Parliamentary candidates and their campaign messages at the 2019 General Election

The 2019 General Election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to how parties and their leaders campaigned in the run up to the polling day. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to individual candidates by exploring the nature of local campaign communications. We find that candidates make little effort to promote their personal traits, with personalisation of leaflets remaining largely limited to offering visual cues in the shape of candidate photos. We also find that while negative campaign messages are common, they tend to relate to an opposing party more generally. Similarly, we find that highlighting the tactical situation in the constituency remains a rare practice. Our findings suggest that there is still considerable room for candidates to tailor their campaign materials to their personal attributes and the local electoral context.

Partisanship overcomes framing in shaping solar geoengineering perceptions: Evidence from a conjoint experiment

The discourse on solar geoengineering (SG) is evolving, yet public perceptions of SG as a climate change solution remain underexplored, especially in the polarized US political landscape. We examine the relative importance of different SG narratives-framed as complementary, substitutive, or posing a moral hazard-and partisan information sources in shaping public attitudes. Using a conjoint experiment with 2123 American voters, we find that partisan alignment with the information source plays a decisive role in shaping trust in the messenger and support for SG, overshadowing any impact of message framing. Both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to trust the messenger and support SG when the information comes from a copartisan source. However, despite these strong partisan influences, policy preferences remain consistent with ideological baselines. These findings highlight the importance of partisanship in shaping perceptions of emerging climate technologies such as SG, even in contexts of low public awareness, and underscore the challenges of depolarizing public discourse on climate change solutions.

Parental income moderates the influence of genetic dispositions on political interest in adolescents

The political involvement of adolescents is characterized by a substantial socioeconomic gradient already at a young age with enduring effects into adulthood. This study investigates whether high parental income creates an enhancing environment that increases the influence of genetic dispositions on political interest using the German TwinLife study (2014-2020, age 10-29, n = 6,174, 54% female, 19% migration background). While 30-40% of the total variance in political interest of twin adolescents (age 10-18) can be attributed to genetic influences, a gene-environment interaction model shows that this share is much lower among poor compared to rich families. Family fixed-effects models among early adults further show no significant effect of income differences on political interest after controlling for family background and genetic influences. This study suggests that the income gap in political participation cannot be fully understood without accounting for life cycle processes and genetic background.

Distinguishing Underlying, Inferred, and Expressed Preferences, Attitudes, and Beliefs: An Absence of (Mental) Flatness?

People's choices of food and drink, the attitudes they express, and the beliefs that they state are influenced by their political and other identities. At the same time, people's everyday choices depend on the context of available options in ways that are difficult to explain in terms of the choosers' preferences and beliefs. Such phenomena provoke various questions. Do partisans or conspiracy theorists really believe what they are saying? Given the systematic inconsistency of their choices, in what sense do consumers prefer the items they purchase? More generally, how "flat" is the mind-do we come to decision-making and choice with pre-existing preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, or are our explanations for our behavior mere post-hoc narratives? Here, we argue that several apparently disparate difficulties are rooted in a failure to separate psychologically different types of preferences, attitudes, and beliefs. We distinguish between underlying, inferred, and expressed preferences. These preferences may be expressed in different coordinate spaces and hence support different types of explanatory generalizations. Choices that appear inconsistent according to one type of preference can appear consistent according to another, and whether we can say that a person "really" prefers something depends on which type of preference we mean. We extend the tripartite classification to the case of attitudes and beliefs, and suggest that attributions of attitudes and beliefs may also be ambiguous. We conclude that not all of the mental states and representations that govern our behavior are context-dependent and constructed, although many are.

What Drives Opposition to Social Rights for Immigrants? Clarifying the Role of Psychological Predispositions

Why do people oppose granting social rights to immigrants? Previous research indicates that psychological predispositions such as authoritarianism or ethnocentrism are strong drivers, but our understanding of their roles is still incomplete. This is in part because studies have not yet systematically tested different psychological variables against other, but also in part because some other potentially important predispositions such as implicit bias and social dominance orientation have so far been overlooked. We address this gap using original data from survey experiments conducted in six countries (Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States). We find consistent effects of ethnocentrism and social dominance orientation, a less robust effect of authoritarianism and no effect of implicit bias. In substantive terms, we find that a belief in ethnocentric stereotypes and a desire for dominance are the central factors driving opposition to immigrants' social rights.

Pandemic Times and Health Care Exclusion: Attitudes toward Health Care Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants

CONTEXT

Most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States are excluded from government health care programs. Yet, health care inequities pose significant dangers to all members of society during a pandemic. This project explores to what extent undocumented immigrants, in the context of a pandemic, can be seen as deserving of access to government health care programs.

METHODS

The project's first survey experiment explores whether work ethic can affect perceptions of undocumented immigrants as deserving of government health care programs. The second survey experiment tests to what extent appeals to fairness and self-interest, during a pandemic, shape health care deservingness attitudes.

FINDINGS

The results show that respondents view undocumented immigrants as less deserving of health care than citizens, even when undocumented immigrants have a solid work history. The second survey experiment, however, shows that appeals to fairness and self-interest trigger substantial increases in support for undocumented immigrants among both Republicans and Democrats.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that while undocumented immigrants are seen as less deserving of access, appeals to fairness and self-interest can trigger increased support.

Differential brain activations between Democrats and Republicans when considering food purchases

We measured brain activity using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm and conducted a whole-brain analysis while healthy adult Democrats and Republicans made non-hypothetical food choices. While the food purchase decisions were not significantly different, we found that brain activation during decision-making differs according to the participant's party affiliation. Models of partisanship based on left insula, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, superior frontal gyrus, or premotor/supplementary motor area activations achieve better than expected accuracy. Understanding the differential function of neural systems that lead to indistinguishable choices may provide leverage in explaining the broader mechanisms of partisanship.

Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined

A key debate in the psychology of ideology is whether leftists and rightists are psychologically similar or different. A long-standing view holds that left-wing and right-wing people are meaningfully different from one another across a whole host of basic personality and cognitive features. Scholars have recently pushed back, suggesting that left-wing and right-wing people are more psychologically similar than distinct. We review evidence regarding the psychological profiles of left-wing and right-wing people across a wide variety of domains, including their dispositions (values, personality, cognitive rigidity, threat-sensitivity, and authoritarianism), information processing (motivated reasoning and susceptibility to misinformation), and their interpersonal perceptions and behaviors (empathy, prejudice, stereotyping, and violence). Our review paints a nuanced picture: People across the ideological divide are much more similar than scholars sometimes appreciate. And yet, they differ-to varying degrees-in their personality, values, and (perhaps most importantly) in the groups and causes they prioritize, with important implications for downstream attitudes and behavior in the world.

