Keynote speakers
Vladimíra Čavojová is a researcher and deputy director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the Centre for Social and Psychological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In her research, she focuses on examining various types of unfounded beliefs, scientific thinking, and ways to reduce the spread of misinformation. In addition to research and writing scientific articles, she also dedicates herself to popularizing science. She has received the Prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences; she has written or edited several popular science books and organized lectures and workshops for the general public on intuitive thinking and combating misinformation. She currently teaches at the University of Trnava.
Who are our enemies? Motivated thinking and cognitive laziness in succumbing to misinformation
In the lecture, I want to address the ongoing debate about whether people succumb to misinformation, such as conspiracy theories or fake news, more because they rely on automatic, intuitive processes and fail to engage in sufficient analytical thinking (cognitive laziness) or rather because they interpret information in a biased manner according to their ideological or value-based beliefs (motivated thinking). Is there an asymmetry in succumbing to misinformation based on value orientation? Is it possible to change a person's belief in the truthfulness of misinformation?
The lecture will be followed by a symposium on Unfounded Beliefs and Misinformation in the Context of Global Crises: From Pandemics to War Conflicts and Climate Crisis.
Sylvie Graf is a leading research scientist at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where she founded and leads the Brno Laboratory of Intergroup Processes. She deals with possibilities for improving relationships between people from different social groups through intergroup contact, mass media, and language describing people in intergroup contexts.
How does mass media influence our attitudes towards stigmatized groups? The effect of news content, employed language, speakers, and images
Mass media news about people from socially stigmatized groups often represent the only, though widely available, source of information about these groups. The lecture summarizes the results of several research projects focusing on how the content and form of news about stigmatized minorities influence attitudes of the majority society towards them, across various intergroup contexts. I will discuss the effect of the valence of news content (positive, negative, ambiguous), the effect of language used to describe group membership (nouns vs. adjectives and various terms for refugee status), the effect of speakers quoted within the news (experts vs. migrants), and finally the effect of accompanying visual material on emotions, perceptions, attitudes, and tendencies to behave toward members of outgroups represented in the media.
The lecture will be followed by a symposium on Tense Intergroup Relations: Possibilities for Improving Intergroup Attitudes and Tendencies towards Reconciliation.