On September 17-21, 2023, the ISSID 2023 (International Society for the Study of Individual Differences) was held in Belfast, Northern Ireland. More information about the convention is available on the conference website.
During the conference, Maria Flakus took part in the discussions, giving a talk entitled: “Behind Beliefs: Collective Narcissism, Political Orientation, and Belief in Disinformation in the time of War in Ukraine” (co-authors: Piotr Koc, Hubert Plisiecki, & Artur Pokropek). Additional information about the talk are provided below.
Abstract: A striking outcome of the war in Ukraine was disinformation spread by Russians. Considering its opinion-making qualities, it is essential to understand the background of the susceptibility to such content. Considering the similarities between disinformation and conspiracies, we examined the predictors of disinformation susceptibility utilizing those typically described for conspiracies, i.e., collective narcissism (CN) and political orientation (PO). Also, considering the associations between CN and PO, we examined if PO would moderate the CN-disinformation relationship. Also, we provided a more in-depth inspection of our results by testing all hypotheses mentioned above in relation to belief in COVID-related and generic conspiracies to analyze the parallels and discrepancies in associations between collective narcissism, political orientation, and different kinds of conspiracies. The results of two studies (study 1: N = 1067; study 2: N = 397) highlighted CN and liberal PO as predictors of belief in disinformation and conspiracies (COVID-related and generic), suggesting a positive effect of the former and a negative of the latter. However, results showed that CN might be of different importance for belief in disinformation and COVID-related conspiracies when PO is accounted for, with a positive effect only for liberals.
Keywords: conspiracy theory, disinformation, collective narcissism, political orientation, war in Ukraine