Caregiver Perceptions of Social Communication and Interaction: Development and Validation of the SCIPS

Social communication and interaction (SC/I) skill quality may be influenced by cultural values, norms, and expectations. Because difficulties in SC/I is a core criterion for identifying autism and is a frequent construct of interest in autism research, a measure designed to capture cross-cultural differences in the perspectives of SC/I skills is warranted. To address this need we developed and validated the Social Communication and Interaction Perceptions Scale (SCIPS), a caregiver report measure for children ages 6-18 years, that measures both frequency and perceived importance of various SC/I skills. Results from 401 diverse caregiver participants showed that for both domains (i.e., Frequency and Importance) the SCIPS has good reliability (α = 0.88-0.95) and two factors that examine basic and advanced aspects of SC/I skills. Findings support the use of the SCIPS as a measure of caregiver perspectives of SC/I skills in clinical and research contexts.

Social Psychological Perspectives on Political Polarization: Insights and Implications for Climate Change

Political polarization is a barrier to enacting policy solutions to global issues. Social psychology has a rich history of studying polarization, and there is an important opportunity to define and refine its contributions to the present political realities. We do so in the context of one of the most pressing modern issues: climate change. We synthesize the literature on political polarization and its applications to climate change, and we propose lines of further research and intervention design. We focus on polarization in the United States, examining other countries when literature was available. The polarization literature emphasizes two types of mechanisms of political polarization: (1) individual-level psychological processes related to political ideology and (2) group-level psychological processes related to partisan identification. Interventions that address group-level processes can be more effective than those that address individual-level processes. Accordingly, we emphasize the promise of interventions leveraging superordinate identities, correcting misperceived norms, and having trusted leaders communicate about climate change. Behavioral interventions like these that are grounded in scientific research are one of our most promising tools to achieve the behavioral wedge that we need to address climate change and to make progress on other policy issues.

The Resilience of Attitude Toward Vaccination: Web-Based Randomized Controlled Trial on the Processing of Misinformation

BACKGROUND

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was already recognized that internet-based misinformation and disinformation could influence individuals to refuse or delay vaccination for themselves, their families, or their children. Reinformation, which refers to hyperpartisan and ideologically biased content, can propagate polarizing messages on vaccines, thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy even if it is not outright disinformation.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of reinformation on vaccine hesitancy. Specifically, the goal was to investigate how misinformation presented in the style and layout of a news article could influence the perceived tentativeness (credibility) of COVID-19 vaccine information and confidence in COVID-19 vaccination.

METHODS

We conducted a web-based randomized controlled trial by recruiting English-speaking Canadians aged 18 years and older from across Canada through the Qualtrics (Silver Lake) paid opt-in panel system. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 distinct versions of a news article on COVID-19 vaccines, each featuring variations in writing style and presentation layout. After reading the news article, participants self-assessed the tentativeness of the information provided, their confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, and their attitude toward vaccination in general.

RESULTS

The survey included 537 participants, with 12 excluded for not meeting the task completion time. The final sample comprised 525 participants distributed about equally across the 4 news article versions. Chi-square analyses revealed a statistically significant association between general attitude toward vaccination and the perceived tentativeness of the information about COVID-19 vaccines included in the news article (χ21=37.8, P<.001). The effect size was small to moderate, with Cramer V=0.27. An interaction was found between vaccine attitude and writing style (χ21=6.2, P=.01), with a small effect size, Cramer V=0.11. In addition, a Pearson correlation revealed a significant moderate to strong correlation between perceived tentativeness and confidence in COVID-19 vaccination, r(523)=0.48, P<.001. The coefficient of determination (r2) was 0.23, indicating that 23% of the variance in perceived tentativeness was explained by confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. In comparing participants exposed to a journalistic-style news article with those exposed to an ideologically biased article, Cohen d was calculated to be 0.38, indicating a small to medium effect size for the difference in the perceived tentativeness between these groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Exposure to a news article conveying misinformation may not be sufficient to change an individual's level of vaccine hesitancy. The study reveals that the predominant factor in shaping individuals' perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines is their attitude toward vaccination in general. This attitude also moderates the influence of writing style on perceived tentativeness; the stronger one's opposition to vaccines, the less pronounced the impact of writing style on perceived tentativeness.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

RR2-10.2196/41012.

Demography leads to more conservative European societies

Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (a total of 66,188 participants from 15 European countries) and the European Gender and Generation Survey (a total of 121,248 participants from 12 countries), we investigated i) whether differences in political attitudes and attitudes toward family values (i.e. attitudes toward homosexual couples, attitudes toward female reproduction) are associated with differences in the average number of children, and ii) whether such an association between fertility and attitudes affects the population share of these attitudes in subsequent generations. We found that in most of the countries analyzed, right-wing (conservative) individuals have, on average, more children and grandchildren than left-wing (liberal) individuals. We also found that the proportion of right-wing individuals increases from generation to generation. Since political attitudes are presumably evolved traits that are socially and genetically transmitted from one generation to the next, these findings may suggest that demographic differences can lead to shifts in prevailing political attitudes. Thus, to some extent, demography may explain longer-term political trends.

Social identity correlates of social media engagement before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Despite the global presence of social media platforms, the reasons why people like and share content are still poorly understood. We investigate how group identity mentions and expressions of ingroup solidarity and outgroup hostility in posts correlate with engagement on Ukrainian social media (i.e., shares, likes, and other reactions) before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We use a dataset of 1.6 million posts from Ukrainian news source pages on Facebook and Twitter (currently X) and a geolocated sample of 149 thousand Ukrainian tweets. Before the 2022 Russian invasion, we observe that outgroup mentions in posts from news source pages are generally more strongly associated with engagement than negative, positive, and moral-emotional language. After the invasion, social identity mentions become less strongly associated with engagement. Moreover, post-invasion ingroup solidarity posts are strongly related to engagement, whereas posts expressing outgroup hostility show smaller associations. This is the case for both news and non-news social media data. Our correlational results suggest that signaling solidarity with one's ingroup online is associated with more engagement than negativity about outgroups during intense periods of intergroup conflicts, at least in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Navigating race in a racially diverse environment: An experience sampling study on the daily use of race in conversations within Hawaii

As the United States grows more racially diverse, it is imperative to understand whether being in a racially diverse environment impacts conversations about race. This study examines whether exposure to, and interactions with racially diverse others relate to whether people talk about race, the frequency with which people talk about race, and their comfort with doing so within the racially diverse context of Hawaii. We employed experience sampling to measure whether people had conversations about race, how frequently conversations about race occurred and their comfort in those conversations, and whether their exposure to and interactions with racially diverse others predicted these behaviors. Exposure to and interactions with racially diverse others were not significant predictors of race-related conversations (and their comfort with said conversations). However, interactions with racially diverse friends was related to greater likelihood of discussing race, more frequent discussions of race, and more comfort with race-related conversations. These findings illustrate the importance that interactions with cross-race friends have for improving intergroup relations.

