Right-Wing Media’s Neurocognitive and Societal Effects


Book Description

This book empirically tests, compares, and explains the effects of British and American legacy conservative press and far-right websites, on accordant political views and behavioural intentions. Correspondingly, the 2016 Brexit Referendum and American Presidential election results are often attributed to the spread of fake news through social media, Russian Bots, and alt-right news websites. This has raised concerns about the impact of digital disinformation on democracy, as well as the rise of nativist parties and movements worldwide. However, this book argues that these causal attributions are largely based on unproven assumptions and deflect attention from the more influential and harmful role of traditional conservative media. To support this argument, Leyva incorporates insights from various fields such as neurocognitive science, media-communication research, cross-cultural psychology, and sociology. Additionally, the book presents primary evidence from a series of experiments that examined the effects of candidate-related fake news and immigration coverage from both old and new media right-wing sources. These experiments focused on how such content influences anti-immigrant attitudes and voter preferences. By doing so, the book provides a nuanced and robustly tested theoretical account of how right-wing media affects political beliefs, sentiments, and practices at the neuronal level, and of how this can in turn negatively impact democratic multicultural societies. Given its interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of interest to scholars in the social, behavioural, and cognitive sciences who are studying media psychology, online misinformation, authoritarian populism, political sociology, new media, and journalism.




Right-Wing Media's Neurocognitive and Societal Effects


Book Description

"This book explores the effects of both old and new conservative media on political attitudes and attitude-consistent behavioral intentions. The author combines the latest neuro-cognitive research and theories on information and misinformation processing and attitudinal development with extensive scholarship on media priming, framing, agenda-setting, and cultivation effects, to put forth a new working media effects theory. Drawing on three longitudinal experimental studies from the US and UK, the book promotes an interdisciplinary and complex-systems based model of media effects that explains how conservative media mixes with cognitive-psychological, cultural-political, social interactional, and situational factors, contexts, and mechanisms to influence political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Informing the development and application of new social and digital research methods with improved ecological validity, the study will contribute new experiment-based findings on how old and digital news media can mediate or moderate electoral decisions. This truly interdisciplinary study draws on the fields of media studies, communication, political sociology and cognitive science, and will be of interest to scholars and students working in these fields as well as media psychology, new media, and journalism"--




Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders


Book Description

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.




Manual of Hypertension of the European Society of Hypertension, Third Edition


Book Description

The Manual of Hypertension of the European Society of Hypertension reflects emerging concepts that have the potential to impact diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to hypertension. Updating all material, this new edition also delves into a number of areas that have received heightened interest in recent years or have become a matter of debate due to the controversial interpretation of the available data. FEATURES Reflects emerging concepts impacting diagnostic and therapeutic approaches Explores background, history, epidemiology, and risk factors Describes pharmacological, nonpharmacological, and medical treatments Examines hypertension in special populations and treatment




Vulnerable Minds


Book Description

Neuroscience research has raised a troubling possibility: Could the tendency to stigmatize others be innate? Some evidence suggests that the brain is prone to in-group and out-group classifications, with consequences from ordinary blind spots to full-scale dehumanization. Many are inclined to reject the argument that racism and discrimination could have a cognitive basis. Yet if we are all vulnerable to thinking in exclusionary ways—if everyone, from the most ardent social-justice advocates to bigots and xenophobes, has mental patterns and structures in common—could this shared flaw open new prospects for political rapprochement? Liya Yu develops a novel political framework that builds on neuroscientific discoveries to rethink the social contract. She argues that our political selves should be understood in terms of our shared social capacities, especially our everyday exclusionary tendencies. Yu contends that cognitive dehumanization is the most crucial disruptor of cooperation and solidarity, and liberal values-based discourse is inadequate against it. She advances a new neuropolitical language of persuasion that refrains from moralizing or shaming and instead appeals to shared neurobiological vulnerabilities. Offering practical strategies to address those we disagree with most strongly, Vulnerable Minds provides timely guidance on meeting the challenge of including and humanizing others.




The Righteous Mind


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.




Predisposed


Book Description

This thoughtfully updated revision of a classic text sheds new light on the potential sociological and biological differences that result in deep, seemingly unbridgeable political divisions. Renowned social scientists and experts in biopolitics, John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Alford present overwhelming evidence that political opinion is shaped not just by cultural background or information bias but is rather the result of diverse psychological, physiological, and genetic traits. This new edition shifts the emphasis from differences between the political left and the right (liberals and conservatives) as they have traditionally been understood and explores specific brands of liberalism and conservatism such as ardent supporters of politicians such as Donald Trump. An essential read for students and scholars of political psychology and party politics, this book invites the reader to reconsider their perspectives on public opinion and partisan conflict.




Social Psychology of Political Polarization


Book Description

The 21st-century political landscape has been defined by deep ideological polarization, and as a result scientific inquiry into the psychological mechanisms underlying this divide has taken on increased relevance. The topic is by no means new to social psychology. Classic literature on intergroup conflict shows how pervasive and intractable these group conflicts can be, how readily they can emerge from even minimal group identities, and the hedonic rewards reaped from adopting an "us vs. them" perspective. Indeed, this literature paints a bleak picture for the efficacy of any interventions geared toward reducing intergroup discord. But advances in the psychology of moral judgments and behavior, in particular greater understanding of how moral concerns might inform the creation and stability of political identities, offer new ways forward in understanding partisan divides. This volume brings together leading researchers in moral and political psychology, offering new perspectives on the moral roots of political ideology, and exciting new opportunities for the development of more effective applied interventions.




White Supremacy and the American Media


Book Description

This volume examines the ways in which the media, including film, television, social media, and gaming, has constructed and sustained a narrative of white supremacy that has entered mainstream American discourse. With chapters by today’s preeminent critical race scholars, the book looks in particular at the ways media institutions have circulated white supremacist ideology across a wide range of platforms and texts that have had significant impact on shaping our current polarized and racialized social and political landscape. Systematically scrutinizing every media platform, this volume provides readers with an understanding of the ways in which media has provided institutional support for white supremacist ideology, and presents them with the means to examine and analyze the persistence of these narratives within our racial discourse, thus offering the necessary knowledge to challenge and transform these racially divisive and destructive narratives. White Supremacy and the American Media will be of interest not only to scholars working in critical race studies and popular culture in the United States, but also to those working in the fields of Film and Television Studies, Sociology, Geography, Art History, Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Popular Culture, and Media Studies.




Effects of Game and Game-like Training on Neurocognitive Plasticity


Book Description

Cognitive training is not always effective. This is also the case for the form of cognitive training that this Research Topic focuses on: prolonged performance on game-like cognitive tasks. The ultimate goal of this cognitive training is to improve ecologically-valid target functions. For example, cognitive training should help children with ADHD to stay focused at school, or help older adults to manage the complexity of daily life. However, so far this goal has proven too ambitious. Transfer from trained to non-trained tasks is not even guaranteed in a laboratory, so there is a strong need for understanding how, when and for how long cognitive training has effect. Which cognitive functions are amenable to game training, for whom, and how? Are there mediating factors for success, such as motivation, attention, or age? Are the improvements real, or can they be attributed to nonspecific factors, such as outcome expectancy or demand characteristics? Are there better strategies to improve cognitive functions through game training? This Research Topic of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience charts current insights in the determinants of success of game training.




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