Extremism and Conspiracy Belief

Flashcards on Extremism and Conspiracy Belief

Fake News

Mis-, dis-, or mal-information related to conspiracy beliefs, post-truth, polarization, and extremism.

Rigidity-of-the-right model

The political left and right differ in their cognitive styles, as reflected in increased closed-mindedness among right-wing individuals.

Right-wing political attitudes

Driven by fear and uncertainty. Fearful, closed-minded, authoritarian, dogmatic, outgroup derogatory and prejudiced.

Threats to White Identity

Influx of immigrants, social justice by people of color, feminist movements, and LGBTQ+ pride are perceived as overall threats.

Psychological pattern

Extreme left- and right-wing ideologies may share a similar underlying psychological pattern.

Psychological Features of Extreme Political Ideologies

Psychological distress stimulates adopting an extreme ideological outlook. Extreme ideologies are characterized by a relatively simplistic, black-and-white perception of the social world.

Consequences of Mental Simplicity

Political extremists are overconfident in their judgments. Political extremists are less tolerant of different groups and opinions than political moderates.

Cognitive shortcut

Extremists adopt a relatively simplistic, black-and-white perception of the social world.

Belief superiority

Overconfidence that one accurately understands reality better than others.

Consequences of cognitive simplicity

Extremists experience their moral judgments as moral absolutes that reflect a simple and universal truth and are considered morally superior.

Extremists Information Trust

Extremists receive or trust information about political issues mainly from their extremist in-group and ignore information that may provide more nuanced/moderate perspectives.

Conspiracy beliefs

A 'sense-making' set of simple assumptions about the world in uncertain or threatening times.

Junk News Professionalism

Outlets do not employ the standards and best practices of professional journalism.

Junk News Style

Outlets use emotionally driven language with emotive expressions, hyperbole, ad hominem attacks, misleading headlines, excessive capitalization, unsafe generalizations and fallacies, moving images, graphic pictures and mobilizing memes.

Junk News Credibility

Outlets rely on false information and conspiracy theories, which they often employ strategically. They report without consulting multiple sources and do not employ fact-checking methods. Their sources are often untrustworthy and their standards of news production lack credibility.

Junk News Bias

Reporting in these outlets is highly biased and ideologically skewed, which is otherwise described as hyper-partisan reporting. These outlets frequently present opinion and commentary essays as news.

Junk News Counterfeit

Outlets mimic professional news media. They counterfeit fonts, branding and stylistic content strategies. Commentary and junk content is stylistically disguised as news

High Junk News Coverage

Values shows that the group is sharing a wide range of junk news.

High Junk News Consistency

Values shows that the group is playing a key role in the spreading of such junk news.

Trump Supporters

Play a key role in junk news dissemination. Share the widest range of junk sources on Twitter and contribute more to the dissemination of junk news than all other groups put together.

Heterophily

A measure of connections between groups in a network: a ratio is calculated of the actual ties between two groups, compared with the expected number of ties between them, if all the ties in the network were distributed evenly.

Political Extremism

Positively associated with an increased tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, at either side of the political spectrum.

Dogmatic intolerance

I believe that everyone should think like me. If everyone would think about it, they would hold the same opinions as I do. How I feel about issues is the truth.

Anti-establishment sentiments and opinions

Are core element of populism and extremism. Typically, high levels of confidence in one's own understanding of political issues

Overclaiming

Recognition of non-existing persons, objects, etc