Special FDA designations for drug development: orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy

BACKGROUND

Over the past decades, US Congress enabled the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to facilitate and expedite drug development for serious conditions filling unmet medical needs with five special designations and review pathways: orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy.

OBJECTIVES

This study reviews the FDA's five special designations for drug development regarding their safety, efficacy/clinical benefit, clinical trials, innovation, economic incentives, development timelines, and price.

METHODS

We conducted a keyword search to identify studies analyzing the impact of the FDA's special designations (orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy) on the safety, efficacy/clinical benefit, trials, innovativeness, economic incentives, development times, and pricing of new drugs. Results were summarized in a narrative overview.

RESULTS

Expedited approval reduces new drugs' time to market. However, faster drug development and regulatory review are associated with more unrecognized adverse events and post-marketing safety revisions. Clinical trials supporting special FDA approvals frequently use small, non-randomized, open-label designs. Required post-approval trials to monitor unknown adverse events are often delayed or not even initiated. Evidence suggests that drugs approved under special review pathways, marketed as "breakthroughs", are more innovative and deliver a higher clinical benefit than those receiving standard FDA approval. Special designations are an economically viable strategy for investors and pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for rare diseases with unmet medical needs, due to financial incentives, expedited development timelines, higher clinical trial success rates, alongside greater prices. Nonetheless, patients, physicians, and insurers are concerned about spending money on drugs without a proven benefit or even on drugs that turn out to be ineffective. While European countries established performance- and financial-based managed entry agreements to account for this uncertainty in clinical trial evidence and cost-effectiveness, the pricing and reimbursement of these drugs remain largely unregulated in the US.

CONCLUSION

Special FDA designations shorten clinical development and FDA approval times for new drugs treating rare and severe diseases with unmet medical needs. Special-designated drugs offer a greater clinical benefit to patients. However, physicians, patients, and insurers must be aware that special-designated drugs are often approved based on non-robust trials, associated with more unrecognized side effects, and sold for higher prices.

Does he see what she sees? The gender gap in perceptions of institutional sexism

Women are more likely than men to perceive institutional sexism. In the present study, we examined the gender gap in perceptions of a legal case in which a female plaintiff claims she was a victim of institutional gender discrimination by an employer. Participants were randomly assigned to receive information about institutional forms of sexism (or not) prior to learning the facts of the case. In addition, participants were randomly assigned to take the female plaintiff's perspective (or remain objective) while reviewing the case. In isolation, sexism awareness and perspective-taking both independently eliminated the gender gap in perceptions of discrimination. However, contrary to expectations, the gender gap reemerged among participants who were made aware of sexism prior to perspective-taking such that women perceived more discrimination than men. Implications for interventions to increase perceptions of institutional sexism are discussed.

Attachment and Political Personality are Heritable and Distinct Systems, and Both Share Genetics with Interpersonal Trust and Altruism

The attachment and caregiving domains maintain proximity and care-giving behavior between parents and offspring, in a way that has been argued to shape people's mental models of how relationships work, resulting in secure, anxious or avoidant interpersonal styles in adulthood. Several theorists have suggested that the attachment system is closely connected to orientations and behaviors in social and political domains, which should be grounded in the same set of familial experiences as are the different attachment styles. We use a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 1987) to assess the genetic and environmental relationship between attachment, trust, altruism, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). Results indicate no shared environmental overlap between attachment and ideology, nor even between the attachment styles or between the ideological traits, challenging conventional wisdom in developmental, social, and political psychology. Rather, evidence supports two functionally distinct systems, one for navigating intimate relationships (attachment) and one for navigating social hierarchies (RWA/SDO), with genetic overlap between traits within each system, and two distinct genetic linkages to trust and altruism. This is counter-posed to theoretical perspectives that link attachment, ideology, and interpersonal orientations through early relational experiences.

The racialization of pit bulls: What dogs can teach us about racial politics

Many have argued that discrimination against pit bulls is rooted in the breed's association with Black owners and culture. We theoretically and empirically interrogate that argument in a variety of ways and uncover striking similarities between the racialization of pit bulls and other racialized issues (e.g., poverty and crime) in public opinion and policy implementation. After detailing the reasons to expect pit bulls to be racialized as Black despite dog ownership in the U.S. generally being raced as white, the article shows: (1) Most Americans associate pit bulls with Black people. (2) Anti-Black attitudes, in general, are significant, independent, predictors of both anti-pit views and of preferring other breeds over them; (3) stereotypes of Black men as violent, in particular, are significant, independent, predictors of both anti-pit views and of preferring other breeds over them. (4) Implicit racialization through a national survey experiment further eroded support for legalizing pits, with the treatment effect significantly conditioned by respondent's race. And (5) state-level racial prejudice is a significant negative predictor of enacting legislation to preempt breed-specific bans. We conclude with our findings' broader insights into the nature of U.S. racial politics. Michael Tesler, mtesler@uci.edu, corresponding author, is Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine; Mary McThomas, mary.mcthomas@uci.edu, is Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting. We thank Maneesh Arora, Rachel Bernhard, Nathan Chan, Louis Pickett, David Sears, DeSipio, Adam Duberstein, Jane Junn, Claire Kim, Jessica Manforti, J. Scott Matthews, Justin.

The effect of temperature on language complexity: Evidence from seven million parliamentary speeches

Climate change carries important effects on human wellbeing and performance, and increasingly research is documenting the negative impacts of out-of-comfort temperatures on workplace performance. In this study, we investigate the plausibly causal effect of extreme temperatures, i.e., out-of-comfort, on language complexity among politicians, leveraging a fixed effects strategy. We analyze language complexity in over seven million parliamentary speeches across eight countries, connecting them with precise daily meteorological information. We find hot days reduce politicians' language complexity, but not cold days. Focusing on one country, we explore marginal effects by age and gender, suggesting high temperatures significantly impact older politicians at lower thresholds. The findings propose that political rhetoric is not only driven by political circumstances and strategic concerns but also by physiological responses to external environmental factors. Overall, the study holds important implications on how climate change could affect human cognitive performance and the quality of political discourse.

