The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness.
Конференцијски прилог (Објављена верзија)
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Conspiracy theories are complex narratives that causally link multiple events and actors
together. Believers tend to achieve their narrative coherence by establishing higher-order
beliefs that can encompass even the specific contradictory conspiratorial claims. In spite of
the complex structure of conspiracy beliefs, and an active role that a believer takes in
producing them, previous studies have mostly ignored this and assessed it by single Likert-
type statements.
In this study, we adapted and validated a narrative construction task to assess conspiracy
proneness. To this end, we first presented the respondents with a bogus event, ambiguous
enough that it can be interpreted in a conspiratorial or non-conspiratorial manner (“rounding
down” clients’ bank accounts). We then presented a list of potential claims related to it,
divided into three groups — non-conspiratorial, mildly and extremely conspiratorial (12 for
each group). Their task was to construct a coherent narrativ...e by selecting and then organizing
the supplied items. We also included contradictory information (4 pairs for each group), to
check if participants’ would include them in their narratives. We derived indices of proneness
to conspiratorial interpretation by counting the proportion of conspiratorial claims in the final
narrative; we also tracked the number of chosen contradictory claims.
A total of 218 participants completed all the materials. To validate the narrative measure,
participants also filled in three questionnaires of belief in conspiracies — conspiracy
mentality, the belief in specific and contradictory conspiracies scales, as well as a measure of
proneness to endorsing incompatible beliefs — doublethink. The proportion of conspiratorial
claims included in the narratives was on average 60%, while hardly any contradictory claims
were selected (M = 1.6; SD = 1.1). Regression with measures of conspiracy beliefs as predictors showed that conspiracy mentality was the only significant predictor of the
proportion of conspiratorial claims in the narrative (F(3, 214) = 2.768, p = .04; R 2adj = .024,
partial r = .154).
We discuss potential explanations for the inconsistent relations with traditional measures and
offer guidelines for improving the task. We also address the reasons for the fact that, when
asked to build a causal explanation, respondents predominantly opted for the conspiratorial
claims even though they were offered more “mundane” causes for the event.
Кључне речи:
conspiracy theories / narrative construction / contradictory beliefs / measurement / validationИзвор:
Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology, 2020, 118-119Институција/група
Psihologija / PsychologyTY - CONF AU - Petrović, Marija AU - Žeželj, Iris PY - 2020 UR - http://reff.f.bg.ac.rs/handle/123456789/5083 AB - Conspiracy theories are complex narratives that causally link multiple events and actors together. Believers tend to achieve their narrative coherence by establishing higher-order beliefs that can encompass even the specific contradictory conspiratorial claims. In spite of the complex structure of conspiracy beliefs, and an active role that a believer takes in producing them, previous studies have mostly ignored this and assessed it by single Likert- type statements. In this study, we adapted and validated a narrative construction task to assess conspiracy proneness. To this end, we first presented the respondents with a bogus event, ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted in a conspiratorial or non-conspiratorial manner (“rounding down” clients’ bank accounts). We then presented a list of potential claims related to it, divided into three groups — non-conspiratorial, mildly and extremely conspiratorial (12 for each group). Their task was to construct a coherent narrative by selecting and then organizing the supplied items. We also included contradictory information (4 pairs for each group), to check if participants’ would include them in their narratives. We derived indices of proneness to conspiratorial interpretation by counting the proportion of conspiratorial claims in the final narrative; we also tracked the number of chosen contradictory claims. A total of 218 participants completed all the materials. To validate the narrative measure, participants also filled in three questionnaires of belief in conspiracies — conspiracy mentality, the belief in specific and contradictory conspiracies scales, as well as a measure of proneness to endorsing incompatible beliefs — doublethink. The proportion of conspiratorial claims included in the narratives was on average 60%, while hardly any contradictory claims were selected (M = 1.6; SD = 1.1). Regression with measures of conspiracy beliefs as predictors showed that conspiracy mentality was the only significant predictor of the proportion of conspiratorial claims in the narrative (F(3, 214) = 2.768, p = .04; R 2adj = .024, partial r = .154). We discuss potential explanations for the inconsistent relations with traditional measures and offer guidelines for improving the task. We also address the reasons for the fact that, when asked to build a causal explanation, respondents predominantly opted for the conspiratorial claims even though they were offered more “mundane” causes for the event. C3 - Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology T1 - The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness. EP - 119 SP - 118 UR - https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_5083 ER -
@conference{ author = "Petrović, Marija and Žeželj, Iris", year = "2020", abstract = "Conspiracy theories are complex narratives that causally link multiple events and actors together. Believers tend to achieve their narrative coherence by establishing higher-order beliefs that can encompass even the specific contradictory conspiratorial claims. In spite of the complex structure of conspiracy beliefs, and an active role that a believer takes in producing them, previous studies have mostly ignored this and assessed it by single Likert- type statements. In this study, we adapted and validated a narrative construction task to assess conspiracy proneness. To this end, we first presented the respondents with a bogus event, ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted in a conspiratorial or non-conspiratorial manner (“rounding down” clients’ bank accounts). We then presented a list of potential claims related to it, divided into three groups — non-conspiratorial, mildly and extremely conspiratorial (12 for each group). Their task was to construct a coherent narrative by selecting and then organizing the supplied items. We also included contradictory information (4 pairs for each group), to check if participants’ would include them in their narratives. We derived indices of proneness to conspiratorial interpretation by counting the proportion of conspiratorial claims in the final narrative; we also tracked the number of chosen contradictory claims. A total of 218 participants completed all the materials. To validate the narrative measure, participants also filled in three questionnaires of belief in conspiracies — conspiracy mentality, the belief in specific and contradictory conspiracies scales, as well as a measure of proneness to endorsing incompatible beliefs — doublethink. The proportion of conspiratorial claims included in the narratives was on average 60%, while hardly any contradictory claims were selected (M = 1.6; SD = 1.1). Regression with measures of conspiracy beliefs as predictors showed that conspiracy mentality was the only significant predictor of the proportion of conspiratorial claims in the narrative (F(3, 214) = 2.768, p = .04; R 2adj = .024, partial r = .154). We discuss potential explanations for the inconsistent relations with traditional measures and offer guidelines for improving the task. We also address the reasons for the fact that, when asked to build a causal explanation, respondents predominantly opted for the conspiratorial claims even though they were offered more “mundane” causes for the event.", journal = "Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology", title = "The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness.", pages = "119-118", url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_5083" }
Petrović, M.,& Žeželj, I.. (2020). The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness.. in Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology, 118-119. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_5083
Petrović M, Žeželj I. The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness.. in Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology. 2020;:118-119. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_5083 .
Petrović, Marija, Žeželj, Iris, "The Shaping of a story: Narrative construction task as a tool to measure conspiracy-proneness." in Book of Abstracts, XXVI scientific conference Empirical Studies in Psychology (2020):118-119, https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_reff_5083 .