October 10, 2022 • 43 mins
In this episode Laura interviews Professor Aleksandra Cichocka, Professor of Political Psychology at the University of Kent School of Psychology. Prof. Cichocka received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Warsaw in 2013. During her doctoral studies she was a Fulbright Fellow at New York University. After completing her PhD, she joined Kent, where she leads the Political Psychology Lab.
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Laura (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast remediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Professor Alexandra Chicho,
an academic who leads the politicalpsychology lab at the University
of Canton Canterbury, and formerVice President of the International
(00:32):
Society of Political Psychology.
Welcome, Alexandra.
Aleksandra Cichocka (00:35):
Hi.
Thanks for having me.
I am extremely
Laura (00:38):
happy to have you here.
So just to get started then,perhaps you could tell me what
does a political psychologist
Aleksandra Cichocka (00:45):
actually do?
So as a political psychologist,we're basically trying to
understand the world of politicsfrom a psychological perspective.
So essentially we're trying tounderstand why people endorse
certain political ideologies.
Why would they vote forone party or another?
Why would they support different policies?
(01:05):
Why would they become even involvedin politics or become disengaged?
A psychological perspective, so tryingto understand their psychological
needs, motivations, personalityprofiles, sometimes even the
biological basis of political behavior.
So essentially we're trying toexplain political behavior, political
phenomena political movements.
(01:26):
Using psychology.
So political psychology is a disciplinethat is at the border of psychology
political science, but also can beinspired from other disciplines such as
philosophy, sociology, law et cetera.
So it's a really fascinating field ofinquiry because we get to basically
observe the real life, see what'shappening on in politics, and
(01:47):
there's a lot to , be excited andinspired and worried about right now.
And we try to make sense of it fromthe perspective of of a psychologist.
Laura (01:56):
It's fascinating work.
Definitely.
And we will get into a few ofthe things you measure as a
political psychologist as well.
But first I wanna understand alittle bit about your background.
A lot of your work seems torevolve around narcissism, so what
drew you to that line of work?
Aleksandra Cichocka (02:14):
So essentially I started being interested in narcissism
by trying to figure out whetherpeople can be narcissistic about
the different groups they belong to.
, growing up in Poland, I wasreally fascinated by the way we.
As Polish people especiallythe kind of post communist time
view, our national identity.
(02:34):
And of course there's a lot ofvariation within countries and between
countries when it comes to this.
But together with my collaborators wewere always fascinated by these ideas
that people can see that their nation,for instance is really highly appreciated.
We observe that some people tendto view their nation as exceptional
and extraordinary, but that otherssimply do not appreciate it enough.
(02:55):
And this is similar to how individualnarcissists think about themselves so
that they are great, but if others donot appreciate their greatness, it's
only because they try to undermine themon purpose or they basically, See the
real potential in them and in the historyof political psychology researchers
such as Ador and from have beenwriting of about collective narcissism.
(03:20):
So these sort of unappreciatedideas of national greatness.
And they were using themto explain things like.
Rise of passe in NA Germany and trying touse them as a sort of one of the potential
factors explaining the OC cows and thesort of atrocities of World War ii.
So we revived this concept andbrought it back to Contemporary
(03:43):
social, political psychology and tryto find modern ways to measure it.
And this also meant that I, we really tryto understand individual narcissism and
whether there can be parallels betweenhow individuals can be narcissistic
about themselves versus narcissisticabout the groups that develop too.
In a sort of weird turn of events,I became interested also in
individual narcissism because Itried to understand narcissism of
(04:06):
groups and narcissism in politics.
So now my research tries to understandboth how people's individual feelings
about themselves, be it narcissisticor not, and people's sentiments
about the groups they belong to, howthey map onto different political
preferences, behaviors, all the factorsI mentioned in the introduction.
Laura (04:24):
And so it goes in this individual narcissism then of I
am the greatest obviously to, oh,my tennis club is the greatest and
also my school is the greatest, andalso my country is the greatest.
And those latter three are aform of collective narcissism.
Aleksandra Cichocka (04:38):
Yeah, that's what we would say.
So there would be forms of collectivenarcissism, although I will say that it's.
Still, something that we're stilltrying to understand is whether the
fact that someone is narcissisticabout themselves means that they're
necessarily narcissistic about allthe groups that they belong to.
Or maybe some groups become thissort of special focus of their
attention and then they don't needto kinda look for recognition of
(05:00):
the greatness of the other groups.
So this is something how this maps acrossdifferent groups within the same sort
of individual is we're still trying tounderstand, although both us and people
in other labs, other teams have looked atcollective nurses in all sorts of groups.
So yeah.
You mentioned tennis clubs and therehave been studies and organizations with
gender, ethnicity nation and nationalitiestypically most often studied in this
(05:24):
context, especially in the politicalcontext because I think it's something
that pretty salient when it comes tounderstanding political phenomena, but
as I said, it can be really attributedor measured in all sorts of groups.
I know there's some researchers do thisin sports, like you mentioned, tennis
clubs and they've done sort of collectivenarcissism in sports teams as well.
And quite surprisingly, The sort ofprocesses that are associated with
(05:46):
collective narcissism and the sortof outcomes attitudes, behaviors
seem to be similar across the board.
So regardless whether we look at,someone's workplace or their ethnic group,
there's similar processes can be observed.
That's so interesting.
Laura (05:59):
And you mentioned already gender and ethnicity as potential
sources of, or perhaps potentialtargets of collective narcissism.
And so does that mean then that collectivenarcissism feeds into these greater
social conflicts that we can see aroundus in different forms in different
countries, whether it's gender or raceor political party or what have you?
(06:20):
Is
Aleksandra Cichocka (06:21):
there a role that's played there?
It certainly can be responsible forsome of the things we're observing.
We see that just like narcissiststend to be extremely sensitive to any
criticisms or threats or basically anysigns of lack of recognition for them.
Similarly, those who are highin collective narcissism tend
to be really sensitive to anysigns that their group might be
(06:43):
criticized, undermined, undervalue.
And or threatened inany sort of broad way.
And this doesn't even have to be real.
It's not that they see somethingas an insult for example.
So that sort of oversensitivity meansthat they're more likely to lash out,
that anybody who allegedly criticizesthe group and the gut can mean that
they might be more prejudiced towardsmembers of other groups that they see.
(07:06):
, as threatening or asundermining them or ignoring.
So essentially those high in collectivenarcissism about different groups would
be more likely to be show hostilitytowards members of other groups.
So we've seen that in different contexts.
As I said, we've seen thatin the national context.
So collective narcissism isassociated with prejudice, especially
(07:28):
towards groups that are seen ashaving a sort of difficult history.
With the group.
So maybe they have been like historicalenemies, but also sometimes even members
of technically neutral groups that arejust seen as, maybe doing something
that is ambiguous and that's enoughto trigger the sort of rage and anger
of those high collected nurses in.
We also find that collective narcissismpredicts general support for violent,
(07:52):
destructive forms of dealing with threats.
There's research showing that they supportextreme movements in the organizations.
They're more likely to support,use of violence and aggression in
response to conflicts rather thanmaybe trying to invest efforts in more
Democratic or or normative mediation.
Yeah.
Like rather than trying to focuson a, a more constructive approach.
Laura (08:16):
And so you mentioned this role of anger that comes up when collective
well narcissists for otherwise.
Offended or they think theremight be something going
that doesn't recognize them.
Is that sort of the primarything, the primary emotion we
would associate with a narcissist
Aleksandra Cichocka (08:32):
backlash?
There has been theorizing about thisthat narcissism is regulated by anger
and rage, but also there has been sometheoretical works suggesting stronger
of shame and shame avoidance in.
Okay,
Laura (08:47):
so we've talked a little bit then about this emotional association
with narcissism and it reminds meof one of your paper titles cuz I
was looking through the list of yourpublications and I saw that there was
one there called Does Self Love orSelf Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs?
And I'm assuming that this self loveidea implies narcissism so well.
(09:11):
Firstly, is it self love or self hate?
And what is the connection with conspiracy
Aleksandra Cichocka (09:15):
beliefs?
So the reason for thistitle, was that a lot of.
Previous theorizing in the literaturehas linked conspiracy beliefs with
low self-esteem, so people feelingnegatively about themselves.
People were arguing that conspiracytheories might help people place blame
for any misfortunes in their life or any,negative self feelings onto others, Maybe
(09:40):
some malevolent forces that are trying toundermine them, and this is why they're,
not feeling great about themselves.
However, if you looked at the literature,the evidence has been really inconclusive.
So some studies were saying that,it's people who have a positive
self-evaluation or that are morelikely to be in conspiracy or it's
others that, it's low self-esteem.
(10:01):
And we basically try to argue is that,to fully understand this, you have to
differentiate between narcissism andwhat we would call secure self-esteem.
So this sort of self confide.
That's a need externalvalidation that basically a well
grounded sense of self-worth.
So that would be a secure self-esteem.
And narcissism, I said as I said,is a bit of a sort of exaggerated
(10:22):
self-love or exaggerated self imagethat needs validation from others to
be maintained that people seek kinda.
Confirmation for in the outside.
And our argument was that these twotypes of self worth or self evaluation
would have very different relationshipswith belief in conspiracy areas.
So if someone is high in secureself-esteem, so if someone is really
(10:48):
self confident in this sort of groundedway they might not need to find explan.
Or look for sort of explanationsfor, anything going wrong with their
lives because, they feel that they'repositive about themselves and they
feel they can face life challenges.
They don't necessarily look someoneto blame for, if they encounter
any sort of obstacles on their.