Environmental Correlates of Physical Activity and Screen-Time in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Seven-Country Observational Study

This cross-sectional observational study sought to examine the environmental correlates of physical activity and screen-time among youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parents of youth with ASD (n = 1,165) from seven countries/regions provided responses to an online survey form measuring environmental correlates (i.e., physical activity neighborhood environment, social network, social trust and cohesion, bedroom media, social home environment) and outcomes (i.e., physical activity, screen-time). Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine environmental predictors of the outcomes. Physical activity neighborhood environment (B = 0.15, p = 0.047), social network (B = 0.16, p = 0.02), and social home environment (B = 1.07, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with physical activity, whereas social trust and cohesion and bedroom media were not. Further, social trust and cohesion (B = -0.14, p = 0.001), bedroom media (B = 0.10, p = 0.001), and social home environment (B = -0.16, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with screen-time while neighborhood environment and social network were not. The identified environmental attributes of physical activity and screen-time behaviors should be targeted for health promotion among youth with ASD.

How our ideological out-group shapes our emotional response to our shared socio-political reality

What shapes our emotional responses to socio-political events? Following the social identity approach, we suggest that individuals adjust their emotional responses to socio-political stimuli based on their ideological out-group's responses, in a manner that preserves the comparative and normative fit of ideological in-group-out-group categories. In Study 1 and Study 2 (pre-registered), Jewish-Israeli leftists and rightists were exposed to their ideological out-group's alleged emotional response to a stimulus associated with Israeli-Palestinian relations, which was either stereotypical (leftists expressing low anger and rightists expressing high anger) or non-stereotypical (leftists expressing high anger and rightists expressing low anger). Across studies, participants reported more positive affect towards their ideological out-group when its response to the stimulus was non-stereotypical versus stereotypical, yet their own response to the stimulus became more "extreme" (towards the low end of the anger scale for leftists, and towards the high end of the anger scale for rightists), shifting farther away from their ideological out-group norm. Our findings suggest that in highly polarized contexts, where "leftist" and "rightist" identities are largely defined in comparison to one another, the "positioning" of ideological groups relative to one another plays a role in shaping their responses to their shared socio-political reality.

"Death and Love Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic": Effects of Pathogen Threats on Online Dating and Social Distancing From Life-History Strategy Perspectives

Drawing from the terror management theory (TMT) and evolutionary perspectives of Life-History Strategy, a between-subject online experiment examined the interaction effects of pre-existing death anxiety, fear-inducing media content (coronavirus threat vs. gun violence threat vs. low threat mental disorder), and intrasexual competition for mates on online dating intentions and social distancing intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicate the interaction effects of participants' pre-experimental death anxiety and different types of fear-inducing media content on perceived fear and intention to use online dating websites/apps as well as the interaction effects of pre-experimental intrasexual competitiveness and fear-inducing media content on social distancing intention in the context of online dating. Theoretical contributions to the terror management literature and practical implications for the online dating industry are discussed.

Keeping track of who knows what in multiparty conversation despite severe memory impairment

Language use has long been understood to be tailored to the intended addressee, a process termed audience design. Audience design is reflected in multiple aspects of language use, including adjustments based on the addressee's knowledge about the topic at hand. In group settings, audience design depends on representations of multiple individuals, each of whom may have different knowledge about the conversational topic. A central question, then, concerns how these representations are encoded and retrieved in multiparty conversation where successful conversation requires keeping track of who knows what. In the present research, we probe the biological memory systems that are involved in this process of multiparty audience design. We present the results of two experiments that compare language use in persons with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe declarative memory impairment (amnesia), and demographically matched neurotypical comparison participants. Participants played a game in which they discussed abstract images with one partner in conversation, and then discussed the images again with the same partner or with a new partner in a three-party conversation. Neurotypical participants' language use reflected newly formed representations of which partner was familiar with which images. Participants with amnesia showed evidence of partner-specific audience design in multiparty conversation but it was attenuated, especially when success required rapid alternations between representations of common ground. The findings suggest partial independence of the formation and use of partner-specific representations from the hippocampal-dependent declarative memory system and highlight the unique contributions of the declarative memory system to flexible and dynamic language use.

LEXpander: Applying colexification networks to automated lexicon expansion

Recent approaches to text analysis from social media and other corpora rely on word lists to detect topics, measure meaning, or to select relevant documents. These lists are often generated by applying computational lexicon expansion methods to small, manually curated sets of seed words. Despite the wide use of this approach, we still lack an exhaustive comparative analysis of the performance of lexicon expansion methods and how they can be improved with additional linguistic data. In this work, we present LEXpander, a method for lexicon expansion that leverages novel data on colexification, i.e., semantic networks connecting words with multiple meanings according to shared senses. We evaluate LEXpander in a benchmark including widely used methods for lexicon expansion based on word embedding models and synonym networks. We find that LEXpander outperforms existing approaches in terms of both precision and the trade-off between precision and recall of generated word lists in a variety of tests. Our benchmark includes several linguistic categories, as words relating to the financial area or to the concept of friendship, and sentiment variables in English and German. We also show that the expanded word lists constitute a high-performing text analysis method in application cases to various English corpora. This way, LEXpander poses a systematic automated solution to expand short lists of words into exhaustive and accurate word lists that can closely approximate word lists generated by experts in psychology and linguistics.

Color War. Does Color Influence the Perception of Political Messages?

Several studies have shown that exposure to colors affects cognitive and affective processes. In this paper, we tried to find if colors affect the perception of political messages and activate partisan biases. We focus our study on the Spanish cultural environment. In a prestudy (n = 991), participants identified red as progressive, blue as conservative, and gray as neutral. In two subsequent experiments (n = 840; n = 938), we analyzed how these three colors influenced the interpretation of political messages and confronted them with issues ownership. The results show that the colors can activate partisan biases but do not have the same strength as issues ownership.

State Resident Handedness, Ideology, and Political Party Preference: U.S. Presidential Election Outcomes Over the Past 60 Years

Pearson correlation, partial correlation, and multiple regression strategies determined the degree to which estimates of the level of left-handedness in each of the 48 contiguous American states related to citizen political ideology and to Democratic-Republican presidential popular vote over the past 60 years. Higher state levels of left-handedness were associated significantly with liberal ideology in each of the presidential election years from 1964 to 2016. Comparable ideology data were not available for 2020. Higher state levels of left-handedness also were associated with a greater degree of Democratic candidate popular vote support in each of the presidential election years from 1964 to 2020 except for 1976. The mean size of these 28 significant Pearson correlations involving the two political criteria was .62 (SD = .12) with a range of .38-.80, indicating handedness alone could account for a mean of 40.1% (SD = 14.9) of the variance in the two political preference variables. Corresponding multiple regressions showed that when state-level Big Five personality, White population percent, urbanization, and income variables were given the opportunity to enter the equations, handedness still emerged with a significant regression coefficient in 26 of the 28 equations. The two exceptions occurred for 1968 with either political preference criterion. It is speculated that such relations are grounded in hypothesized but poorly understood genetic links between handedness, personality, and political beliefs and attitudes, and, that a foundational genetic predisposition to left-handedness in a population may have much greater impact on correlates than overt levels of left-handedness.

