People who believe the US is entitled to special treatment became more likely to endorse conspiratorial patterns of thinking over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. According to new research with 1,685 Americans, collective narcissism predicted a strengthening of conspiracy thinking.

People who believe the United States is entitled to special treatment became more likely to endorse conspiratorial patterns of thinking over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. According to new research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, collective narcissism uniquely predicted a strengthening of conspiracy thinking in America.

The findings suggest that conspiracy theories that are linked to collective narcissism can grow more extreme in response to certain political environments.

“Previous studies showed that collective narcissists — people who are narcissistic about their groups, who exaggerate their group’s importance and think their group is not sufficiently appreciated by others — tend to believe that some specific other groups conspire to hurt and undermine their own group,” explained study author Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of London.

“For example, in one previous study we showed that Polish collective narcissists believed that Germans conspired so the Polish role in the peaceful overthrow of communist regimes in Central Europe was not properly recognized.

“In the present study we wanted to examine whether collective narcissism was related to a general conspiratorial mindset – a predisposition to perceive the world as a place in which out-groups are always secretly plotting against the in-group,” Golec de Zavala said.

“Such a relationship would mean that collective narcissists will tend to search for conspiring enemies, whether they are given a reason for it or not. In addition, we wanted to examine whether political campaigns strengthen this tendency among collective narcissists.”

The researchers analyzed data collected from a longitudinal study that was commissioned by University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Political Psychology. The study surveyed 1,685 American adults from July 2016 to November 2016.

Golec de Zavala and her colleagues found that collective narcissism statistically predicted an increase in conspiracy thinking over the course of the 2016 campaign.

Americans who agreed with statements like “The United States deserves special treatment” in July were even more likely to agree with statements like “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places” in November.

“Political campaigns, especially those that use conspiracy beliefs as a tool to mobilize their electorate, are likely to mobilize collective narcissists. We found that American collective narcissism was linked to the conspiratorial mind-set and this relationship strengthened during the 2016 presidential campaign in the U.S,” Golec de Zavala told PsyPost.

“In another study, we found that collective narcissism was the strongest, after partisanship, predictor of voting for President Trump.”

The researchers controlled for the effects of age, income, gender, race, national in-group identification, education, levels of social trust, political orientation, political knowledge, authoritarianism, and need for closure.

American identification, trust, and political knowledge were associated with reduced conspiracy thinking, while higher levels of authoritarianism and need for closure were associated with greater conspiracy thinking.

But collective narcissism still predicted an increase in conspiracy thinking beyond these factors.

“We are now investigating whether collective narcissism is associated with a general hostile bias when perceiving intergroup relations i.e. a general belief that intergroup relations are always antagonistic and out-groups have hostile and aggressive intentions towards the in-group,” Golec de Zavala said.

“We believe that the general conspiratorial mindset is an aspect of such general hostile bias which contribute to collective narcissistic intergroup hostility. One important question that still needs to be addressed is whether collective narcissism causes such bias. This question is difficult to answer because collective narcissism is an individual predisposition, difficult to manipulate experimentally. We are running longitudinal studies to answer this question.”

“We believe collective narcissists are attracted to the conspiratorial mindset because conspiracy theories provide a simple explanation of why their group is not sufficiently appreciated and recognized by others – a belief crucial to collective narcissism,” Golec de Zavala added. “This reassures collective narcissists that their group is important and challenging enough to inspire envious plotting of others. This also justifies collective narcissistic intergroup hostility.”

The study, “Collective Narcissism and the Growth of Conspiracy Thinking over the Course of the 2016 United States Presidential Election: A Longitudinal Analysis“, was authored by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala and Christopher M. Federico.

Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD Co. showed an early model.

“Everyone was laughing at BYD for making a toy,” recalled Isbrand Ho, the Shenzhen-based company’s managing director in Europe. “And look now. Everyone has one.”]

Suddenly, buses with battery-powered motors are a serious matter with the potential to revolutionize city transport—and add to the forces reshaping the energy industry. With China leading the way, making the traditional smog-belching diesel behemoth run on electricity is starting to eat away at fossil fuel demand.

The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

All this is starting to make an observable reduction in fuel demand. And because they consume 30 times more fuel than average sized cars, their impact on energy use so far has become much greater than the than the passenger sedans produced companies from Tesla Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp.

Keeping It in the Ground 

For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations. This year, the volume of fuel buses take off the market may rise 37 percent to 279,000 barrels a day, about as much oil as Greece consumes, according to BNEF.

“This segment is approaching the tipping point,” said Colin Mckerracher, head of advanced transport at the London-based research unit of Bloomberg LP. “City governments all over the world are being taken to task over poor urban air quality. This pressure isn’t going away, and electric bus sales are positioned to benefit.”

China is ahead on electrifying its fleet because it has the world’s worst pollution problem. With a growing urban population and galloping energy demand, the nation’s legendary smogs were responsible for 1.6 million extra deaths in 2015, according to non-profit Berkeley Earth.

Putting It Back 

A decade ago, Shenzhen was a typical example of a booming Chinese city that had given little thought to the environment. Its smog became so notorious that the government picked it for a pilot program for energy conservation and zero emissions vehicles in 2009. Two years later, the first electric buses rolled off BYD’s production line there. And in December, all of Shenzhen’s 16,359 buses were electric.

BYD had a 13 percent of China’s electric bus market in 2016 and put 14,000 of the vehicles on the streets of Shenzhen alone. It’s built 35,000 so far and has capacity to build as many as 15,000 a year, Ho said. 