In their life.
(11:08):
However, if someone is likereally defensive, like narcissist,
they're only always on the lookoutfor sort of signs of threat.
And maybe trying someone trying toundermine them, maybe working, somewhere,
from the back seat and trying to preventthem from getting what they want, so yeah.
We argued that narcissism might beassociated with stronger belief in Tric
(11:28):
also because narcissists tend to be moreparanoid in general about other people.
And we think that might spill overto also being more paranoid about
politics in the society and differentgroups working in the society.
And this is exactly what we found.
Now there's the flip side of this, thatonce you crank into account these elements
of narcissism, you do find that link.
(11:49):
The lower secure self-esteempredicts belief in conspiracy
theories as well, right?
Cause all the people whofeel poorly about the.
In general, but the tricky thingabout this is that, narcissism
self-esteem tend to be correlated.
So on average, people who arehigher narcissism might also
show higher, self-esteem.
So these things are sometimesdifficult to tease apart without,
(12:12):
using psychological measurements.
Specific statistical analysis.
So by using specific statisticaltechniques, we try to get at these
sort of more narcissistic and moresecure aspects of self-esteem.
But in real life, to some degreethese things can be conflated and
one thing can look like another.
When you interact with other people.
(12:32):
That's really curious
Laura (12:33):
actually.
And firstly, I want to know what kind ofconspiracy beliefs we're talking about.
Are we talking about like UFOs?
Are we talking about lizardmen role in the world?
Do they all interact withNASS in the same way?
Aleksandra Cichocka (12:46):
So far we haven't, we've have found that their relationship
is pretty systematic, , we, in the, ouroriginal project, when we looked at it,
it was indeed belief in all sorts ofconspiracy theories, being like nine
11 prisons, Diana, or more generalpolitical conspiracies would people.
I believe that there are, somesecret agents within the government,
(13:06):
, trying to get at people eliminatepolitical opponents, et cetera.
But also, yeah, the more wconspiracy theories if you will.
But others have also looked at itin different contexts and have been
finding pretty consistent evidencethat this association exists
seems to be a pretty robust link.
Both us and other researchers wholooked at it in the context of the
Covid 19 pandemic . And we alsofind that conspiracy theories about
(13:29):
Coronavirus were associated with highernarcissism and collected narcissism.
So both of them independently seem tobe linked with these with conspiracy.
Laura (13:39):
It's like people to hang out with
. Aleksandra Cichocka: Yeah.
With conspiracy theories.
And there's various reasons for this.
So once one of them I said isparanoia, but another one of
is when it comes to individualnarcissism is potentially this idea.
You have access to reallyprivileged knowledge as well.
So people might think you mightlook to learn about conspiracy
(13:59):
theories just to feel that they knowsomething other people don't know.
So there is work by othersincluding Roland Ov and Ti Be,
but also Karen Douglas was.
Anthony Tian have found that needfor uniqueness is associated with
believe in conspiracy theories andneed for uniqueness and feeling special
is a characteristic of narcissism.
So that's also one reason whythey might feel the need to
(14:23):
explore conspiracy theories.
Trying to feel that theyare special privileged.
And yeah, that's another kind ofroute to by which conspiracy theories
may appeal to those high narciss.
How curious,
and so earlier as well, you mentioned that normally people who
are narcissistic have quite high self.
(14:44):
But you also mentioned this mightnot be the case because there was
the very narcissistic people who weremore prone to conspiracy beliefs and
also people with low self-esteem whowere more prone to conspiracy beliefs.
Is it that we're all proneto conspiracy beliefs?
What happened to the middle ground here?
Yeah.
And how is it that sort ofself-esteem and narcissism can
(15:05):
be separated if we are able to
Aleksandra Cichocka (15:06):
separate them?
Sorry, that's
Laura (15:07):
like a 10 part question.
, Aleksandra Cichocka: Narcissism and self-esteem are distinct.
So what I try to get at earlier is that,narcissism and self-esteem sometimes
can on the surface look similar.
So for.
Someone might be self confidentbut on at the surface, but unless
you see more about whether, howtheir self confidence manifest.
For example, do they become, enragedin criticism and versus not and the
(15:30):
first impression might not give youenough information to know whether
their positive self evaluation is.
Defensive or some narcissisticor more secure, . self-esteem and
narcissism are very distinct phenomenaor very distinct sort of traits.
And there is more and more researchfrom others, but also some work
that we have done that shows thatactually they have different origins.
(15:50):
They come from differentdevelopmental trajectories.
And as I said, people who are high innarcissism versus high in self-esteem
this the secure self-esteem would act verydifferently in response, for instance,
to criticism and, threat, et cetera.
We also there's also been this sortof idea that, very excessively high
self-esteem might simply be narcissism.
But there is more and moreevidence that this is not the case.
(16:12):
For example, we tracked changesin narcissism different aspects
of our components of narcissismand self-esteem across.
Several months and we found thattheir trajectories essentially
were slightly different.
So even the different components ofnarcissism were reinforcing each other
over time within the same person.
(16:33):
But the they were not changesin self-esteem, were not leading
to higher a lower narcissism.
, basically.
Over time, it's not that, having higherand higher self-esteem would make
someone a narcissist eventually, right?
These things are, there are differentsets of beliefs about oneself.
Narcissists believe they're betterthan others, and if someone doesn't see
it, they simply, don't wanna see it.
(16:53):
Or they're basically pushthem Do not wish them well.
But while those with high self-esteem seethemselves, positively, on usually equal
playing with others, they can recognizewhat sort of, strengths and weaknesses
they have when interacting with others.
So they don't get as upsetif someone might, criticize
them or not acknowledge it.
So they are essentially to the same traitor ways we consume our beliefs about our.
(17:18):
Now.
. So yeah, and what we have been finding isthat it is narcissism that makes people
particularly predisposed, or at least wethink, predisposed to conspiracy beliefs.
These are usually cross-sectional studies,so we don't really have often causal
evidence for narcissism to cause the,Also, it's because it's very hard to
(17:38):
experimentally manipulate someone into.
More narcissistic.
Yep.
that a relatively stable personality fora disposition that can fluctuate like
most traits, but still it's, so it'smostly from correlational evidence, but
we, it seems that it, high narcissismmakes conspiracy theories appealing.
Now the effects forself-esteem are much smaller.
So the, the degree to which lowself-esteem, predisposes people to
(18:01):
conspiracy is if anything is much weaker.
It is that defensiveness.
And we find that in other sort ofresearch on conspiracy beliefs, that
being defensive looking to, maintainthe positive image of yourself
and the groups of you belong toAssociated with conspiracy beliefs.
So it was a bit of a long-windedexplanation, but I hope that's quickly.
So the, sometimes there's an issue.
So relative strengths of theeffects we're dealing with.
(18:23):
And we are now together with colleagueshere at Kent Karen Douglas, Robbie Satton
Mickey Green and Mikey Beton, who's nowat Cambridge and is leaving this project.
We're working on a meta-analysisof all sorts of different needs
and models associated withbelieve in conspiracy theories.
So stay tuned for thefinal version of that.
Fantastic.
No, it sounds like itwould be very interesting.
(18:44):
And so now that you've clarified thisrelationship or lack of relationship,
moreover, between self-esteem andnarcissism, as far as they're not
necessarily entangled, it's clear if wecome across someone who is narcissistic,
whether individually, collectively, itsounds like they're very much related.
We can't just attack them and thinkthat will reduce their narcissism.
(19:04):
Cause you also mentioned that NA isa quite a stable trait in that case.
I understand from what you said thatcollecting narcism can be quite toxic.
. So what should we actually do about it?
Aleksandra Cichocka (19:16):
Actually That's the million old question
we're trying to answer as well.
When it comes to collective narcissism,we have some evidence that it can
develop as a sort of response tofrustrated personal needs as well.
For example there's some work showing thatpeople with low Feeling of control over
their lives or a lot of love, self worthare more likely to develop collective
(19:37):
narcissism towards donation for instance.
From that we could reason that, youknow, making people feel more in
control and boosting their self worthin a sort of healthy, secure way.
Not in a sort of overconfidence kinda way.
. Laura: No, you're the greatest to keep going.
Yeah.
It might buffer.
Some of these effects.
So it might make people a little bitless likely to be defensive about
(19:59):
the different groups they belong to.
But this work, again, isin quite a, in infancy.
So we have, we foundsome evidence for this.
So we have found some experimentalevidence that boosting ones.
Feelings of personal control would leadto would decrease collective narcissism,
at least, declaratively and temporarily.
But we don't know to what degreethis lasts and we don't, still don't
(20:20):
know, how robust this effect is cuzlike this is preliminary evidence.
But this is the direction that someof this work is might be going to.
So basically trying to focuson, satisfying people's
personal needs and making sure.
They feel secure in their environments.
That should reducedefensiveness in general.
And likewise, there are similararguments about conspiracy beliefs.
(20:41):
The model that we work with when itcomes to understanding conspiracy
theories with current Douglass forcertain and others is basically trying
to C conspiracy theories is a way tomanage different individual needs.
And one thing to stress here is that,They're not usually an effective way
to manage individual needs, but peoplethink they might be right, So they
(21:04):
promise, an enemy you could blame foryour problems or, they, they promise
maybe some degree of certainty.
If you can explain an event that is reallyunexplainable by placing, appointing to.
Who was responsible, right?
So that might give you a, a littlebit of a false sense of certainty.
And it's false because conspiracy theoriestend to reinforce feelings of thread and
(21:25):
then someone is out to get you, and thatyou shouldn't feel confident because,
there's secret forces operating in theshadows that might, try to undermine you.