Rumors in Retweet: Ideological Asymmetry in the Failure to Correct Misinformation

We used supervised machine-learning techniques to examine ideological asymmetries in online rumor transmission. Although liberals were more likely than conservatives to communicate in general about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (Study 1, N = 26,422) and 2020 death of the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (Study 2, N = 141,670), conservatives were more likely to share rumors. Rumor-spreading decreased among liberals following official correction, but it increased among conservatives. Marathon rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly 10 times more often post-correction. Epstein rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly, eight times more often post-correction. With respect to ideologically congenial rumors, conservatives circulated the rumor that the Clinton family was involved in Epstein's death 18.6 times more often than liberals circulated the rumor that the Trump family was involved. More than 96% of all fake news domains were shared by conservative Twitter users.

Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility

Widespread failures of replication and generalization are, ironically, a scientific triumph, in that they confirm the fundamental metascientific theory that underlies our field. Generalizable and replicable findings require testing large numbers of subjects from a wide range of demographics with a large, randomly-sampled stimulus set, and using a variety of experimental parameters. Because few studies accomplish any of this, meta-scientists predict that findings will frequently fail to replicate or generalize. We argue that to be more robust and replicable, developmental psychology needs to find a mechanism for collecting data at greater scale and from more diverse populations. Luckily, this mechanism already exists: Citizen science, in which large numbers of uncompensated volunteers provide data. While best-known for its contributions to astronomy and ecology, citizen science has also produced major findings in neuroscience and psychology, and increasingly in developmental psychology. We provide examples, address practical challenges, discuss limitations, and compare to other methods of obtaining large datasets. Ultimately, we argue that the range of studies where it makes sense *not* to use citizen science is steadily dwindling.

Evaluating CloudResearch's Approved Group as a solution for problematic data quality on MTurk

Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. These concerns have grown recently due to the bot crisis of 2018 and observations that past safeguards of data quality (e.g., approval ratings of 95%) no longer work. To address data quality concerns, CloudResearch, a third-party website that interfaces with MTurk, has assessed ~165,000 MTurkers and categorized them into those that provide high- (~100,000, Approved) and low- (~65,000, Blocked) quality data. Here, we examined the predictive validity of CloudResearch's vetting. In a pre-registered study, participants (N = 900) from the Approved and Blocked groups, along with a Standard MTurk sample (95% HIT acceptance ratio, 100+ completed HITs), completed an array of data-quality measures. Across several indices, Approved participants (i) identified the content of images more accurately, (ii) answered more reading comprehension questions correctly, (iii) responded to reversed coded items more consistently, (iv) passed a greater number of attention checks, (v) self-reported less cheating and actually left the survey window less often on easily Googleable questions, (vi) replicated classic psychology experimental effects more reliably, and (vii) answered AI-stumping questions more accurately than Blocked participants, who performed at chance on multiple outcomes. Data quality of the Standard sample was generally in between the Approved and Blocked groups. We discuss how MTurk's Approval Rating system is no longer an effective data-quality control, and we discuss the advantages afforded by using the Approved group for scientific studies on MTurk.

Picturing the populations who could benefit from health insurance access expansions: An analysis of US health insurance television ads airing in 2018

Efforts to expand access to health insurance in the United States are key to addressing health inequities and ensuring that all individuals have access to health care during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Yet, attempts to expand public insurance programs, including Medicaid, continue to face opposition in state and federal policymaking. Limited policy success raises questions about the health insurance information environment and the extent that available information signals both available resources and the need for policy reform. In this study, we explore one way that consumers and policymakers learn about health insurance-television advertisements-and analyze content in ads that could contribute to an understanding of who needs health insurance or who deserves to benefit from policies to expand insurance access. Specifically, we implement a content analysis of health insurance ads airing throughout 2018 on broadcast television or national cable, focusing on the depictions of people in those ads. Our findings indicate that individuals depicted in ads for Medicaid plans differ from those in ads for non-Medicaid plans. Groups that comprise large populations of current Medicaid enrollees, children and pregnant people, were more likely to appear in ads for non-Medicaid plans than in ads for Medicaid plans. This has implications for potential enrollees' understanding of who is eligible as well as the general public's and policymakers' perspectives on who should be targeted for current or future policies.

Characteristics Associated With Loneliness and Coping Skills Utilization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Although stay-at-home orders and physical distancing measures are vital to managing the COVID-19 outbreak, there is concern these limitations on in-person contact may increase feelings of loneliness. The present study examined loneliness in relation to living situation, psychiatric symptoms, and coping skills utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim was to identify demographic and psychological factors that may contribute to greater feelings of loneliness. A sample of 125 adults (18 years and older) completed measures on loneliness, psychiatric symptoms, and coping skills in September 2020. Multiple regression analysis indicated living situation moderates the relationship between hours spent having remote conversations and loneliness. Remote conversation hours were associated with decreased loneliness in those living alone but was not associated with loneliness in those living with others. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that substance use and self-blame were associated with increased loneliness whereas the use of emotional support to cope with pandemic-related stress was associated with decreased loneliness. The current study highlights the importance of finding alternative ways to remain socially connected, particularly for those living alone. Increasing access to videoconferencing technology and promoting help-seeking behaviors may be a promising approach to manage loneliness during times of increased social isolation.

Does personality matter? Exploring its moderating role on the relationship between neighbourhood ethnic outgroup-size and preferences for Brexit

Prior research has examined the relationship between ethnic outgroup-size at the neighbourhood level and Brexit support, yet there is a lack of understanding on the factors that moderate these effects. This paper critically extends prior debate by focusing on how personality traits moderate not only the extent to which the levels (2011) of ethnic outgroup-size in individuals' residential neighbourhoods but also the increase thereof (2001-2011) are associated with individuals' preferences about the 2016 Brexit referendum. Using data from Understanding Society, we find that two personality traits, agreeableness and openness, are key moderators affecting the above-mentioned relationship. High-agreeable and high-open individuals are less likely than low-agreeable and low-open individuals to support Brexit. However, while the gap between low and highly agreeable individuals shrinks as ethnic outgroup-size increases, the gap widens between those higher vs. lower in openness. Our findings highlight the multifaceted role of personality traits as a driver of heterogeneous effects on political behaviour. In sum, this paper shows that analysing the complex and intertwined nature of both contextual and individual factors is fundamental for a better understanding, not only of the Brexit referendum but, more broadly, of anti-immigrant sentiment.

