Call it a conspiracy: How conspiracy belief predicts recognition of conspiracy theories.

While conspiracy theories are treated as irrational fringe beliefs in popular culture, conspiracy belief is quite common. Given the disconnect between stereotypes about conspiracy belief and its prevalence, I tested whether people have difficulty recognizing the conspiracy theories that they believe as conspiracy theories. Across two studies I demonstrate that people have considerable difficulty identifying conspiracy theories they believe as conspiracy theories, particularly when they do not take much time to consider whether their beliefs might be conspiracy theories. This is consistent with the notion that people experience "conspiracy blindness." People have trouble recognizing the conspiracy theories they believe as conspiracy theories because they do not take the time to consider whether their beliefs might be conspiracy theories. In Study 2, I demonstrate that people can overcome their conspiracy blindness and recognize the conspiracy theories they believe as conspiracy theories when they are given a definition for "conspiracy theory" and asked to consider their answer. This suggests that people are typically ignorant of their own conspiracy beliefs, but capable of recognizing them when given the tools and motivation to do so. However, recognizing their beliefs as conspiracy theories does not reduce their adherence to those beliefs.

How Ambient Cues Facilitate Political Segregation.

People increasingly self-segregate into politically homogeneous communities. How they do this remains unclear. We propose that people use ambient cues correlated with political values to infer whether they would like to live in those communities. We test this hypothesis in five studies. In Studies 1 (n = 3,543) and 2 (n = 5,609), participants rated community cues; liberals and conservatives' preferences differed. In Studies 3a (n = 1,643) and 3b (n = 1,840), participants read about communities with liberal or conservative cues. Even without explicit information about the communities' politics, participants preferred communities with politically congenial cues. In Study 4 (n = 282), participants preferred politically congenial communities and wanted to leave politically uncongenial communities. In Study 5 (n = 370), people selectively navigated their communities in a politically congenial way. These studies suggest that peoples' perceptions of communities can be shaped by subtle, not necessarily political, cues that may facilitate growing political segregation.

The state of social and personality science: Rotten to the core, not so bad, getting better, or getting worse?

The scientific quality of social and personality psychology has been debated at great length in recent years. Despite research on the prevalence of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) and the replicability of particular findings, the impact of the current discussion on research practices is unknown. The current studies examine whether and how practices have changed, if at all, over the last 10 years. In Study 1, we surveyed 1,166 social and personality psychologists about how the current debate has affected their perceptions of their own and the field's research practices. In Study 2, we coded the research practices and critical test statistics from social and personality psychology articles published in 2003-2004 and 2013-2014. Together, these studies suggest that (a) perceptions of the current state of the field are more pessimistic than optimistic; (b) the discussion has increased researchers' intentions to avoid QRPs and adopt proposed best practices, (c) the estimated replicability of research published in 2003-2004 may not be as bad as many feared, and (d) research published in 2013-2014 shows some improvement over research published in 2003-2004, a result that suggests the field is evolving in a positive direction. (PsycINFO Database Record