But on the surface they are, there mightbe a way for people trying to manage
their frustrated personal needs and then.
Maybe one way of trying to address,belief in advers, or could be
trying to address these basic needs.
(21:47):
But the problem is that a lot of reasonswhy people feel, uncertain, disengaged
alienated, from the society is, someof the society issues we are facing.
We've just had.
Where, still have, are inthe middle of the pandemic.
This is probably not as acutelypresent in people's lives that
it was just a few months ago.
But still, a massive problem frommany people who still need to, be
(22:08):
really careful about their health andwellbeing still probably increasing,
worries anxiety uncertainty.
Big financial crisis right now.
People in the UK worriedabout paying their energy
bill, energy bills, et cetera.
So a lot of, , reasons why people feel.
Anxious uncertain, insecurehave a lot to do with the
(22:29):
society and societal processes.
So I think there's only so much we cando as individual psychologists here.
And of course, we're trying to understandand test certain interventions, but,
trying to for instance, find little nudgesor or even I don't know, training sessions
or whatever that would make peoplesuddenly less defensive, might be Harding.
(22:49):
They live in a society thatconstantly throws the curves.
Curves at them.
Laura (22:53):
I think that's very relatable.
And I had to laugh a little whenyou said they were alienated
because of course I immediatelystarted thinking about alien based
, Aleksandra Cichocka: but none, that's kinda alienated
. Laura: Not that noted.
I, you all hear as aliens are here.
So that's what we'veheard on this podcast.
But yeah, it's very, I think it'svery easy to empathize with somebody
(23:14):
who you know is there and they'reunable to meet their basic needs.
You've just mentioned heating andthis energy crisis and obviously we've
seen inflation in so many countries.
Maybe all countries.
I dunno about that.
Around the world.
And there's that real insecurity.
And if you can't do anything cuzyou cannot get paid more, you do not
have more hours in the day to work.
Yeah, you can understand why people sayit's because of this person doing this
(23:36):
to me or these people doing it to me.
And yeah, it does give you that, maybealmost the fight as a way to move forward
because you have that will to live cuzyou are in this noble fight against these
very nasty people doing things to you.
Yeah.
So it's hard not to empathize with that.
And I guess it's also a little bithard to not feel as individuals.
(23:57):
Disempowered to help becauseof course the instinct is to go
how can we help these people?
But yeah,
Aleksandra Cichocka: it has to be systemic. (24:02):
undefined
Yeah.
And I think you, but you also touchedon something that is important to stress
and which we try to really emphasizein the study of conspiracy theories.
That usually in our work, we try toreally not make judgements about whether
certain conspiracy theories are true.
Some of them are more probable thanothers, and some of them we are
(24:22):
able to evaluate as scientists.
But, the if someone believesabout, A some sort of, collision in
politics, it sometimes can be true.
And for the nine 11 sometimesis the best example.
Nine 11 was a conspiracy.
I think people just differ with respectwas like, who's behind the conspiracy?
Yeah, and in that sense I think there'sa sort of tricky line doing the kind
(24:46):
of work that we do between, on the onehand trying to be advocate for truth
and fighting misinformation et cetera.
And also trying to.
Sympathize with why people believecertain things and, , while both obviously
not, judging these beliefs, but also,sometimes we really do not have the
resources because we're not investigativejournalists to figure out what actually.
(25:09):
Has happened in center situations.
, what we're trying to is underis understand why are people
attracted to these explanationsfor what's happening in the world?
Why would certain people be, morelikely to, Read about conspiracy
theories or other, forms ofmisinformation versus not, right?
Trying to basically, and that's whatpolitical psychology is all about.
Trying to understand the why, whatdoes, what psychological mechanisms,
(25:32):
what societal mechanisms coming toplay that, make people attracted to
these to look out for these explan.
Fantastic.
Laura (25:41):
And I think there's one question I should have definitely asked already,
and that is, thinking of collectiveNarcis, How frequent actually is that?
What amount of the populationwould you say is prone to collect
narcism and is it all enough?
? ? Aleksandra Cichocka: I I think it's hard to know answer this question precisely,
this is the percentage of people, Yeah.
Mostly because we measure collectivenarcissism on the continuum.
(26:05):
So it's not that, it'slike a zero one thing.
And likewise with narcissism, yes, you canhave a narcy cystic personality disorder.
To be, would be classifiedby, a clinical psychologist.
But it's not a 0 0 1 thing.
Just like people can be a littlebit more versus less narcissistic,
people probably can be a littlebit more versus less collectively
narcissistic about their groups.
And then, as I said, we don'treally know yet if, someone
(26:25):
might be, not narcissistic about.
Country, but maybe they'resuper nurses think about their
football team, that they support.
Yeah.
In the so basically what what weare finding is that it is pretty,
pretty equally distributed evenlydistributed in the population.
, right?
So normal distribution in mostplaces we looked at, when we
looked at representative samples.
(26:46):
Some people within the, any kind ofcountry would Who are low on this,
some would fall, most would score.
Some are in the middle,some would fall very high.
But it's not to say that theyare not, there are no between
country differences, for example.
So recently we've done thisexciting project in which we
were able to measure collectivenarcissism across over 50 countries.
(27:09):
This was part of this internationalcollaboration of social and moral
psychology that we started the.
Last year in March to try tounderstand psychology behind Covid 19.
This was inspired by Jay Van Bawho got a few of us together to try
to collect data across the world.
It was a, an insane project that Idon't even know how we pulled it off,
(27:31):
but we got there and we publishedsome work on identity and covid 19.
But we also because we collecteddata and collective narcissism across
different countries, we were able tosee if there are variations between
countries and we tried to make someguesses for where they might come from.
We don't believe that people arenaturally predisposed to be, or
(27:52):
culturally predisposed to be,narcissistic about their group.
But as I said, it's a function ofpeople's sort of experiences, right?
. So it can be a function of individualexperiences, but also of how the group
is treated, how their nation is treatedin their international arena, right?
Cuz people do.
Countries do not operate in a vacuum.
There is a lot of dependencies,different systems of trade and alliances
(28:14):
and agreements and conflicts, right?
So we reasoned that the way peopleare or the nation is treated,
or the way at least that peopleperceive it to be treated might.
Mean that on average citizensof this country might be more
likely to, show higher levels ofcollective narcissism versus lower.
So one factor that we looked atthere was level of globalization.
(28:36):
So how globalized countries and that'sbecause there's also some evidence that
feelings that your group is being excludedand ignored, in international relations
can lead to higher collective narcissism.
So we said Okay, what would be a proxy?
A country being like superincluded and integrated versus
excluded from, different processes.
And we thought globalization is,the degree that to which countries
(28:57):
globalize would capture this.
And we found prettyrobust evidence for this.
So the more globalized the country,the lower levels of collective
narcissism among the citizens, theless globalize the country, the higher
collective narcissism on average.
But that also points us to maybea potential, and that kind of
speaks to your earlier questions.
Maybe, one potential isgreater integration, right?
(29:20):
And greater collaboration betweencountries, And if people feel that they're
being listened to an, that their country.
Has a say that could maybe affect,levels of collective narcissism.
But again, this is stillcrosssectional data.
We were excited that we got all these 56countries measures of collective narcis.
Wow.
Most of the samples were represented asif not all, but the effects hold, even
if we just look at representative data.
(29:40):
But it also could be that, the higheron average collective narcissism within
the country, the less globalized theybecome because they are, collective.
System is also associated withwillingness to leave supernational
organizations such as the eu.
So in the UK for example,higher collective narcissism was
related with support for Brexit.
We found similar effectsin Holland support for,
(30:01):
potential coex as they call it.
So that's not something that ison the, that is not something
that is on the ballot yet.
But, people have been making suchsuggestions and high collective
narcissism predicts greatersupport for such solutions.
So it could be that Alsothe paradoxal thing is that.
The more collective narcissism in thecountry or maybe among, leadership,
(30:24):
et cetera, the more likely we are toalso isolate ourselves, which might
mean that, some collectiveness mightbe frustrated further, et cetera.
So these are, some patels potentialimplications of these findings, but
there's still more work to be done.
To, It's always more work to be done.
Always work to that to be done.
That's why it's great to be an academic.
There's always the world that does notfail to inspire us to do more and more.
(30:50):
Absolutely.
I see.
And you've just made me think as wellof I wasn't there a certain form of US
president who said we might leave theUN or they might leave the UN because
that certain country was so great
Very subtle of me.
Very subtle.
Aleksandra Cichocka (31:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Something that inspired us to thinkabout, these links and there is
evidence that higher, us collectivenarcissism was linked to support
for the president versus opponents.
But of course, Yeah.
And a lot of his rhetoric has thesemarkers of collective narcissism, right?
. So we are an exceptional country.
(31:26):
, and you.
Our enemies just don'tappreciate how great we are.
We need to show everybody whowe yeah, are dealing with.
But of course hard to say to whatdegree he himself would endorses his
narratives, but for, from what he, hisrhetoric, that's certainly such as that.
This is that kind of versionof of national identity.
And so I guess one thing
Laura (31:46):
people will be wondering Is at the national level, the difference
then between collective narcism andpatriotism, because often people can be,
can view patriotism as a very good thing.
So do they different and in what way?
Aleksandra Cichocka (32:01):
Yeah, that's a great question.
And in some way it's useful to think aboutthe difference between secure self-esteem.
and individual narcissism, right?
So justice people can besecure about themselves.
They can also have very secure,confident attachment to their group
and feel strong ties with, other peoplein their nation feel really positive
about their culture and their history.
