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People resort to various questionable health practices to preserve or regain health - they intentionally do not adhere to medical recommendations (e.g., self-medicate or modify the prescribed therapies;iNAR), or use traditional/complementary/alternative (TCAM) medicine. As retrospective reports overestimate adherence and suffer from recall and desirability bias, we tracked the variations in daily questionable health behaviors and compared them to their retrospectively reported lifetime use. We also preregistered and explored their relations to a wide set of psychological predictors - distal (personality traits and basic thinking dispositions) and proximal (different unfounded beliefs grouped under the term irrational mindset). A community sample (N=224) tracked daily engagement in iNAR and TCAM use during 14 days via experience sampling. We observed a high rate of questionable health practices over the 14 days; daily engagement rates roughly corresponded to lifetime ones. iNAR and TCAM were weakly, but robustly positively related. Independent of the assessment method, an irrational mindset was the most important predictor of TCAM use. For iNAR, however, psychological predictors emerged as relevant only when assessed retrospectively. Our study offers insight into questionable health behaviors from both a within and between-person perspective, and highlights the importance of their psychological roots.

Despite insufficient evidence base for some of its practices, traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) use is rapidly growing; psychological roots of this trend are still under-studied. Based on previous research, input from TCAM practitioners, and content analysis of online media, we developed a comprehensive instrument to measure the use of TCAM and administered it to an online community sample (N=583). Factor analysis indicated four domains of TCAM use, in line with theoretical taxonomies: Alternative medical systems, Natural product-based practices, New age medicine, and Rituals/Customs, all converging toward a common tendency. Irrational beliefs and cognitive biases, especially magical health beliefs and naturalness bias, predicted unique variance in both TCAM attitudes and overall TCAM use, above socio-demographic variables, reported health status, and ideological beliefs. Furthermore, each domain of TCAM use, although differing slightly in sociodemographic/psychological profile, was consistently associated with an irrational mindset, even after controlling for other factors. This provides strong evidence for exploring psychological susceptibility to the use of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine.

Background: The World Health Organization recognizes non-adherence to treatment recommendations as a growing global problem. Questionnaires typically focus on only one non-adhering behavior, e.g., medication-taking, and target people with specific health conditions. In this preregistered study, we aimed to (1) develop a novel instrument suitable to the general population, consisting of non-adherence to prescribed therapy, self-medication, and avoidance to seek medical treatment, capturing intentional non-adherence (iNAR), (2) differentiate it from habitual non-adherence, such as smoking, and (3) relate iNAR to patient-related factors, such as sociodemographics, health status, and endorsement of irrational beliefs (conspiratorial thinking and superstitions), and to a set of healthcare-related beliefs and experiences. Methods: First, medical doctors provided a list of non-adherence behaviors in a focus group. To this list we added behaviors that fitted our definition of intentional non-adherence, identified in a thorough literature search. This initial list of 22 behaviors was further refined by a public health expert. The instrument was then tested on a sample of 583 participants, sufficiently powered to detect effects for all preregistered statistical analysis. Participants were recruited using an online snowballing procedure and via social networks. Results: Factor analysis yielded a one-factor solution, and the final 12-item iNAR questionnaire had satisfactory internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .72). A hierarchical linear regression showed that, as expected, health condition variables and healthcare-related beliefs and experiences accounted for 14% of the variance of iNAR behaviors, whereas sociodemographics and irrational beliefs did not additionally contribute. In comparison, the same regression model with smoking (representative of habitual non-adherence) as a criterion variable, accounted for less than 3% of the variance, with education as the only significant predictor. Conclusions: We have constructed a brief, comprehensive, and reliable measure of iNAR behaviors. Normalization of patients’ passivity and, in particular, negative experiences with the healthcare system contributed to intentional, but not habitual non-adherence. We believe that public health interventions designed to discourage intentional non-adherence should foremost attempt to improve all patients' experiences with the system and build trust with their healthcare practitioners rather than aim at specific demographic groups or at correcting patients' unfounded beliefs.

Collective action is a powerful force driving social change but often sparks contention about what actions are acceptable means to effect social change. In five studies (total N = 2,979), we investigated double standards in judging collective action—that is, whether observers will judge the same protest actions as more acceptable if the protesters are ingroup members and their cause aligns with the ingroup's interests (identity-based double standards) or if the protesters' cause aligns with the observers' ideological positions (ideology-based double standards). In two studies, we developed an instrument of 25 controversial protest actions, based in item response theory, to measure where people draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of collective action. In three preregistered experiments, we used this instrument to test for double standards in judging collective action for workers' rights in the United Kingdom and for or against defunding the police and for or against restricting abortion in the United States. We found evidence for ideology-based, but not for identity-based, double standards: Participants judged the same protest actions to be more acceptable when the protesters' cause aligned with their own ideological position—but showed no consistent ingroup bias in terms of class, race, and gender. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the often divided response to prominent social movements.

Objective: We aimed to describe how Serbian online media cover the topic of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TM/CAM). Methods: We conducted a content analysis of 182 articles from six news and six magazine websites, published July–December 2021. Results: Biologically based treatments, predominantly herbal products framed as Serbian or Russian folk medicine, were the most common. The practices were often presented as general health enhancers; other common reasons given for the use of TM/CAM were to alleviate respiratory problems, boost the immunity, and detox. The tone was overwhelmingly positive, with most of the positive articles neglecting to present information on potential harms of TM/CAM use. Few articles provided a recommendation to speak with a healthcare provider; in contrast, the recommended dosage was often explained. TM/CAM practitioners and conventional medicine practitioners were most commonly cited sources. Articles tended to appeal to TM/CAM’s tradition of use, naturalness, and convenience, used pseudoscientific jargon, and failed to cite sources for the claims that TM/CAM use is supported by science. Conclusion: Much of the information provided in Serbian online media seems to be uncritical, with a potential for misleading consumers.

Stereotypes about vegetarians and vegans influence behavior toward these groups, as well as decisions about consumption of animal products in general, affecting the health and wellbeing of humans and other animals, as well as the environment. We extend the existing research with a study of stereotypes in a non-WEIRD meat-eating culture based on content analysis of open-ended responses (Study 1) and ratings on the competence and warmth dimensions (Study 2). We also sought to predict the positivity of stereotypes by the general attitude to animals, perception of vegetarianism as a threat to local traditions, and the anticipated moral reproach of vegetarians toward meat-eaters. We found that stereotypes about vegetarians are ambivalent, while stereotypes about vegans are more clearly negative, both to a greater extent among meat-eaters compared with vegetarians/vegans and among men compared with women. The open-ended responses were most frequently related to health, both good and poor health, and secondly to moral values, empathy, and commitment as well as unfavorable social traits. References to masculinity/femininity were not prominent in the spontaneous responses and neither was the general domain of competence, although both groups are ascribed relatively high competence when explicitly asked. While meat-eaters mostly relate vegetarianism and veganism to health, those who themselves are vegetarian or vegan most readily relate these choices to empathy and moral values, as well as free-mindedness. Perceptions of vegetarianism as a threat, as well as one’s general level of speciesism predicted stereotype positivity. We discuss how future cross-cultural research can benefit from the categories of traits we derived from the open-ended analysis and the implications of the findings for shaping public communications.