BYD estimates its buses have logged 17 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) and saved 6.8 billion liters (1.8 billion gallons) of fuel since they started ferrying passengers around the world’s busiest cities. That, according to Ho, adds up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution avoided, which is about as much as 3.8 million cars produce in each year.

“The first fleet of pure electric buses provided by BYD started operation in Shenzhen in 2011,” Ho said by phone. “Now, almost 10 years later, in other cities the air quality has worsened while—compared with those cities—Shenzhen’s is much better.”

Driving the Revolution 

Other cities are taking notice. Paris, London, Mexico City and Los Angeles are among 13 authorities that have committed to only buying zero emissions transport by 2025.

London is slowly transforming its fleet. Currently four routes in the city center serviced by single-decker units are being shifted to electricity. There are plans to make significant investments to the clean its public transport networks, including retrofitting 5,000 old diesel buses in a program to ensure all buses are emission-free by 2037. 

Transport for London, responsible for the city’s transport system, declined to comment for this article because of rules around engaging with the media ahead of May local government elections.

Those goals will have an impact on fuel consumption. London’s network draws about 1.5 million barrels a year of fuel. If the entire fleet goes electric, that may displace 430 barrels a day of diesel for each 1,000 buses going electric, reducing U.K. diesel consumption by about 0.7 percent, according to BNEF.

Ramping Up 

Across the U.K. there were 344 electric and plug-in hybrid buses in 2017, and BYD hopes to be picked to supply more. It has partnered with a Scottish bus-maker to provide the batteries for 11 new electric buses that hit the city’s roads in March.

Falkirk-based manufacturer Alexander Dennis Ltd. began making electric buses in 2016 and has quickly become the European market leader with more than 170 vehicles operating in the U.K. alone.

More work is on the horizon, with London’s transport authority planning a tender to electrify its iconic double-decker buses, Ho said.

“The tech is ready,” Ho said. “We are ready, we have our plants in China, and Alexander Dennis in Scotland is geared up for TfL. Once we’re given the word, we are ready to go.”

The US is stingier with child care and maternity leave than the rest of the world

In most American families led by couples, both parents are in the workforce. At the same time, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. children are being raised by single moms.

Yet child care is generally unaffordable and paid leave is not available to most U.S. parents.

Around the world, however, most employed women automatically get paid maternity leave. And in most wealthy countries, they also have access to affordable child care.

These holes in the national safety net are a problem for many reasons, including one I’ve been researching with my colleagues for years: Paid parental leave and child care help women stay in the workforce and earn higher wages over time. This lack of parental leave and child care may explain why the U.S. is no longer a leader in women’s workforce participation.

Maternity leave

The U.S. is one of a handful of countries worldwide that does not mandate paid maternity leave. The other four are the low-income nations of Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

Paid leave, which typically lasts at least 14 weeks, needs to be designed thoughtfully. When women can and do take two or even three years off after having a baby, as they may in Hungary, long leaves can limit mothers’ work experience and lead to discrimination.

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act did mandate 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave for some American workers. Yet most families can’t forgo the income that moms bring home.

Denmark offers what I think is a strong example. There, moms get almost 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and dads get two weeks of paid paternity leave. On top of that, couples get up to a total 32 weeks of parental leave, which parents can split. This policy grants parents both the time and resources necessary to care for children, without “mommy tracking” mothers.

Child care

In many wealthy countries, child care and preschool are considered a mainstay of the educational system. But in the U.S., only about half of all children between the ages of 3 and 6 are getting publicly supported child care of any kind, including kindergarten, versus 99 percent of kids that age in France.

Interestingly, high-quality early childhood education programs are associated with many excellent outcomes for children from lower-income families: higher graduation rates, along with lower rates of teen pregnancy and juvenile crime.

In other words, when governments invest in child care and maternity leave, it fosters a more productive, healthy and creative workforce.

The Making of Star Wars

Lucas supervised a team of four editors working under extreme deadlines to get the film out on time.

Although ostensibly an exterior, the Mos Eisley street was built on Stage 8. Extras were suited up in alien costumes and masks.

Carrie Fisher tries on John Mollo's design for Princess Leia for the first time.

Anthony Daniels on being C-3PO: "I saw a chair one day and it said 'Anthony Daniels' on the back of it, and I was very excited about that. But I never got to sit in the chair because I could never sit down. I had this terrible leaning board, a kind of medieval thing with arms that allowed me to recline at about 70 degrees, which was very little use at all, because the weight still went down to your ankles.

Stormtroopers wore all-in-one black leotards over which the front and back of the body clasped together.

George Lucas directs the stormtroopers.

Sir Alec Guinness and George Lucas on the set.

Harrison Ford clearly enjoyed playing the trigger-happy Han Solo.

Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill on the set. Early character sketches had Han Solo sporting a cape and beard.

Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels (in C-3PO costume) and Sir Alec Guinness stand in front of the cantina exterior.

Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew (in Chewbacca outfit), Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford on the set. Leia's "earmuff" hairstyle was inspired by photographs taken by Edward S. Curtis of Native Americans and photos of Pancho Villa's rebel women.

David Prowse prepares to play Darth Vader.

George Lucas and Anthony Daniels (in the C-3PO costume) on the sandcrawler set, which cost $128,000 and was placed on the Tunisia-Libya border.

George Lucas survived filming in Tunisia, but was unhappy with what had transpired there.

George Lucas shows Carrie Fisher how to hold and shoot a gun.

Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill.

George Lucas demonstrates to Sir Alec Guinness how to surrender himself to the Force.

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew (in the Chewbacca costume) and Harrison Ford pose for a publicity shot.

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