(32:22):
But that doesn't necessarily imply thatthey think they're better than others
or that they think they're, unique andthey deserve special treatment in any.
, there's there can be this positivesecure group identity that actually has
a lot of benefits in both in terms ofhow we treat others, members of other
groups, other countries, but also howwe treat members of our own society.
(32:43):
So the real probably shocking and sadparadox of collective narcissism is that.
It shows disregard for members ofother groups and, other nations.
But those high collected narcissismactually also don't really care
that much about their compatriots.
They care more about the image of thenation and how the nation is seen in
(33:04):
the international arena, whether it'sportrayed as strong as important, but
not so much about the wellbeing and.
Of others within the societywhile patriotism is associated.
Not only caring, for your nationand the symbols of the flags,
but also caring for others.
Making sure that, you're supportingyour fellow citizens with political
(33:27):
engagement, wanting to war for thecountry to make it better often.
. So an interesting example of howcollective narcissism can almost
backfire on people comes from someof the research on that we've done
in the context of the pandemic.
So Biki Feld, who's justbeen his PhD here at Kent.
And colleagues did some studies whenhe basically tried to gauge people's
(33:49):
support for certain policies that havebeen suggested during the pandemic
that might actually be, beneficialfor sticking it to others, but not
beneficial for people within the country.
So one example is the infamousventilator scheme that UK opted
out of during the pandemic.
So at the very beginning, therewas this sort of opportunity for
(34:10):
buying ventilators within the eu.
And this was the sort oftransition period for the uk.
So UK could have joined the Youin purchasing this equipment.
, and basically get a better dealfor people in the UK that had
decided to opt out of this.
And see people seem to havesupported this, at least those who
were high in collective narciss.
And because they felt no, we canshow them that we can do it alone and
(34:32):
better, even though they, objectivelythey were losing out on this decision.
Another example comes from the US where.
President Trump at some point suggestedthat US should report should test
less so to report less cases sothat it would make the country look
better in international comparisons.
And we found that those higherend collective narcissism said
(34:55):
that, Yeah, we should do this.
Even though we explicitly toldthem that testing, is really
important, that can save lives.
And they were still, even though itwould say, it could explicitly harm
people in the country, they wouldstill be more like, To support this.
And that was regardless of their supportfor Trump in the first place, right?
So we controlled for this andstill hire collective narcissism
(35:15):
predicted saying Yeah, let's reducetesting would make us looks better.
And that was statistically mediated,like this idea that, we need.
To get, We need recognition.
We need to look strong inthe international arena.
And we have examples of this also,from other context organizations, et
cetera, that those who high collectivenarcissism really treat the group as a,
(35:36):
something that serves their ego, right?
So they want to feel good aboutthemselves, so they invest, they
think we need to make our country lookgreat and at whatever costs, right?
So even if we treat.
Are other people within the countryas disposable as someone you can
just use for your own service, right?
So , that's the, I think that's oneof the saddest aspects of collective
(36:00):
narcissism that we find it reallypack fire on your own country.
And I think to some degree that'ssome maybe something that leaders.
We suspect do not always recognize, theythink that just boosting this sort of
idea let's, whatever it takes, let's justshape this view that the we are special,
we are exceptional, we are ordinary.
That might in some way also leads togreater cohesion within the nation.
(36:23):
But that's not the case.
It might lead to, the need to defendthe image and the reputation of the
nation, but it can backfire becausepeople do not care for each other.
They care for what it looks like to the.
Laura (36:35):
As you're saying that the image that comes to my mind
is actually Russia right now.
Yeah.
Where there's obviously been a lot ofdis discourses over many years about
sort of Russian exceptionalism andstrength, this idea of this Russian
bear, and yet now with the mobilization.
Yeah.
And
Aleksandra Cichocka (36:51):
crucially that the West is not giving them the
recognition that is you, that they'reconstantly trying to undermine them.
Exactly.
Russia,
Laura (36:58):
Its own specials type of sovereignty.
Yeah.
And does deserves recognition.
And now, yeah, you have this effectof mobilization and individual
Russian people being treated.
Disposable.
Yeah.
In like very egotisticallooking kind of way.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's just, it's horrific.
So I can you, I think that maybepaints the picture of how collective
(37:20):
narcism can actually hurt Yeah.
Inside of a country.
Aleksandra Cichocka (37:24):
Yeah.
And also you see a lot ofRussians trying to flee.
There's at least reports right now,being worried they're gonna be sent
to, and both because they might beworried they're gonna send to a war.
They do not support.
Of course not everybody Russia supports.
Of course.
Yeah.
But also we have some evidenceshowing that those who are
high in collective narcissism.
Do not show loyalty to their group.
(37:45):
If they can get a bit better dealelsewhere, they're gonna go, Wow.
It could be, Yeah, becauseit's not really about
They don't care aboutthat particular group.
They might, if they can find likeprestige, almost prestige elsewhere.
Yeah.
Find prestige elsewhere.
They're, that's whatthey're gonna go after.
So for instance and this isagain, Sort of indirect evidence.
(38:05):
But that same researcher who doesthis covid studies, has found that
in study of politicians in Iceland,those who are collectively narciss
think about their political party.
Were the ones who have changedthe parties the most in the past.
Wow.
So that kind of is indirectevidence that, that we have.
That chasing prestige.
So it may as well be that some of the,that some people within Russia, and that
(38:29):
obviously would play out similar in othercountries, might have been supporting
Puttings agenda until it came for them.
And they were the ones who were,might have been sent to the front
and they were like, Oh no, nevermind.
Yeah.
There's that meme
Laura (38:41):
about you joined the face eating, the leopards eating face party.
And then you never thought that theleopard would eat your own face.
There's that, there's awhole meme about it, right?
Oh yeah.
Never thought this would happen tome, but now it's been turned back on
me and I'm gonna stop what I'm out.
Aleksandra Cichocka (38:54):
Yeah, exactly.
Yes, I think Russia is areally great example of this
rhetoric from Putins right now.
And yeah, has a lot of thosemarks of the narcis, isn't it?
In the we can reallysee very well there how.
Certain things can be, framed asinsults and threats even in, maybe
we, from our perspective, wouldn'tsee them as threatening, from the
(39:15):
perspective of NA and Russia'sneighboring countries, et cetera.
Laura (39:20):
Absolutely.
Okay.
So look we've talked about collectivenarcissism, individual narcism.
We're talked about conspiracies andhow this is all terrible for everyone.
Nobody wants to be acollective narcissist, really.
But I if you had to give one piece ofadvice, and of course more research
needed, but to people who were tryingto work on types of social conflicts, I.
(39:41):
Is there something you could tell themabout how to deal with or to help or
to redirect collective narcissists sothat we could accomplish something more
collaborative and coherent as a society?
Aleksandra Cichocka (39:53):
This is a difficult question, of course.
Cause it, it's very hard to giveadvice if you don't have direct
evidence for this advice working,if you are workers in academia.
But I think there, there would betwo things I would pay attention to.
One of them is trying to figure out, when.
Some identities may not actually buildthe group, but about the individual.
So look into the individual modelsthat people have for endorsing center
(40:16):
and beliefs, certain versions of theiridentity, so basically trying to look
at the psychological motivations behind.
Different beliefs and be collectednarcissism, belief in conspiracy
or so train to understand why,what kind of functions, what it
serves for individual, right?
What does it give them or promise them atleast, Because as I said, some of these
things might backfire on the person.
(40:37):
But the second thing, and I guessthat's the hardest one is looking
at structural effect factors,which I mentioned earlier, right?
Because.
A lot of this really points to the, orbows down to the fact that people cannot
have their basic need mets met sometimes in the modern societies, which
means that they are psychologicallymore vulnerable to latch onto these
(40:59):
beliefs that can be really detrimental,not only for the society more broadly,
but also for them in the long term.
And often we've, there is this, Wayin which people deal with frustrated
needs or deal with the people,develop coping styles that are
actually backfiring later on, right?
Then that can kinda have thisknock on effect and be almost
(41:21):
like a vicious circle, right?
So say someone, tries to clingingonto a conspiracy theory to make,
to feel more secure, but they end upfeeling more secure and more alienated
from politics even further, right?
Looking at structural factors.
It can affect the individual.
I think that's what I would focus on.
But how to actually tackle them, Ithink , it's really difficult and
we still trying to figure that out.
(41:43):
Working on different interventionsand yeah, real life applications.
Laura (41:48):
So basically watch this space
Aleksandra Cichocka (41:51):
fantastic.
And not only, and of course a lot, lotsof others, people doing this work as well.
So I'm excited to see whatcomes out of other labs too.
Laura (41:58):
Fantastic.
Look, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
It has been so interestingand so engaging.
I really appreciate your time.
And so for those interested in learningmore about your work, where can they find.
Aleksandra Cichocka (42:11):
The University of Kent website all
our publications are there.
Most of them are available to download.
And you can also followme and our lab on Twitter.
We post usually new developments from ourteam and other people we collaborate with.
So it's usually a lot of exciting workcoming from political psychology at.
(42:32):
And we have a master's programin possible psychology for those
who want to kinda dig in further.
There you go.
Laura (42:39):
recruiting student who you
Aleksandra Cichocka (42:41):
Yes.
Laura (42:41):
Super.
And
Aleksandra Cichocka: what's the Twitter hand? (42:43):
undefined
Yeah, so it's at Alex Chi Hot Guys,my Twitter and Paul Psych at Kens
Paul Psych Kent is the lab Twitter.
Laura (42:50):
Fantastic.