The role of values in coping with health and economic threats of COVID-19

The current research examined the role of values in guiding people's responses to COVID-19. Results from an international study involving 115 countries (N = 61,490) suggest that health and economic threats of COVID-19 evoke different values, with implications for controlling and coping with the pandemic. Specifically, health threats predicted prioritization of communal values related to caring for others and belonging, whereas economic threats predicted prioritization of agentic values focused on competition and achievement. Concurrently and over time, prioritizing communal values over agentic values was associated with enactment of prevention behaviors that reduce virus transmission, motivations to help others suffering from the pandemic, and positive attitudes toward outgroup members. These results, which were generally consistent across individual and national levels of analysis, suggest that COVID-19 threats may indirectly shape important responses to the pandemic through their influence on people's prioritization of communion and agency. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

'So Help Me God'? Does oath swearing in courtroom scenarios impact trial outcomes?

In countries such as Britain and the US, court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence and are often compelled to publicly choose between religious ("oath") and secular ("affirmation") versions of this declaration. Might defendants who opt to swear an oath enjoy more favourable outcomes than those who choose to affirm? Two preliminary, pre-registered survey studies using minimal vignettes (Study 1, N = 443; Study 2, N = 913) indicated that people associate choice of the oath with credible testimony; and that participants, especially religious participants, discriminate against defendants who affirm. In a third, Registered Report study (Study 3, N = 1821), we used a more elaborate audiovisual mock trial paradigm to better estimate the real-world influence of declaration choice. Participants were asked to render a verdict for a defendant who either swore or affirmed, and were themselves required to swear or affirm that they would try the defendant in good faith. Overall, the defendant was not considered guiltier when affirming rather than swearing, nor did mock-juror belief in God moderate this effect. However, jurors who themselves swore an oath did discriminate against the affirming defendant. Exploratory analyses suggest this effect may be driven by authoritarianism, perhaps because high-authoritarian jurors consider the oath the traditional (and therefore correct) declaration to choose. We discuss the real-world implications of these findings and conclude the religious oath is an antiquated legal ritual that needs reform.

Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases

One of the essential insights from psychological research is that people's information processing is often biased. By now, a number of different biases have been identified and empirically demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, these biases have often been examined in separate lines of research, thereby precluding the recognition of shared principles. Here we argue that several-so far mostly unrelated-biases (e.g., bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, outcome bias) can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans' tendency toward belief-consistent information processing. What varies between different biases is essentially the specific belief that guides information processing. More importantly, we propose that different biases even share the same underlying belief and differ only in the specific outcome of information processing that is assessed (i.e., the dependent variable), thus tapping into different manifestations of the same latent information processing. In other words, we propose for discussion a model that suffices to explain several different biases. We thereby suggest a more parsimonious approach compared with current theoretical explanations of these biases. We also generate novel hypotheses that follow directly from the integrative nature of our perspective.

Review time of oncology drugs and its underlying factors: an exploration in China

Introduction: How the launch delay of drugs and other factors of interest can influence the length of the review period by drug agencies is still unknown, and understanding this can help better strike the trade-off related to review speed. Methods: We included all new oncology drug applications submitted to China's National Medical Product Administration (NMPA) between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2021, and ultimately succeeded in achieving marketing approval. For each drug, the length of the NMPA review process and other major characteristics were collected, including the registration class, approval class, priority review designation, and launch delay relative to the United States, as well as the number of patients enrolled, comparator, and primary endpoint of the pivotal trials supporting the approval. Linear regression model was employed to analyze the effects of factors of interest on the NMPA review time. Results: From 2018 to 2021, NMPA received 137 oncology applications that were ultimately approved. Half of the approvals [76 (55.5%)] were first licensed in the US, leaving a median launch delay of 2.71 years (IQR, 1.03-5.59) in China. In the pivotal studies, the median enrollment was 361 participants (IQR, 131-682), and the use of control groups [90 (65.7%)] and surrogate endpoints [101 (73.7%)] was prevalent. The median review time was 304 days (IQR, 253-376). Multivariate analysis for log-transformed review time showed that larger enrollment (> 92) was associated with a drop of 20.55% in review time (coefficient = -0.230; 95% CI, -0.404 to -0.055; p = 0.010); and a short delay (0 < delay ≤ 1.95 years) was associated with a drop of 17.63% in review time (coefficient = -0.194; 95% CI, -0.325 to -0.062; p = 0.004). Discussion: The short launch delay relative to the US was one important driver to the review speed of NMPA, which might suggest its latent regulatory reliance on the other global regulator during the post-marketing period when new information on the drug's clinical benefit was still lacking.

Cross-direct effects in settings with two mediators

When multiple mediators are present, there are additional effects that may be of interest beyond the well-known natural (NDE) and controlled direct effects (CDE). These effects cross the type of control on the mediators, setting one to a constant level and one to its natural level, which differs across subjects. We introduce five such estimands for the cross-CDE and -NDE when two mediators are measured. We consider both the scenario where one mediator is influenced by the other, referred to as sequential mediators, and the scenario where the mediators do not influence each other. Such estimands may be of interest in immunology, as we discuss in relation to measured immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. We provide identifying expressions for the estimands in observational settings where there is no residual confounding, and where intervention, outcome, and mediators are of arbitrary type. We further provide tight symbolic bounds for the estimands in randomized settings where there may be residual confounding of the outcome and mediator relationship and all measured variables are binary.

Incentivizing COVID-19 Vaccination in a Polarized and Partisan United States

CONTEXT

As COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out in early 2021, governments at all levels in the United States experienced significant difficulty in consistently and efficiently administering injections in the face of vaccination resistance among a public increasingly politically polarized on vaccination preferences before the beginning of mass vaccinations.

METHODS

Using an original conjoint experiment fielded to a nationally representative sample before the mass proliferation of COVID-19 vaccines, the authors examined how different incentives (e.g., employer mandates, state-organized or health care provider-organized vaccination clinics, and financial incentives) affect the public's preference to get vaccinated. They also tested how financial incentive preferences correlated with self-reported vaccination intention using observational data from the June 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll.

