Mitigation system threat partially mediates the effects of right‐wing ideologies on climate change beliefs

Research consistently shows that right‐wing ideological adherents are more likely to deny climate change. However, less is known about how right‐wing ideological subtypes are uniquely related to climate change denial, as well as what explains these relationships. This study examines whether threat to the socioeconomic system in the form of climate change mitigation policies, referred to as Climate Change Mitigation Threat (CCMT), mediates the relationships between Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) subtypes and four forms of climate change denial (existence denial, human cause denial, impact denial and climate science denial). U.S. participants (N = 334; M_age = 34.70, SD = 5.98) were recruited via Amazon MTurk. When shared variance in the predictors was accounted for, we found that: (a) Conventionalism (RWA‐C) positively predicted all forms of climate change denial; (b) Dominance (SDO‐D) positively predicted existence denial; (c) Anti‐Egalitarianism (SDO‐E) positively predicted both human cause and impact denial; and (d) Aggression (RWA‐A) negatively predicted existence denial. All significant direct relationships were partially mediated by CCMT, except for the direct paths between SDO‐D and existence denial, and RWA‐A and existence denial. These findings suggest that right‐wing adherents who conform to societal norms and prefer unequal social systems may deny climate change partly due to a perception that mitigation strategies proposed to combat climate change threaten the existing socioeconomic system.     

What's the subject? Brexit and politics as articulation

This paper focuses on the moment of Brexit and its political aftermath in order to challenge dominant academic and popular conceptions of the political subject as singular and coherent. Instead, we suggest that there is an urgent political and analytical need for a view of the subject as multiple, contradictory, and dialogic. As interdisciplinary scholars working on the borders of policy studies and cultural studies, we think this is a critical site for transdisciplinary conversations about such conceptions of the subject. In the political field, such subjects are selectively and unevenly addressed and mobilized by political projects—such as Vote Leave—that invite them to recognize themselves as part of an imagined collective identity. In the twin disturbances of the European Union referendum and the 2017 general election, we suggest that it is possible to see that other voicings, other identifications, and other projects remain possible. Specific political mobilizations are neither singular nor stable.     

Train‐the‐trainer: Methodology to learn the cognitive interview

Research has indicated that police may not receive enough training in interviewing cooperative witnesses, specifically in use of the cognitive interview (CI). Practically, for the CI to be effective in real‐world investigations, police investigators must be trained by law enforcement trainers. We conducted a three‐phase experiment to examine the feasibility of training experienced law enforcement trainers who would then train others to conduct the CI. We instructed Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement trainers about the CI (Phase I); law enforcement trainers from both agencies (n = 4, 100% male, mean age = 50 years) instructed university students (n = 25, 59% female, mean age = 21 years) to conduct either the CI or a standard law enforcement interview (Phase II); the student interviewers then interviewed other student witnesses (n = 50, 73% female, mean age = 22 years), who had watched a simulated crime (phase III). Compared with standard training, interviews conducted by those trained by CI‐trained instructors contained more information and at a higher accuracy rate and with fewer suggestive questions.     

Agent Causation and the Phenomenology of Agency

Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one's own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end, a reconciliation can be worked out. Here, it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action.