We'll make sure to include thisin the podcast description as.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Great.
So thanks again and for everyone else.
Until next time, this is Laura May with aConflict Tipping podcast from media.com.
Hello, and welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast remediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Professor Alexandra Chicho,
an academic who leads the politicalpsychology lab at the University
of Canton Canterbury, and formerVice President of the International
(00:32):
Society of Political Psychology.
Welcome, Alexandra.
Aleksandra Cichocka (00:35):
Hi.
Thanks for having me.
I am extremely
Laura (00:38):
happy to have you here.
So just to get started then,perhaps you could tell me what
does a political psychologist
Aleksandra Cichocka (00:45):
actually do?
So as a political psychologist,we're basically trying to
understand the world of politicsfrom a psychological perspective.
So essentially we're trying tounderstand why people endorse
certain political ideologies.
Why would they vote forone party or another?
Why would they support different policies?
(01:05):
Why would they become even involvedin politics or become disengaged?
A psychological perspective, so tryingto understand their psychological
needs, motivations, personalityprofiles, sometimes even the
biological basis of political behavior.
So essentially we're trying toexplain political behavior, political
phenomena political movements.
(01:26):
Using psychology.
So political psychology is a disciplinethat is at the border of psychology
political science, but also can beinspired from other disciplines such as
philosophy, sociology, law et cetera.
So it's a really fascinating field ofinquiry because we get to basically
observe the real life, see what'shappening on in politics, and
(01:47):
there's a lot to , be excited andinspired and worried about right now.
And we try to make sense of it fromthe perspective of of a psychologist.
Laura (01:56):
It's fascinating work.
Definitely.
And we will get into a few ofthe things you measure as a
political psychologist as well.
But first I wanna understand alittle bit about your background.
A lot of your work seems torevolve around narcissism, so what
drew you to that line of work?
Aleksandra Cichocka (02:14):
So essentially I started being interested in narcissism
by trying to figure out whetherpeople can be narcissistic about
the different groups they belong to.
, growing up in Poland, I wasreally fascinated by the way we.
As Polish people especiallythe kind of post communist time
view, our national identity.
(02:34):
And of course there's a lot ofvariation within countries and between
countries when it comes to this.
But together with my collaborators wewere always fascinated by these ideas
that people can see that their nation,for instance is really highly appreciated.
We observe that some people tendto view their nation as exceptional
and extraordinary, but that otherssimply do not appreciate it enough.
(02:55):
And this is similar to how individualnarcissists think about themselves so
that they are great, but if others donot appreciate their greatness, it's
only because they try to undermine themon purpose or they basically, See the
real potential in them and in the historyof political psychology researchers
such as Ador and from have beenwriting of about collective narcissism.
(03:20):
So these sort of unappreciatedideas of national greatness.
And they were using themto explain things like.
Rise of passe in NA Germany and trying touse them as a sort of one of the potential
factors explaining the OC cows and thesort of atrocities of World War ii.
So we revived this concept andbrought it back to Contemporary
(03:43):
social, political psychology and tryto find modern ways to measure it.
And this also meant that I, we really tryto understand individual narcissism and
whether there can be parallels betweenhow individuals can be narcissistic
about themselves versus narcissisticabout the groups that develop too.
In a sort of weird turn of events,I became interested also in
individual narcissism because Itried to understand narcissism of
(04:06):
groups and narcissism in politics.
So now my research tries to understandboth how people's individual feelings
about themselves, be it narcissisticor not, and people's sentiments
about the groups they belong to, howthey map onto different political
preferences, behaviors, all the factorsI mentioned in the introduction.
Laura (04:24):
And so it goes in this individual narcissism then of I
am the greatest obviously to, oh,my tennis club is the greatest and
also my school is the greatest, andalso my country is the greatest.
And those latter three are aform of collective narcissism.
Aleksandra Cichocka (04:38):
Yeah, that's what we would say.
So there would be forms of collectivenarcissism, although I will say that it's.
Still, something that we're stilltrying to understand is whether the
fact that someone is narcissisticabout themselves means that they're
necessarily narcissistic about allthe groups that they belong to.
Or maybe some groups become thissort of special focus of their
attention and then they don't needto kinda look for recognition of
(05:00):
the greatness of the other groups.
So this is something how this maps acrossdifferent groups within the same sort
of individual is we're still trying tounderstand, although both us and people
in other labs, other teams have looked atcollective nurses in all sorts of groups.
So yeah.
You mentioned tennis clubs and therehave been studies and organizations with
gender, ethnicity nation and nationalitiestypically most often studied in this
(05:24):
context, especially in the politicalcontext because I think it's something
that pretty salient when it comes tounderstanding political phenomena, but
as I said, it can be really attributedor measured in all sorts of groups.
I know there's some researchers do thisin sports, like you mentioned, tennis
clubs and they've done sort of collectivenarcissism in sports teams as well.
And quite surprisingly, The sort ofprocesses that are associated with
(05:46):
collective narcissism and the sortof outcomes attitudes, behaviors
seem to be similar across the board.
So regardless whether we look at,someone's workplace or their ethnic group,
there's similar processes can be observed.
That's so interesting.
Laura (05:59):
And you mentioned already gender and ethnicity as potential
sources of, or perhaps potentialtargets of collective narcissism.
And so does that mean then that collectivenarcissism feeds into these greater
social conflicts that we can see aroundus in different forms in different
countries, whether it's gender or raceor political party or what have you?
(06:20):
Is
Aleksandra Cichocka (06:21):
there a role that's played there?
It certainly can be responsible forsome of the things we're observing.
We see that just like narcissiststend to be extremely sensitive to any
criticisms or threats or basically anysigns of lack of recognition for them.
Similarly, those who are highin collective narcissism tend
to be really sensitive to anysigns that their group might be
(06:43):
criticized, undermined, undervalue.
And or threatened inany sort of broad way.
And this doesn't even have to be real.
It's not that they see somethingas an insult for example.
So that sort of oversensitivity meansthat they're more likely to lash out,
that anybody who allegedly criticizesthe group and the gut can mean that
they might be more prejudiced towardsmembers of other groups that they see.
(07:06):
, as threatening or asundermining them or ignoring.
So essentially those high in collectivenarcissism about different groups would
be more likely to be show hostilitytowards members of other groups.
So we've seen that in different contexts.
As I said, we've seen thatin the national context.
So collective narcissism isassociated with prejudice, especially
(07:28):
towards groups that are seen ashaving a sort of difficult history.
With the group.
So maybe they have been like historicalenemies, but also sometimes even members
of technically neutral groups that arejust seen as, maybe doing something
that is ambiguous and that's enoughto trigger the sort of rage and anger
of those high collected nurses in.
We also find that collective narcissismpredicts general support for violent,
(07:52):
destructive forms of dealing with threats.
There's research showing that they supportextreme movements in the organizations.
They're more likely to support,use of violence and aggression in
response to conflicts rather thanmaybe trying to invest efforts in more
Democratic or or normative mediation.
Yeah.
Like rather than trying to focuson a, a more constructive approach.
Laura (08:16):
And so you mentioned this role of anger that comes up when collective
well narcissists for otherwise.
Offended or they think theremight be something going
that doesn't recognize them.
Is that sort of the primarything, the primary emotion we
would associate with a narcissist
Aleksandra Cichocka (08:32):
backlash?
There has been theorizing about thisthat narcissism is regulated by anger
and rage, but also there has been sometheoretical works suggesting stronger
of shame and shame avoidance in.
Okay,
Laura (08:47):
so we've talked a little bit then about this emotional association
with narcissism and it reminds meof one of your paper titles cuz I
was looking through the list of yourpublications and I saw that there was
one there called Does Self Love orSelf Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs?
And I'm assuming that this self loveidea implies narcissism so well.
(09:11):
Firstly, is it self love or self hate?
And what is the connection with conspiracy
Aleksandra Cichocka (09:15):
beliefs?
So the reason for thistitle, was that a lot of.
Previous theorizing in the literaturehas linked conspiracy beliefs with
low self-esteem, so people feelingnegatively about themselves.
People were arguing that conspiracytheories might help people place blame
for any misfortunes in their life or any,negative self feelings onto others, Maybe
(09:40):
some malevolent forces that are trying toundermine them, and this is why they're,
not feeling great about themselves.
However, if you looked at the literature,the evidence has been really inconclusive.
So some studies were saying that,it's people who have a positive
self-evaluation or that are morelikely to be in conspiracy or it's
others that, it's low self-esteem.
(10:01):
And we basically try to argue is that,to fully understand this, you have to
differentiate between narcissism andwhat we would call secure self-esteem.
So this sort of self confide.
That's a need externalvalidation that basically a well
grounded sense of self-worth.
So that would be a secure self-esteem.
And narcissism, I said as I said,is a bit of a sort of exaggerated
(10:22):
self-love or exaggerated self imagethat needs validation from others to
be maintained that people seek kinda.
Confirmation for in the outside.
And our argument was that these twotypes of self worth or self evaluation
would have very different relationshipswith belief in conspiracy areas.
So if someone is high in secureself-esteem, so if someone is really
(10:48):
self confident in this sort of groundedway they might not need to find explan.
Or look for sort of explanationsfor, anything going wrong with their
lives because, they feel that they'repositive about themselves and they
feel they can face life challenges.
They don't necessarily look someoneto blame for, if they encounter
any sort of obstacles on their.
In their life.
(11:08):
However, if someone is likereally defensive, like narcissist,
they're only always on the lookoutfor sort of signs of threat.
