Democracies assume accurate knowledge by the populace, but the human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning. We articulate why and how identification with political parties - known as partisanship - can bias information processing in the human brain. There is extensive evidence that people engage in motivated political reasoning, but recent research suggests that partisanship can alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgments. We propose an identity-based model of belief for understanding the influence of partisanship on these cognitive processes. This framework helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth. Finally, we discuss strategies for de-biasing information processing to help to create a shared reality across partisan divides.

A recurrent observation in the field of organ donation is that organ demand exceeds supply. Organ donation promotion is therefore required in order to diminish this gap. In this article, we focus on post-mortem organ donation and review psychosocial literature contributing to identify firstly, the determinants of donation, and secondly, the factors likely to increase the efficiency of donation promotion campaigns. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our review and advance promising avenues for future researc

Democracies assume accurate knowledge by the populace, but the human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning. We articulate why and how identification with political parties–known as partisanship–can bias information processing in the human brain. There is extensive evidence that people engage in motivated political reasoning, but recent research suggests that partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgments. We propose an identity-based model of belief for understanding the influence of partisanship on these cognitive processes. This framework helps explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even truth. Finally, we discuss strategies for de-biasing information processing to help create a shared reality across partisan divides.

In two studies we assessed the role of distinctiveness threat, group‐based emotions (angst, fear, and anger), and prejudice on people's willingness to engage in collective action against immigrant groups. In Study 1 (N = 222) White British participants were either informed that in the next 40 years the proportion of immigrants in the UK is unlikely to change (control condition) or that there will be more immigrants than White British people living in Britain (threat condition). We obtained support for a sequential multiple mediator model in which threat predicted British people's willingness to engage in collective action via the emotions first and then prejudice. This finding was replicated in Study 2 with an Italian sample (N = 283). These results enhance understanding of when and why advantaged groups undertake collective action against disadvantaged groups by demonstrating that distinctiveness threats and emotions promote such actions.

• Collective responsibility increases support for collective punishment. • This effect is stronger for democratic groups, as compared to nondemocratic groups. • The value of democracy creates higher expectations for democratic groups. • Violated expectations decrease group value, increasing punishment.

We test three competing theoretical accounts invoked to explain the rise and spread of political (mis)information. We compare the ideological values hypothesis (people prefer news that bolster their values and worldviews); the confirmation bias hypothesis (people prefer news that fit their preexisting stereotypical knowledge); and the political identity hypothesis (people prefer news that allow them to believe positive things about political ingroup members and negative things about political outgroup members). In three experiments ( N = 1,420), participants from the United States read news describing actions perpetrated by their political ingroup or outgroup. Consistent with the political identity hypothesis, Democrats and Republicans were both more likely to believe news about the value-upholding behavior of their ingroup or the value-undermining behavior of their outgroup. Belief was positively correlated with willingness to share on social media in all conditions, but Republicans were more likely to believe and want to share apolitical fake news.

This research examined the support for international military interventions as a function of the political system and the public opinion of the target country. In two experiments, we informed participants about a possible military intervention by the international community towards a sovereign country whose government planned to use military force against a secessionist region. They were then asked whether they would support this intervention whilst being reminded that it would cause civilian deaths. The democratic or nondemocratic political system of the target country was experimentally manipulated, and the population support for its belligerent government policy was either assessed (Experiment 1) or manipulated (Experiment 2). Results showed greater support for the intervention when the target country was nondemocratic, as compared to the democratic and the control conditions, but only when its population supported the belligerent government policy. Support for the external intervention was low when the target country was democratic, irrespective of national public opinion. These findings provide support for the democracy-as-value hypothesis applied to international military interventions, and suggest that civilian deaths (collateral damage) are more acceptable when nondemocratic populations support their government's belligerent policy.

Because punishments are expected to give offenders what they deserve proportionally to the severity of their offenses, the punishment of an entire group because of the misdeed of a few of its members is generally considered as unfair. Group entitativity might increase support for such collective punishment, because members of highly entitative groups are perceived as more similar and interchangeable. We designed three experiments comparing support for third-party collective punishment of low versus high entitative groups. As comparison base-rate, we included conditions in which participants punish an individual wrongdoer (Experiments 1 & 2). Results show that although support for individual punishment is higher than support for collective punishment, this difference was reduced (Experiment 1) or absent (Experiment 2) when the group was highly entitative. Experiment 3 replicated the increasing effect of group entitativity on support for collective punishment. We conclude that group entitativity increases the likelihood of an entire group being treated as a single unit, facilitating collective punishment when a few group members commit an offense.