Presenter Status
Chair & Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Behavioral Sciences
Second Presenter Status
Psychology Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences
Third Presenter Status
Educational Psychology (Research) Graduate Student, Graduate Department of Psychology and Counseling
Preferred Session
Oral Session
Start Date
25-10-2019 3:00 PM
Presentation Abstract
This exploratory study examined psychological wellness and resilience as predictors of conspiracist beliefs, disaster response beliefs, and disaster misconceptions beliefs. Data was collected from 300 participants through Amazon’s MTurk. These individuals completed a demographic questionnaire; for Misconception Measures the Myth and Misconception Propositions about Disasters Questionnaire (Alexander, 2007), Beliefs about Disaster Response (Wenger et al., 1975), and Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Brotherton et al., 2013); for Resilience Measures the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007), Beliefs about Resilient Behaviors subscale from the Behavior in Mass Emergencies Questionnaire (Drury et al., 2013); and for Psychological Wellness the 2-item Perceived Stress Scale (Buchanan & McConnell, 2017), Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991), Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (Degrogatis, 2000), and 10-item Personality Inventory (Gosling et al., 2003). The Mage of participants was 33.6 years (SD = 10.0), ranging between 18 and 68 years. Hierarchical regressions revealed that stress, media use, resilience, disaster response beliefs, and disaster misconceptions beliefs contributed significantly to one or more models predicting disaster response beliefs (R2 = .64), disaster misconceptions beliefs (R2 = .56) and conspiracist beliefs (R2 = .35). One implication is that stress could be managed in order to decrease these beliefs.
Included in
Human Factors Psychology Commons, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons
B-3 Psychological Perceptions of Disaster Misconceptions: Exploring the Acceptance of Disaster Myths in Relation to Psychological Well-being, Resilience and Conspiracist Ideation
This exploratory study examined psychological wellness and resilience as predictors of conspiracist beliefs, disaster response beliefs, and disaster misconceptions beliefs. Data was collected from 300 participants through Amazon’s MTurk. These individuals completed a demographic questionnaire; for Misconception Measures the Myth and Misconception Propositions about Disasters Questionnaire (Alexander, 2007), Beliefs about Disaster Response (Wenger et al., 1975), and Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Brotherton et al., 2013); for Resilience Measures the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007), Beliefs about Resilient Behaviors subscale from the Behavior in Mass Emergencies Questionnaire (Drury et al., 2013); and for Psychological Wellness the 2-item Perceived Stress Scale (Buchanan & McConnell, 2017), Spiritual Well-Being Scale (Paloutzian & Ellison, 1991), Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (Degrogatis, 2000), and 10-item Personality Inventory (Gosling et al., 2003). The Mage of participants was 33.6 years (SD = 10.0), ranging between 18 and 68 years. Hierarchical regressions revealed that stress, media use, resilience, disaster response beliefs, and disaster misconceptions beliefs contributed significantly to one or more models predicting disaster response beliefs (R2 = .64), disaster misconceptions beliefs (R2 = .56) and conspiracist beliefs (R2 = .35). One implication is that stress could be managed in order to decrease these beliefs.