And maybe trying someone trying toundermine them, maybe working, somewhere,
from the back seat and trying to preventthem from getting what they want, so yeah.
We argued that narcissism might beassociated with stronger belief in Tric
(11:28):
also because narcissists tend to be moreparanoid in general about other people.
And we think that might spill overto also being more paranoid about
politics in the society and differentgroups working in the society.
And this is exactly what we found.
Now there's the flip side of this, thatonce you crank into account these elements
of narcissism, you do find that link.
(11:49):
The lower secure self-esteempredicts belief in conspiracy
theories as well, right?
Cause all the people whofeel poorly about the.
In general, but the tricky thingabout this is that, narcissism
self-esteem tend to be correlated.
So on average, people who arehigher narcissism might also
show higher, self-esteem.
So these things are sometimesdifficult to tease apart without,
(12:12):
using psychological measurements.
Specific statistical analysis.
So by using specific statisticaltechniques, we try to get at these
sort of more narcissistic and moresecure aspects of self-esteem.
But in real life, to some degreethese things can be conflated and
one thing can look like another.
When you interact with other people.
(12:32):
That's really curious
Laura (12:33):
actually.
And firstly, I want to know what kind ofconspiracy beliefs we're talking about.
Are we talking about like UFOs?
Are we talking about lizardmen role in the world?
Do they all interact withNASS in the same way?
Aleksandra Cichocka (12:46):
So far we haven't, we've have found that their relationship
is pretty systematic, , we, in the, ouroriginal project, when we looked at it,
it was indeed belief in all sorts ofconspiracy theories, being like nine
11 prisons, Diana, or more generalpolitical conspiracies would people.
I believe that there are, somesecret agents within the government,
(13:06):
, trying to get at people eliminatepolitical opponents, et cetera.
But also, yeah, the more wconspiracy theories if you will.
But others have also looked at itin different contexts and have been
finding pretty consistent evidencethat this association exists
seems to be a pretty robust link.
Both us and other researchers wholooked at it in the context of the
Covid 19 pandemic . And we alsofind that conspiracy theories about
(13:29):
Coronavirus were associated with highernarcissism and collected narcissism.
So both of them independently seem tobe linked with these with conspiracy.
Laura (13:39):
It's like people to hang out with
. Aleksandra Cichocka: Yeah.
With conspiracy theories.
And there's various reasons for this.
So once one of them I said isparanoia, but another one of
is when it comes to individualnarcissism is potentially this idea.
You have access to reallyprivileged knowledge as well.
So people might think you mightlook to learn about conspiracy
(13:59):
theories just to feel that they knowsomething other people don't know.
So there is work by othersincluding Roland Ov and Ti Be,
but also Karen Douglas was.
Anthony Tian have found that needfor uniqueness is associated with
believe in conspiracy theories andneed for uniqueness and feeling special
is a characteristic of narcissism.
So that's also one reason whythey might feel the need to
(14:23):
explore conspiracy theories.
Trying to feel that theyare special privileged.
And yeah, that's another kind ofroute to by which conspiracy theories
may appeal to those high narciss.
How curious,
and so earlier as well, you mentioned that normally people who
are narcissistic have quite high self.
(14:44):
But you also mentioned this mightnot be the case because there was
the very narcissistic people who weremore prone to conspiracy beliefs and
also people with low self-esteem whowere more prone to conspiracy beliefs.
Is it that we're all proneto conspiracy beliefs?
What happened to the middle ground here?
Yeah.
And how is it that sort ofself-esteem and narcissism can
(15:05):
be separated if we are able to
Aleksandra Cichocka (15:06):
separate them?
Sorry, that's
Laura (15:07):
like a 10 part question.
, Aleksandra Cichocka: Narcissism and self-esteem are distinct.
So what I try to get at earlier is that,narcissism and self-esteem sometimes
can on the surface look similar.
So for.
Someone might be self confidentbut on at the surface, but unless
you see more about whether, howtheir self confidence manifest.
For example, do they become, enragedin criticism and versus not and the
(15:30):
first impression might not give youenough information to know whether
their positive self evaluation is.
Defensive or some narcissisticor more secure, . self-esteem and
narcissism are very distinct phenomenaor very distinct sort of traits.
And there is more and more researchfrom others, but also some work
that we have done that shows thatactually they have different origins.
(15:50):
They come from differentdevelopmental trajectories.
And as I said, people who are high innarcissism versus high in self-esteem
this the secure self-esteem would act verydifferently in response, for instance,
to criticism and, threat, et cetera.
We also there's also been this sortof idea that, very excessively high
self-esteem might simply be narcissism.
But there is more and moreevidence that this is not the case.
(16:12):
For example, we tracked changesin narcissism different aspects
of our components of narcissismand self-esteem across.
Several months and we found thattheir trajectories essentially
were slightly different.
So even the different components ofnarcissism were reinforcing each other
over time within the same person.
(16:33):
But the they were not changesin self-esteem, were not leading
to higher a lower narcissism.
, basically.
Over time, it's not that, having higherand higher self-esteem would make
someone a narcissist eventually, right?
These things are, there are differentsets of beliefs about oneself.
Narcissists believe they're betterthan others, and if someone doesn't see
it, they simply, don't wanna see it.
(16:53):
Or they're basically pushthem Do not wish them well.
But while those with high self-esteem seethemselves, positively, on usually equal
playing with others, they can recognizewhat sort of, strengths and weaknesses
they have when interacting with others.
So they don't get as upsetif someone might, criticize
them or not acknowledge it.
So they are essentially to the same traitor ways we consume our beliefs about our.
(17:18):
Now.
. So yeah, and what we have been finding isthat it is narcissism that makes people
particularly predisposed, or at least wethink, predisposed to conspiracy beliefs.
These are usually cross-sectional studies,so we don't really have often causal
evidence for narcissism to cause the,Also, it's because it's very hard to
(17:38):
experimentally manipulate someone into.
More narcissistic.
Yep.
that a relatively stable personality fora disposition that can fluctuate like
most traits, but still it's, so it'smostly from correlational evidence, but
we, it seems that it, high narcissismmakes conspiracy theories appealing.
Now the effects forself-esteem are much smaller.
So the, the degree to which lowself-esteem, predisposes people to
(18:01):
conspiracy is if anything is much weaker.
It is that defensiveness.
And we find that in other sort ofresearch on conspiracy beliefs, that
being defensive looking to, maintainthe positive image of yourself
and the groups of you belong toAssociated with conspiracy beliefs.
So it was a bit of a long-windedexplanation, but I hope that's quickly.
So the, sometimes there's an issue.
So relative strengths of theeffects we're dealing with.
(18:23):
And we are now together with colleagueshere at Kent Karen Douglas, Robbie Satton
Mickey Green and Mikey Beton, who's nowat Cambridge and is leaving this project.
We're working on a meta-analysisof all sorts of different needs
and models associated withbelieve in conspiracy theories.
So stay tuned for thefinal version of that.
Fantastic.
No, it sounds like itwould be very interesting.
(18:44):
And so now that you've clarified thisrelationship or lack of relationship,
moreover, between self-esteem andnarcissism, as far as they're not
necessarily entangled, it's clear if wecome across someone who is narcissistic,
whether individually, collectively, itsounds like they're very much related.
We can't just attack them and thinkthat will reduce their narcissism.
(19:04):
Cause you also mentioned that NA isa quite a stable trait in that case.
I understand from what you said thatcollecting narcism can be quite toxic.
. So what should we actually do about it?
Aleksandra Cichocka (19:16):
Actually That's the million old question
we're trying to answer as well.
When it comes to collective narcissism,we have some evidence that it can
develop as a sort of response tofrustrated personal needs as well.
For example there's some work showing thatpeople with low Feeling of control over
their lives or a lot of love, self worthare more likely to develop collective
(19:37):
narcissism towards donation for instance.
From that we could reason that, youknow, making people feel more in
control and boosting their self worthin a sort of healthy, secure way.
Not in a sort of overconfidence kinda way.
. Laura: No, you're the greatest to keep going.
Yeah.
It might buffer.
Some of these effects.
So it might make people a little bitless likely to be defensive about
(19:59):
the different groups they belong to.
But this work, again, isin quite a, in infancy.
So we have, we foundsome evidence for this.
So we have found some experimentalevidence that boosting ones.
Feelings of personal control would leadto would decrease collective narcissism,
at least, declaratively and temporarily.
But we don't know to what degreethis lasts and we don't, still don't
(20:20):
know, how robust this effect is cuzlike this is preliminary evidence.
But this is the direction that someof this work is might be going to.
So basically trying to focuson, satisfying people's
personal needs and making sure.
They feel secure in their environments.
That should reducedefensiveness in general.
And likewise, there are similararguments about conspiracy beliefs.
(20:41):
The model that we work with when itcomes to understanding conspiracy
theories with current Douglass forcertain and others is basically trying
to C conspiracy theories is a way tomanage different individual needs.
And one thing to stress here is that,They're not usually an effective way
to manage individual needs, but peoplethink they might be right, So they
(21:04):
promise, an enemy you could blame foryour problems or, they, they promise
maybe some degree of certainty.
If you can explain an event that is reallyunexplainable by placing, appointing to.
Who was responsible, right?
So that might give you a, a littlebit of a false sense of certainty.
And it's false because conspiracy theoriestend to reinforce feelings of thread and
(21:25):
then someone is out to get you, and thatyou shouldn't feel confident because,
there's secret forces operating in theshadows that might, try to undermine you.
But on the surface they are, there mightbe a way for people trying to manage
their frustrated personal needs and then.