FINDINGS

The authors found financial incentives positively influenced vaccine preferences among the mass public and all partisan groups, including Republicans who were initially "unlikely" to be vaccinated. The authors used the observational data to replicate their experimental findings, showing positive financial incentive attitudes positively correlated with self-reported vaccination disclosures.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide support for direct financial incentives, rather than other incentives, as being a valuable tool for policy makers tasked with alleviating vaccination resistance among a US mass public increasingly polarized along partisan lines.

Evaluating Federal Policies Using Bayesian Time Series Models: Estimating the Causal Impact of the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

Researchers are often faced with evaluating the effect of a policy or program that was simultaneously initiated across an entire population of units at a single point in time, and its effects over the targeted population can manifest at any time period afterwards. In the presence of data measured over time, Bayesian time series models have been used to impute what would have happened after the policy was initiated, had the policy not taken place, in order to estimate causal effects. However, the considerations regarding the definition of the target estimands, the underlying assumptions, the plausibility of such assumptions, and the choice of an appropriate model have not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we establish useful estimands for the evaluation of large-scale policies. We discuss that imputation of missing potential outcomes relies on an assumption which, even though untestable, can be partially evaluated using observed data. We illustrate an approach to evaluate this key causal assumption and facilitate model elicitation based on data from the time interval before policy initiation and using classic statistical techniques. As an illustration, we study the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), a US federal intervention aiming to improve health outcomes for patients with pneumonia, acute myocardial infraction, or congestive failure admitted to a hospital. We evaluate the effect of the HRRP on population mortality among the elderly across the US and in four geographic subregions, and at different time windows. We find that the HRRP increased mortality from pneumonia and acute myocardial infraction across at least one geographical region and time horizon, and is likely to have had a detrimental effect on public health.

The reductionism of genopolitics in the context of the relationships between biology and political science

The past two decades have seen an increase in the use of theories, data, assumptions and methods of the biological sciences in studying political phenomena. One of the approaches that combine biology with political science is genopolitics. The goal of the study was to analyse the basic ontological, methodological and epistemological assumptions for the reductionism of genopolitics. The results show that genopolitics assumes methodological reductionism but rejects ontological and epistemological reductionism. The key consequences of the findings are the irreducibility of political science to biology and the complementarity of genopolitical explanations and political science explanations based on culturalism. If my findings prove to be correct, they give rise to the formation of a hypothesis regarding the anti-reductionist orientation of the contemporary links between political science and biology. An important step towards confirming or falsifying such a hypothesis will be exploring the reductionism of contemporary biopolitical approaches such as neuropolitics or evolutionary political psychology.

Cognitive and social well-being in older adulthood: The CoSoWELL corpus of written life stories

This paper presents the Cognitive and Social WELL-being (CoSoWELL) project that consists of two components. One is a large corpus of narratives written by over 1000 North American older adults (55+ years old) in five test sessions before and during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The other component is a rich collection of socio-demographic data collected through a survey from the same participants. This paper introduces the first release of the corpus consisting of 1.3 million tokens and the survey data (CoSoWELL version 1.0). It also presents a series of analyses validating design decisions for creating the corpus of narratives written about personal life events that took place in the distant past, recent past (yesterday) and future, along with control narratives. We report results of computational topic modeling and linguistic analyses of the narratives in the corpus, which track the time-locked impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the content of autobiographical memories before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main findings demonstrate a high validity of our analytical approach to unique narrative data and point to both the locus of topical shifts (narratives about recent past and future) and their detailed timeline. We make the CoSoWELL corpus and survey data available to researchers and discuss implications of our findings in the framework of research on aging and autobiographical memories under stress.

An Empirical Study of the Pathway Model Link Between Cognitive Distortions and Gambling Problems

This research empirically tests the relationship between gambling-related cognitive distortions and the development of gambling problems. In two separate studies using methodologies designed to support non-experimental causal inference, we demonstrate that holding false beliefs about gambling experiences is related to current and future risk of developing problems with gambling. In our first study, we use an instrumental variable estimation strategy on an internet sample (n = 184) and observe a statistically significant relationship between Gamblers' Belief Questionnaire scores and measures of loss chasing, overspending, and gambling problems. These findings were robust to linear and ordinal estimation strategies and multiple model specifications. In our second study, we examine five-year prospective longitudinal data (n = 1,431) to validate our initial findings and test whether irrational thoughts are also related to future problems with gambling. While controlling for current fallacies, we find that past Gambling Fallacies Measure scores are related to present gambling problems across two survey waves. The effect size of each of the past fallacy levels is roughly half of the effect size of present levels, suggesting meaningful impacts. Our findings support the Pathways Model of Problem and Pathological Gambling.

Clarifying Eudaimonia and Psychological Functioning to Complement Evaluative and Experiential Well-Being: Why Basic Psychological Needs Should Be Measured in National Accounts of Well-Being

Measuring subjective well-being as a key indicator of national wellness has increasingly become part of the international agenda. Current recommendations for measuring well-being at a national level propose three separate dimensions: evaluative well-being, experiential well-being, and eudaimonia. Whereas the measurement of the first two dimensions is relatively standardized, the third category has remained undertheorized, lacking consensus on how to define and operationalize it. To remedy the situation, we propose that the third dimension should focus on psychological functioning and the identification of key psychological factors humans generally need to live well. A key part of psychological functioning is the satisfaction of basic psychological needs-specific types of satisfying experiences that are essential for psychological health and well-being. Psychological needs as a category provides a parsimonious set of elements with clear inclusion criteria that are strongly anchored in theory and our current understanding of human nature-and could thus form a core part of the third, "eudaimonic" dimension of well-being. The needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness have especially received broad empirical support. Accordingly, national accounts of well-being should include measures for key psychological needs to gain an enriched and practically useful understanding of the well-being of the citizens.

A longitudinal analysis of conspiracy beliefs and Covid-19 health responses

BACKGROUND

Little is known about how conspiracy beliefs and health responses are interrelated over time during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. This longitudinal study tested two contrasting, but not mutually exclusive, hypotheses through cross-lagged modeling. First, based on the consequential nature of conspiracy beliefs, we hypothesize that conspiracy beliefs predict an increase in detrimental health responses over time. Second, as people may rationalize their behavior through conspiracy beliefs, we hypothesize that detrimental health responses predict increased conspiracy beliefs over time.

METHODS

We measured conspiracy beliefs and several health-related responses (i.e. physical distancing, support for lockdown policy, and the perception of the coronavirus as dangerous) at three phases of the pandemic in the Netherlands (N = 4913): During the first lockdown (Wave 1: April 2020), after the first lockdown (Wave 2: June 2020), and during the second lockdown (Wave 3: December 2020).

