The socio-psychological predictors of support for post-truth collective action

ABSTRACT

Politics in the current era are replete with unreliable media stories which lack evidence, sometimes disparagingly dubbed “fake news”. A survey on a sample of Muslims in Indonesia (N = 518) in this work found that participants’ endorsement of collective action in of support issues with little to no empirical evidence (i.e., post-truth collective action) increased as a function of their belief in fake news and prejudice against the outgroup (i.e., non-Muslims). Belief in fake news stemmed from participants’ generic and specific conspiratorial thinking, whereas prejudice was positively predicted by relative Muslim prototypicality, denoting how much Muslims in Indonesia view that their group is more representative than non-Muslims of the superordinate Indonesian identity that encompasses both groups. Additionally, our findings revealed that generic conspiratorial thinking and relative Muslim prototypicality were positively predicted by collective narcissism, which in turn spurred participants’ support for collective action by augmenting belief in fake news.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-truth collective action
• fake news
• prejudice
• conspiratorial beliefs
• relative ingroup prototypicality
• collective narcissism

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/x3ad8.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/x3ad8.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. After Islamic collective narcissism, we assessed Islamic glorification (eight items; α = .79). The item-wording for variables in this research is presented in the Supplemental Information, along with the figures for the alternative models and the covariance matrix of the relationships among variables.

2. We used Expectation maximization (EM) method in SPSS 21 for Windows to assess missingness of our data. By entering Islamic collective narcissism, general conspiratorial beliefs, specific conspiratorial beliefs, relative Muslim prototypicality, beliefs in fake news, prejudice, and support for collective action as quantitative variables, the results revealed that the data contained 0.74% of missing values. This percentage is far less than the standards of 5% (Schafer, 1999) or 10% (Bennett, 2001) cutoff of missing value percentages that may substantially bias the data. Moreover, the EM analysis revealed that the distribution of missing values in our data was at random (Little MCAR’s test: χ² [14] = 14.02, p = .448).

3. Following a well-cited procedure by Korkmaz et al. (2014), we run Mardia’s multivariate normality test. This test was conducted online (http://www.biosoft.hacettepe.edu.tr/MVN/) and the results revealed that the data violated a multivariate normality assumption, χ² = 233.69, p < .001.

4. Power was calculated by means of Monte Carlo simulation using Mplus version 7.4 in which the data was resampled 10.000 times (Muthen & Muthen, 1998–2015). We note that there are substantial limitations to the inferences that can be drawn from post-hoc power analyses and we thus provide the statistic for transparency but caution against over-interpretation (see the limitations section for further discussion).

5. As recommended by Satorra and Bentler (2010), the chi-square difference testing for robust estimator (i.e., MLR) was done by rescaling the chi-square of the hypothesized path model and that of the first alternative model (The chi-square table can be checked at https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/davis/375/popecol/tables/chisq.html).

6. The raw data (in spss and csv), Mplus syntax, and Supplemental Information in this research are freely accessible at https://osf.io/x3ad8

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Mashuri

Ali Mashuri is a lecturer at Department of Psychology and the coordinator of a master program at Department of Social Sciences, University of Brawijaya, Indonesia. He has been interested in studying social psychological topics as diverse as intergroup helping, beliefs in conspiracy theory, separatist conflict, and radicalism Idhamsyah Eka Putra

Idhamsyah Eka Putra

Idhamsyah Eka Putra is a lecturer in psychology graduate programs at Persada Indonesia University. Putra has a wide range of research interests, but mostly covering issues related to psychology of good and evil: why people hate & prejudice, do harm, help, trust, and show compassion. It is usually connected to human rights issues, especially about majority – minority relations

Christopher Kavanagh

Christopher Kavanagh is a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, London, United Kingdom and an Associate Professor in Psychology at Rikkyo University, Japan. His research focuses on ritual psychology and particularly the effects of collective rituals on social identity and group orientated behaviors. He is an advocate for mixed methods research including field studies and lab-based experiments and Open Science methods. He specializes in East Asian syncretic religious environments.

Esti Zaduqisti

Esti Zaduqisti is a lecturer at Department of Islamic Counselling and Guidance, Faculty of Ushuluddin, Adab, and Dakwah , IAIN Pekalongan, Indonesia. Religious tolerance and moderateness are the main topics of her research, along with other topics including intergroup helping and reconciliation.

Fitri Sukmawati

Fitri Sukmawati is a lecturer at Department of Islamic Psychology, Faculty of Ushuluddin, Adab, and Dakwah, IAIN Pontianak, Indonesia. She has investigated social psychological phenomena that mainly have to do with intergroup helping and religious fundamentalism.

Halimatus Sakdiah

Halimatus Sakdiah currently works at Department of Islamic Counselling and Guidance, Faculty of Dakwah and Communication Science, Universitas Islam Negeri Antasari, Banjarmasin, Indonesia. Her research zooms in on Islamic studies and Islamic education.

Selviana Selviana

Selviana Selviana is a lecturer Faculty of Psychology, Persada Indonesia University, Jakarta, Indonesia, whose research interests mainly relate to personality and its impact on social behaviours