Evidence for a positive relationship between perceived stress and belief in conspiracy theories

Perceived stress has previously been implicated in the belief of conspiracies, with some authors suggesting that stress can precipitate increased belief in conspiracy theories. This preregistered survey study aimed to replicate findings by Swami et al. (2016) showing a positive correlation between belief in conspiracy theories and perceived stress. 372 Australian and New Zealand residents participated. Beliefs in conspiracy theories were measured using 11 items drawn mainly from existing scales (α = .87). Perceived stress was measured using the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; α = .91). The average level of endorsement of conspiracy theories was relatively low (M = 1.89 on a Likert scale from 1 to 5; SD = 0.72). Supporting our hypothesis, we found a significant and positive correlation between perceived stress and belief in conspiracy theories, r(370) = .20, p = .001, 95% CI [.096, .292]. Future work could investigate the causal mechanism producing this association.

Rethinking the Methodological Foundation of Historical Political Science

The basis of a methodology determines whether a research method can fit the core characteristics of a particular academic tradition, and thus, it is crucial to explore this foundation. Keeping in mind the controversy and progress of the philosophy of social sciences, this paper aims to elaborate on four aspects including the cognitive model, the view of causality, research methods, and analysis techniques, and to establish a more solid methodological basis for historical political science. With respect to the “upstream knowledge” of methodology, both positivism and critical realism underestimate the tremendous difference between the natural world and the social world. This leads to inherent flaws in controlled comparison and causal mechanism analysis. Given the constructiveness of social categories and the complexity of historical circumstances, the cognitive model of constructivism makes it more suitable for researchers to engage in macro-political and social analysis. From the perspective of constructivism, the causality in “storytelling,” i.e., the traditional narrative analysis, is placed as the basis of the regularity theory of causality in this paper, thus forming the historical–causal narrative. The historical–causal narrative focuses on how a research object is shaped and self-shaped in the ontological historical process, and thus ideally suits the disciplinary characteristics of historical political science. Researchers can complete theoretical dialogues, test hypotheses, and further explore the law of causality in logic and evidence, thereby achieving the purpose of “learning from history” in historical political science.

Decoding the dynamics of poleward shifting climate zones using aqua-planet model simulations

Growing evidence indicates that the atmospheric and oceanic circulation experiences a systematic poleward shift in a warming climate. However, the complexity of the climate system, including the coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere, natural climate variability and land-sea distribution, tends to obfuscate the causal mechanism underlying the circulation shift. Here, using an idealised coupled aqua-planet model, we explore the mechanism of the shifting circulation, by isolating the contributing factors from the direct CO$$_2$$ 2 forcing, the indirect ocean surface warming, and the wind-stress feedback from the ocean dynamics. We find that, in contrast to the direct CO$$_2$$ 2 forcing, ocean surface warming, in particular an enhanced subtropical ocean warming, plays an important role in driving the circulation shift. This enhanced subtropical ocean warming emerges from the background Ekman convergence of surface anomalous heat in the absence of the ocean dynamical change. It expands the tropical warm water zone, causes a poleward shift of the mid-latitude temperature gradient, hence forces a corresponding shift in the atmospheric circulation and the associated wind pattern. The shift in wind, in turn drives a shift in the ocean circulation. Our simulations, despite being idealised, capture the main features of the observed climate changes, for example, the enhanced subtropical ocean warming, poleward shift of the patterns of near-surface wind, sea level pressure, storm tracks, precipitation and large-scale ocean circulation, implying that increase in greenhouse gas concentrations not only raises the temperature, but can also systematically shift the climate zones poleward.

Participatory Budgeting: Case Study of Possible Causes of Failures

Participatory budgeting is perhaps the most widespread and popular form of democratic innovation (DI). It is often identified as an appropriate tool to deepen the democracy at the local level. The text shows that this is not always the case, as some elected officials may use it as a innovation “façade” or its design suffers from various forms of imperfections leading to its failure to be implemented. The authors focus on the practice of participatory budgeting and its failures in the Czech Republic. Through the empirical testing of causal mechanism, the article reveals the main causes of that failure, in the case of its implementation in Prague 7 borough. The mechanism presented is based on the theory-testing minimal process-tracing design in which part of the findings of the previous research have been tested. It also attempts to support empirically only the significant steps of the mechanism between cause and outcome. In particular, the three scope conditions are tested: political support, sufficient funding for participatory budgeting and the existence of a source of know-how. Authors conclude that in the selected case, there was a domino effect of failure, with successive failures in all observed conditions, which ultimately led to a complete brake of causal mechanism and failure of participatory budgeting tool.

