The article explores how a strong need to impose structure, patterns, and clear rules can influence people to endorse conspiracy theories, including findings from studies with autistic traits and systemizing tendencies. It explains that seeking orderly explanations may make conspiratorial narratives feel more coherent than ambiguous facts.

This topic is of interest to psychology readers because it highlights how cognitive styles and the desire for predictability shape belief formation, extending beyond traditional notions of analytical ability alone.

Article Title: The psychological drive for structure predicts conspiracy thinking

Link to PsyPost Article: https://www.psypost dot org/the-psychological-drive-for-structure-predicts-conspiracy-thinking/

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#conspiracytheories #cognition #systemizing #autism #beliefformation

Bad beliefs: why they happen to highly intelligent, vigilant, devious, self-deceiving, coalitional apes (a response to Levy's Bad Beliefs)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2023.2186844

#reasoning #CriticalThinking #BeliefFormation

Bad beliefs: why they happen to highly intelligent, vigilant, devious, self-deceiving, coalitional apes

Neil Levy argues that the importance of acquiring cultural knowledge in our evolutionary past selected for conformist and deferential social learning, and that contemporary bad beliefs – roughly, p...

Taylor & Francis

Hello everyone, this is the new account of the Social Neuroscience Lab at Lübeck University in the North of Germany.
We are located at the Department of Psychiatry and our focus is on basic social and affective neuroscience research with the potential to translate the findings into a clinical context.

Our main topics are: #ExperimentalNeuroscience #ComputationalPsychiatry #SocialLearning #AffectedBeliefs #BeliefFormation #SocialEmotions #SocialReward #SubjectiveControl #Confidence