Maybe one way of trying to address,belief in advers, or could be
trying to address these basic needs.
(21:47):
But the problem is that a lot of reasonswhy people feel, uncertain, disengaged
alienated, from the society is, someof the society issues we are facing.
We've just had.
Where, still have, are inthe middle of the pandemic.
This is probably not as acutelypresent in people's lives that
it was just a few months ago.
But still, a massive problem frommany people who still need to, be
(22:08):
really careful about their health andwellbeing still probably increasing,
worries anxiety uncertainty.
Big financial crisis right now.
People in the UK worriedabout paying their energy
bill, energy bills, et cetera.
So a lot of, , reasons why people feel.
Anxious uncertain, insecurehave a lot to do with the
(22:29):
society and societal processes.
So I think there's only so much we cando as individual psychologists here.
And of course, we're trying to understandand test certain interventions, but,
trying to for instance, find little nudgesor or even I don't know, training sessions
or whatever that would make peoplesuddenly less defensive, might be Harding.
(22:49):
They live in a society thatconstantly throws the curves.
Curves at them.
Laura (22:53):
I think that's very relatable.
And I had to laugh a little whenyou said they were alienated
because of course I immediatelystarted thinking about alien based
, Aleksandra Cichocka: but none, that's kinda alienated
. Laura: Not that noted.
I, you all hear as aliens are here.
So that's what we'veheard on this podcast.
But yeah, it's very, I think it'svery easy to empathize with somebody
(23:14):
who you know is there and they'reunable to meet their basic needs.
You've just mentioned heating andthis energy crisis and obviously we've
seen inflation in so many countries.
Maybe all countries.
I dunno about that.
Around the world.
And there's that real insecurity.
And if you can't do anything cuzyou cannot get paid more, you do not
have more hours in the day to work.
Yeah, you can understand why people sayit's because of this person doing this
(23:36):
to me or these people doing it to me.
And yeah, it does give you that, maybealmost the fight as a way to move forward
because you have that will to live cuzyou are in this noble fight against these
very nasty people doing things to you.
Yeah.
So it's hard not to empathize with that.
And I guess it's also a little bithard to not feel as individuals.
(23:57):
Disempowered to help becauseof course the instinct is to go
how can we help these people?
But yeah,
Aleksandra Cichocka: it has to be systemic. (24:02):
undefined
Yeah.
And I think you, but you also touchedon something that is important to stress
and which we try to really emphasizein the study of conspiracy theories.
That usually in our work, we try toreally not make judgements about whether
certain conspiracy theories are true.
Some of them are more probable thanothers, and some of them we are
(24:22):
able to evaluate as scientists.
But, the if someone believesabout, A some sort of, collision in
politics, it sometimes can be true.
And for the nine 11 sometimesis the best example.
Nine 11 was a conspiracy.
I think people just differ with respectwas like, who's behind the conspiracy?
Yeah, and in that sense I think there'sa sort of tricky line doing the kind
(24:46):
of work that we do between, on the onehand trying to be advocate for truth
and fighting misinformation et cetera.
And also trying to.
Sympathize with why people believecertain things and, , while both obviously
not, judging these beliefs, but also,sometimes we really do not have the
resources because we're not investigativejournalists to figure out what actually.
(25:09):
Has happened in center situations.
, what we're trying to is underis understand why are people
attracted to these explanationsfor what's happening in the world?
Why would certain people be, morelikely to, Read about conspiracy
theories or other, forms ofmisinformation versus not, right?
Trying to basically, and that's whatpolitical psychology is all about.
Trying to understand the why, whatdoes, what psychological mechanisms,
(25:32):
what societal mechanisms coming toplay that, make people attracted to
these to look out for these explan.
Fantastic.
Laura (25:41):
And I think there's one question I should have definitely asked already,
and that is, thinking of collectiveNarcis, How frequent actually is that?
What amount of the populationwould you say is prone to collect
narcism and is it all enough?
? ? Aleksandra Cichocka: I I think it's hard to know answer this question precisely,
this is the percentage of people, Yeah.
Mostly because we measure collectivenarcissism on the continuum.
(26:05):
So it's not that, it'slike a zero one thing.
And likewise with narcissism, yes, you canhave a narcy cystic personality disorder.
To be, would be classifiedby, a clinical psychologist.
But it's not a 0 0 1 thing.
Just like people can be a littlebit more versus less narcissistic,
people probably can be a littlebit more versus less collectively
narcissistic about their groups.
And then, as I said, we don'treally know yet if, someone
(26:25):
might be, not narcissistic about.
Country, but maybe they'resuper nurses think about their
football team, that they support.
Yeah.
In the so basically what what weare finding is that it is pretty,
pretty equally distributed evenlydistributed in the population.
, right?
So normal distribution in mostplaces we looked at, when we
looked at representative samples.
(26:46):
Some people within the, any kind ofcountry would Who are low on this,
some would fall, most would score.
Some are in the middle,some would fall very high.
But it's not to say that theyare not, there are no between
country differences, for example.
So recently we've done thisexciting project in which we
were able to measure collectivenarcissism across over 50 countries.
(27:09):
This was part of this internationalcollaboration of social and moral
psychology that we started the.
Last year in March to try tounderstand psychology behind Covid 19.
This was inspired by Jay Van Bawho got a few of us together to try
to collect data across the world.
It was a, an insane project that Idon't even know how we pulled it off,
(27:31):
but we got there and we publishedsome work on identity and covid 19.
But we also because we collecteddata and collective narcissism across
different countries, we were able tosee if there are variations between
countries and we tried to make someguesses for where they might come from.
We don't believe that people arenaturally predisposed to be, or
(27:52):
culturally predisposed to be,narcissistic about their group.
But as I said, it's a function ofpeople's sort of experiences, right?
. So it can be a function of individualexperiences, but also of how the group
is treated, how their nation is treatedin their international arena, right?
Cuz people do.
Countries do not operate in a vacuum.
There is a lot of dependencies,different systems of trade and alliances
(28:14):
and agreements and conflicts, right?
So we reasoned that the way peopleare or the nation is treated,
or the way at least that peopleperceive it to be treated might.
Mean that on average citizensof this country might be more
likely to, show higher levels ofcollective narcissism versus lower.
So one factor that we looked atthere was level of globalization.
(28:36):
So how globalized countries and that'sbecause there's also some evidence that
feelings that your group is being excludedand ignored, in international relations
can lead to higher collective narcissism.
So we said Okay, what would be a proxy?
A country being like superincluded and integrated versus
excluded from, different processes.
And we thought globalization is,the degree that to which countries
(28:57):
globalize would capture this.
And we found prettyrobust evidence for this.
So the more globalized the country,the lower levels of collective
narcissism among the citizens, theless globalize the country, the higher
collective narcissism on average.
But that also points us to maybea potential, and that kind of
speaks to your earlier questions.
Maybe, one potential isgreater integration, right?
(29:20):
And greater collaboration betweencountries, And if people feel that they're
being listened to an, that their country.
Has a say that could maybe affect,levels of collective narcissism.
But again, this is stillcrosssectional data.
We were excited that we got all these 56countries measures of collective narcis.
Wow.
Most of the samples were represented asif not all, but the effects hold, even
if we just look at representative data.
(29:40):
But it also could be that, the higheron average collective narcissism within
the country, the less globalized theybecome because they are, collective.
System is also associated withwillingness to leave supernational
organizations such as the eu.
So in the UK for example,higher collective narcissism was
related with support for Brexit.
We found similar effectsin Holland support for,
(30:01):
potential coex as they call it.
So that's not something that ison the, that is not something
that is on the ballot yet.
But, people have been making suchsuggestions and high collective
narcissism predicts greatersupport for such solutions.
So it could be that Alsothe paradoxal thing is that.
The more collective narcissism in thecountry or maybe among, leadership,
(30:24):
et cetera, the more likely we are toalso isolate ourselves, which might
mean that, some collectiveness mightbe frustrated further, et cetera.
So these are, some patels potentialimplications of these findings, but
there's still more work to be done.
To, It's always more work to be done.
Always work to that to be done.
That's why it's great to be an academic.
There's always the world that does notfail to inspire us to do more and more.
(30:50):
Absolutely.
I see.
And you've just made me think as wellof I wasn't there a certain form of US
president who said we might leave theUN or they might leave the UN because
that certain country was so great
Very subtle of me.
Very subtle.
Aleksandra Cichocka (31:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Something that inspired us to thinkabout, these links and there is
evidence that higher, us collectivenarcissism was linked to support
for the president versus opponents.
But of course, Yeah.
And a lot of his rhetoric has thesemarkers of collective narcissism, right?
. So we are an exceptional country.
(31:26):
, and you.
Our enemies just don'tappreciate how great we are.
We need to show everybody whowe yeah, are dealing with.
But of course hard to say to whatdegree he himself would endorses his
narratives, but for, from what he, hisrhetoric, that's certainly such as that.
This is that kind of versionof of national identity.
And so I guess one thing
Laura (31:46):
people will be wondering Is at the national level, the difference
then between collective narcism andpatriotism, because often people can be,
can view patriotism as a very good thing.
So do they different and in what way?
Aleksandra Cichocka (32:01):
Yeah, that's a great question.
And in some way it's useful to think aboutthe difference between secure self-esteem.
and individual narcissism, right?
So justice people can besecure about themselves.
They can also have very secure,confident attachment to their group
and feel strong ties with, other peoplein their nation feel really positive
about their culture and their history.
(32:22):
But that doesn't necessarily imply thatthey think they're better than others
or that they think they're, unique andthey deserve special treatment in any.
