential events, misinformation caused greater conflict monitoring, which was indexed by larger late posterior negativity (LPN) between 10-15 Hz. Our study implies that self-referential memory is more susceptible to misinformation via affecting memory reactivation and conflict monitoring.