RESULTS

For physical distancing and perceived danger, the overall cross-lagged effects supported both hypotheses, although the standardized effects were larger for the effects of conspiracy beliefs on these health responses than vice versa. The within-person change results only supported an effect of conspiracy beliefs on these health responses, depending on the phase of the pandemic. Furthermore, an overall cross-lagged effect of conspiracy beliefs on reduced support for lockdown policy emerged from Wave 2 to 3.

CONCLUSIONS

The results provide stronger support for the hypothesis that conspiracy beliefs predict health responses over time than for the hypothesis that health responses predict conspiracy beliefs over time.

The attitudinal space framework: Embracing the multidimensionality of attitudinal diversity

Attitude polarization describes an increasing attitude difference between groups and is increasingly recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon. However, a unified framework to study polarization across multiple dimensions is lacking. We introduce the attitudinal space framework (ASF) to fully quantify attitudinal diversity. We highlight two key measures-attitudinal extremization and attitudinal dispersion-to quantify across- and within-group attitudinal patterns. First, we show that affective polarization in the US electorate is weaker than previously thought based on mean differences alone: in both Democrat and Republican partisans, attitudinal dispersion increased between 1988 and 2008. Second, we examined attitudes toward wolves in Germany. Despite attitude differences between regions with and without wolves, we did not find differences in attitudinal extremization or dispersion, suggesting only weak attitude polarization. These results illustrate how the ASF is applicable to a wide range of social systems and offers an important avenue to understanding societal transformations.

The adaptation of soldiers to post-service life - the mediating impact of political views on the relationship between violence and adaptation

Introduction

The current research explores the association between political views, combat experiences, and the adaptation of soldiers to post-service life. Violent experiences in military service were explored as contributors to both positive and negative dimensions of adaptation, while political views served as possible mediators.

Methods

Three hundred and twenty Israeli veterans participated in the study.

Results

Political views were correlated with adaptation, especially left-to-right voting and anti-militarism. The results support the mediating role of political beliefs (left-right voting and militarism) in the relationship between combat experience and adaptation to post-service life.

Discussion

We contend that political perceptions affect adaptation through sense-making of the combat experiences and the individual processing of these experiences, and the willingness to continue in reserve service, which allows social support and recognition. In addition, they are linked to a sense of bitterness following the reduction of public participation in military and reserve service.

The evolution of economic and political inequality: minding the gap

The extent of economic and political inequality, their change over time, and the forces shaping them have profound implications for the sustainability of a society and the well-being of its members. Here we review the evolution of economic and political inequality broadly, though with particular attention to Europe and the USA. We describe legal/institutional, technological and social forces that have shaped this evolution. We highlight the cumulative effects of inequality across generations as channelled through wealth and inheritance but also through other intergenerational connections. We also review the state of research on the effects of inequality on economic growth, health and societal cohesion. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary ecology of inequality'.

Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries

Most scholars focus on the prevalence and democratic effects of (partisan) news exposure. This focus misses large parts of online activities of a majority of politically disinterested citizens. Although political content also appears outside of news outlets and may profoundly shape public opinion, its prevalence and effects are under-studied at scale. This project combines three-wave panel survey data from three countries (total N = 7,266) with online behavioral data from the same participants (over 106M visits). We create a multi-lingual classifier to identify political content both in news and outside (e.g. in shopping or entertainment sites). We find that news consumption is infrequent: just 3.4% of participants' online browsing comprised visits to news sites. Only between 14% (NL) and 36% (US) of these visits were to news about politics. The overwhelming majority of participants' visits were to non-news sites. Although only 1.6\% of those visits related to politics, in absolute terms, citizens encounter politics more frequently outside of news than within news. Out of every 10 visits to political content, 3.4 come from news and 6.6 from non-news sites. Furthermore, exposure to political content outside news domains had the same - and in some cases stronger - associations with key democratic attitudes and behaviors as news exposure. These findings offer a comprehensive analysis of the online political (not solely news) ecosystem and demonstrate the importance of assessing the prevalence and effects of political content in non-news sources.

Contraceptive access reform and abortion: Evidence from Delaware

OBJECTIVE

To examine the effects of a comprehensive contraceptive access reform, Delaware Contraceptive Access Now, on abortion-one of the most common outcomes of unintended pregnancy.

DATA SOURCE

We used abortion data by state of residence from the Abortion Surveillance System, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Our data covers 5 years prior to (2010-2014) and 5 years after the intervention (2015-2019).

STUDY DESIGN

We used synthetic control methods to estimate program effects. Our design compares Delaware to a weighted average of 45 control states ("synthetic Delaware"), where the quality of the comparison is assessed by its similarity to Delaware in pre-period outcome levels and trends.

DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS

Not applicable. We relied on secondary sources.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We did not find statistically significant evidence that the program reduced abortion rates (0.61 fewer abortions per 1000 women, p-value = 0.74) on average, during the intervention period. The treatment effects were slightly larger in 2016 and 2017 (1.97 fewer abortions per 1000 women but not statistically significant) and attenuated in 2018 and 2019. This does not rule out program benefits in easing barriers to contraceptive methods or in reducing unplanned births. However, findings do suggest that increasing contraceptive access might not be an adequate substitute for restricted abortion access resulting from Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that comprehensive efforts to improve contraceptive access may not reduce the need for accessible and affordable abortion care.

Acceptance and Adherence to COVID-19 Preventive Measures are Shaped Predominantly by Conspiracy Beliefs, Mistrust in Science and Fear - A Comparison of More than 20 Psychological Variables

The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sparked a great interest in psychological factors that determine or explain peoples' responses to the novel threatening situation and the preventive measures (e.g. wearing masks, social distancing). In this study, we focused on contaminated mindware (conspiracy and paranormal beliefs) and investigated its relationship with both acceptance of and adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures, along with other variables from the domains of emotion (trait anxiety, fear), traditional personality traits (Big 5, locus of control, optimism/pessimism) and motivation (self-control, dispositional regulatory focus). A total of 22 variables were measured in an online survey (N = 374) that took place during the second wave of COVID-19 (Nov. 2020 - March 2021) in Switzerland. Of all variables, the endorsement of specific COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs was most strongly associated with lower acceptance and adherence to the preventive measures, together with mistrust in science and a more right-wing political orientation. In contrast, fear of COVID-19 and prevention regulatory focus were positively associated with acceptance and adherence. Our results therefore highlight the importance of fighting (conspiratorial) misinformation and of increasing the perceived credibility of science in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. Moreover, when acceptance was used as predictor for adherence, agreeableness and dispositional prevention regulatory focus still explained unique variance in adherence, suggesting that such personality and motivational variables play an important role in adhering and regulating preventive behaviour independent from the attitude towards the preventive measures themselves.