, there's there can be this positivesecure group identity that actually has
a lot of benefits in both in terms ofhow we treat others, members of other
groups, other countries, but also howwe treat members of our own society.
(32:43):
So the real probably shocking and sadparadox of collective narcissism is that.
It shows disregard for members ofother groups and, other nations.
But those high collected narcissismactually also don't really care
that much about their compatriots.
They care more about the image of thenation and how the nation is seen in
(33:04):
the international arena, whether it'sportrayed as strong as important, but
not so much about the wellbeing and.
Of others within the societywhile patriotism is associated.
Not only caring, for your nationand the symbols of the flags,
but also caring for others.
Making sure that, you're supportingyour fellow citizens with political
(33:27):
engagement, wanting to war for thecountry to make it better often.
. So an interesting example of howcollective narcissism can almost
backfire on people comes from someof the research on that we've done
in the context of the pandemic.
So Biki Feld, who's justbeen his PhD here at Kent.
And colleagues did some studies whenhe basically tried to gauge people's
(33:49):
support for certain policies that havebeen suggested during the pandemic
that might actually be, beneficialfor sticking it to others, but not
beneficial for people within the country.
So one example is the infamousventilator scheme that UK opted
out of during the pandemic.
So at the very beginning, therewas this sort of opportunity for
(34:10):
buying ventilators within the eu.
And this was the sort oftransition period for the uk.
So UK could have joined the Youin purchasing this equipment.
, and basically get a better dealfor people in the UK that had
decided to opt out of this.
And see people seem to havesupported this, at least those who
were high in collective narciss.
And because they felt no, we canshow them that we can do it alone and
(34:32):
better, even though they, objectivelythey were losing out on this decision.
Another example comes from the US where.
President Trump at some point suggestedthat US should report should test
less so to report less cases sothat it would make the country look
better in international comparisons.
And we found that those higherend collective narcissism said
(34:55):
that, Yeah, we should do this.
Even though we explicitly toldthem that testing, is really
important, that can save lives.
And they were still, even though itwould say, it could explicitly harm
people in the country, they wouldstill be more like, To support this.
And that was regardless of their supportfor Trump in the first place, right?
So we controlled for this andstill hire collective narcissism
(35:15):
predicted saying Yeah, let's reducetesting would make us looks better.
And that was statistically mediated,like this idea that, we need.
To get, We need recognition.
We need to look strong inthe international arena.
And we have examples of this also,from other context organizations, et
cetera, that those who high collectivenarcissism really treat the group as a,
(35:36):
something that serves their ego, right?
So they want to feel good aboutthemselves, so they invest, they
think we need to make our country lookgreat and at whatever costs, right?
So even if we treat.
Are other people within the countryas disposable as someone you can
just use for your own service, right?
So , that's the, I think that's oneof the saddest aspects of collective
(36:00):
narcissism that we find it reallypack fire on your own country.
And I think to some degree that'ssome maybe something that leaders.
We suspect do not always recognize, theythink that just boosting this sort of
idea let's, whatever it takes, let's justshape this view that the we are special,
we are exceptional, we are ordinary.
That might in some way also leads togreater cohesion within the nation.
(36:23):
But that's not the case.
It might lead to, the need to defendthe image and the reputation of the
nation, but it can backfire becausepeople do not care for each other.
They care for what it looks like to the.
Laura (36:35):
As you're saying that the image that comes to my mind
is actually Russia right now.
Yeah.
Where there's obviously been a lot ofdis discourses over many years about
sort of Russian exceptionalism andstrength, this idea of this Russian
bear, and yet now with the mobilization.
Yeah.
And
Aleksandra Cichocka (36:51):
crucially that the West is not giving them the
recognition that is you, that they'reconstantly trying to undermine them.
Exactly.
Russia,
Laura (36:58):
Its own specials type of sovereignty.
Yeah.
And does deserves recognition.
And now, yeah, you have this effectof mobilization and individual
Russian people being treated.
Disposable.
Yeah.
In like very egotisticallooking kind of way.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's just, it's horrific.
So I can you, I think that maybepaints the picture of how collective
(37:20):
narcism can actually hurt Yeah.
Inside of a country.
Aleksandra Cichocka (37:24):
Yeah.
And also you see a lot ofRussians trying to flee.
There's at least reports right now,being worried they're gonna be sent
to, and both because they might beworried they're gonna send to a war.
They do not support.
Of course not everybody Russia supports.
Of course.
Yeah.
But also we have some evidenceshowing that those who are
high in collective narcissism.
Do not show loyalty to their group.
(37:45):
If they can get a bit better dealelsewhere, they're gonna go, Wow.
It could be, Yeah, becauseit's not really about
They don't care aboutthat particular group.
They might, if they can find likeprestige, almost prestige elsewhere.
Yeah.
Find prestige elsewhere.
They're, that's whatthey're gonna go after.
So for instance and this isagain, Sort of indirect evidence.
(38:05):
But that same researcher who doesthis covid studies, has found that
in study of politicians in Iceland,those who are collectively narciss
think about their political party.
Were the ones who have changedthe parties the most in the past.
Wow.
So that kind of is indirectevidence that, that we have.
That chasing prestige.
So it may as well be that some of the,that some people within Russia, and that
(38:29):
obviously would play out similar in othercountries, might have been supporting
Puttings agenda until it came for them.
And they were the ones who were,might have been sent to the front
and they were like, Oh no, nevermind.
Yeah.
There's that meme
Laura (38:41):
about you joined the face eating, the leopards eating face party.
And then you never thought that theleopard would eat your own face.
There's that, there's awhole meme about it, right?
Oh yeah.
Never thought this would happen tome, but now it's been turned back on
me and I'm gonna stop what I'm out.
Aleksandra Cichocka (38:54):
Yeah, exactly.
Yes, I think Russia is areally great example of this
rhetoric from Putins right now.
And yeah, has a lot of thosemarks of the narcis, isn't it?
In the we can reallysee very well there how.
Certain things can be, framed asinsults and threats even in, maybe
we, from our perspective, wouldn'tsee them as threatening, from the
(39:15):
perspective of NA and Russia'sneighboring countries, et cetera.
Laura (39:20):
Absolutely.
Okay.
So look we've talked about collectivenarcissism, individual narcism.
We're talked about conspiracies andhow this is all terrible for everyone.
Nobody wants to be acollective narcissist, really.
But I if you had to give one piece ofadvice, and of course more research
needed, but to people who were tryingto work on types of social conflicts, I.
(39:41):
Is there something you could tell themabout how to deal with or to help or
to redirect collective narcissists sothat we could accomplish something more
collaborative and coherent as a society?
Aleksandra Cichocka (39:53):
This is a difficult question, of course.
Cause it, it's very hard to giveadvice if you don't have direct
evidence for this advice working,if you are workers in academia.
But I think there, there would betwo things I would pay attention to.
One of them is trying to figure out, when.
Some identities may not actually buildthe group, but about the individual.
So look into the individual modelsthat people have for endorsing center
(40:16):
and beliefs, certain versions of theiridentity, so basically trying to look
at the psychological motivations behind.
Different beliefs and be collectednarcissism, belief in conspiracy
or so train to understand why,what kind of functions, what it
serves for individual, right?
What does it give them or promise them atleast, Because as I said, some of these
things might backfire on the person.
(40:37):
But the second thing, and I guessthat's the hardest one is looking
at structural effect factors,which I mentioned earlier, right?
Because.
A lot of this really points to the, orbows down to the fact that people cannot
have their basic need mets met sometimes in the modern societies, which
means that they are psychologicallymore vulnerable to latch onto these
(40:59):
beliefs that can be really detrimental,not only for the society more broadly,
but also for them in the long term.
And often we've, there is this, Wayin which people deal with frustrated
needs or deal with the people,develop coping styles that are
actually backfiring later on, right?
Then that can kinda have thisknock on effect and be almost
(41:21):
like a vicious circle, right?
So say someone, tries to clingingonto a conspiracy theory to make,
to feel more secure, but they end upfeeling more secure and more alienated
from politics even further, right?
Looking at structural factors.
It can affect the individual.
I think that's what I would focus on.
But how to actually tackle them, Ithink , it's really difficult and
we still trying to figure that out.
(41:43):
Working on different interventionsand yeah, real life applications.
Laura (41:48):
So basically watch this space
Aleksandra Cichocka (41:51):
fantastic.
And not only, and of course a lot, lotsof others, people doing this work as well.
So I'm excited to see whatcomes out of other labs too.
Laura (41:58):
Fantastic.
Look, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
It has been so interestingand so engaging.
I really appreciate your time.
And so for those interested in learningmore about your work, where can they find.
Aleksandra Cichocka (42:11):
The University of Kent website all
our publications are there.
Most of them are available to download.
And you can also followme and our lab on Twitter.
We post usually new developments from ourteam and other people we collaborate with.
So it's usually a lot of exciting workcoming from political psychology at.
(42:32):
And we have a master's programin possible psychology for those
who want to kinda dig in further.
There you go.
Laura (42:39):
recruiting student who you
Aleksandra Cichocka (42:41):
Yes.
Laura (42:41):
Super.
And
Aleksandra Cichocka: what's the Twitter hand? (42:43):
undefined
Yeah, so it's at Alex Chi Hot Guys,my Twitter and Paul Psych at Kens
Paul Psych Kent is the lab Twitter.
Laura (42:50):
Fantastic.
We'll make sure to include thisin the podcast description as.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Great.
So thanks again and for everyone else.
Until next time, this is Laura May with aConflict Tipping podcast from media.com.
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