Nationalism

Chapter 7, on nationalism, addresses the so-called ‘national identity argument’, according to which a shared national identity fosters social cohesion and is required for, or at least facilitates, egalitarian redistribution. First, it is argued that the prospect for nation-building policies, built on the idea of a shared national culture, is severely restricted by the liberal egalitarian requirements of justice defended in Chapter 4. Then the causal mechanism through which a national culture is supposed to promote trust and solidarity is scrutinized, and it is argued that it is not really supported by, for example, social identity theory and evidence from social psychology. Finally, empirical studies of the effect of national identity on trust and solidarity are considered, and it is argued that these do not support the national identity argument either.

Integration of Neural Networks and Wellbore Stability, a Modern Approach to Recognize Drilling Problems Through Computer Vision

Cavings are a valuable source of information when drilling operations are being performed, and multiple parameters can contribute to producing cavings which indicate that failure has occurred or is about to occur downhole. This study will describe a project which is an integrated study of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Geology, and Photography so that the recognition of cavings in the shaker is possible and how to link the cavings morphology with causal mechanisms related to wellbore instability problems. This study aims to develop a model which can extract caving features such as Shape, Edge Definition, Color, and Size. One of the core aspects of this study was to develop a structured image database of cavings from the Norwegian Continental Shelf which contains important feature information and the application of different algorithms used for automation enabled several opportunities to analyze and identify causal mechanism related to wellbore instability problems in real-time. As a result of that, the drilling operations would experience an improvement in terms of a faster decision-making process to solve operative problems related to wellbore stability which will lead to optimization not only in time and resources but also in safer drilling operations. Different algorithms and artificial intelligence tools were used to investigate the best approach to correctly detect and derive meaningful information about the shape, color size and edge from cavings like supervised learning, unsupervised learning, neural networks and computer vision. A key part of this study was image augmentation which plays a significant role for the detection of the cavings and their features. Multiple data sets can be created, and by using data augmentation, this will enable recognition of more complex patterns that will have on-rig applicability. Also, this new approach can deliver multiple outcomes besides failure mechanism identification such as volume of rocks being drilled, transport of cutting, type of formation being drilled.

Heterogeneous Causality Between Telecommunications and Economic Growth: An Application of Hurlin–Venet Process to the Indian States

Keeping in mind the importance of telecommunications sector for India especially post the reform of 1991, the study seeks to study the causal relationship between telecommunication and economic growth for selected panel of 17 Indian states by implicitly taking into account panel heterogeneity. Using Hurlin–Venet causal mechanism, the study investigates homogeneous causality (HC) as against heterogeneous causality (HEC). Homogeneous non-causality and HC hypothesis both of which assume homogeneity are rejected in both the directions thereby implying that Indian panel is made up of heterogeneous cross sections. After this HEC tests are conducted namely heterogeneous non-causality (HENC) and HEC for each and every cross section. The results from HENC and HEC test show that six states show up unidirectional causality from economic growth to telecommunication, four states show unidirectional causality from telecommunications to economic growth, four states show up bidirectional relationship and three states show up no causality. The results are robust to different lags for both our dependent as well as independent variables. This implies that state level differences are very much relevant for India and thus policies suitable for each state would be guided majorly by direction of relationship that is true in a particular state economy. JEL Classification: C23, L96, O40

Psychological Electoral Neighbourhood Effects

Using combined data from the British Election Study, British Social Attitudes Survey, Census, and the Cambridge Personality and Social Dynamics Research Group, a preregistered large-n regression design demonstrates the continued presence of neighbourhood effects in British elections. In addition to conventional demographic approaches, neighbourhood effects of personality dimensions and ideological orientations are demonstrated. For example, living in an area high on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is positively associated with one's likelihood of voting Conservative, regardless of one's own RWA. These findings are consistent with models in which aggregate psychological phenomena influence individual decision making, either in elections, or in domestic migration preferences. The research furthers the integration of social psychological theory with electoral analysis, but further work is required to understand the causal mechanism behind neighbourhood effects.

A symmetric DBI action theory and its applications to inflationary cosmology

The Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) field theory in string theory is important and can provide the field of the universe’s inflation. At the same time, it provides a causal mechanism for generating the original density perturbation, thereby providing the necessary density perturbation for existing the dense and sparse matter distributions of the universe. We deduce a symmetric DBI action, introduce it into inflationary cosmology to calculate various inflation parameters, further calculate the scalar perturbation spectrum and the tensor-scalar ratio, which are compared with Planck + WMAP9 + BAO data, the power spectrum predicted by the new general DBI inflation theory satisfies the CMB Experiment constraints, i.e., is consistent with the current theories and experimental observations. Consequently, the theory of this paper conforms to current experiments and is supplying the current theories, and also a new way of explaining the inflation of the universe.