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Ontological confusion reconsidered: Introducing the new Ontological Confusion Scale
Applied Cognitive Psychology. 2025. Vol. 39. No. 6. Article e70150.
Ontological confusion refers to a cognitive error involving the misclassification of entities across distinct ontological domains—physical, biological, mental, and moral. While previous research links it to paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs, existing measures—most notably the Core Knowledge Confusions (CKC) scale—suffer from conceptual ambiguity and cultural limitations. This paper introduces the Ontological Confusion Scale (OCS), designed to address these issues by evaluating seven types of ontological misclassification. Across two studies (N = 354 and N = 550), OCS demonstrates a robust unidimensional structure, high internal consistency, and strong convergent and discriminant validity. The scale predicts a range of unfounded beliefs, while outperforming CKC and belief in a just world in explaining unique variance. These findings support a broader view of ontological confusion as a general cognitive tendency underlying intuitive but erroneous reasoning across domains. OCS provides a reliable, culturally adaptable tool for research on belief formation and epistemic vulnerability.
Medushevsky A. N., Liberal.ru 2026
The Liberal Mission Foundation continues to introduce readers to new concepts of democracy and relevant publications. This discussion focuses on the challenges facing democracy in the era of globalization, as addressed in two recent books: *The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies* by S.C. Stokes (2025) and *Critical Theories and the Postsocialist Challenge: Race, ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Liberal.ru 2026
Today, more than ever before, the contribution of new technologies shapes the conditions of humanity's existence as a biological species, prompting a debate about its prospects for survival. This process of transformation—which spans every sphere of social and moral regulation, from family relations and child-rearing to the very meaning of life—is dividing public opinion between ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Сравнительное конституционное обозрение 2026 Т. 35 № 2 (167) С. 4–29
In the context of the rapid changes in the modern world associated with globalization, informatiza tion, and the revision of ethical standards of mass behavior, legal theory faces a number of problems — the loss of consensus in understanding global constitutionalism, growing disagreements regard ing its values and principles, and unclear prospects for the future. ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Сравнительное конституционное обозрение 2026 Т. 35 № 1 С. 53–77
Judges should be independent of politics, yet they are constantly ensnared by it. Politics haunts judges even where the full scope of constitutional guarantees for the separation of powers and an in dependent judiciary is in place, infiltrating the courtroom through variable interpretations of the val ues, principles, and norms of the constitution, the selection ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Вопросы теоретической экономики 2026 № 2 С. 146–164
It is generally accepted that the basis of social and legal stability in any society is a consensus on vir tue — the fundamental values of proper behavior, ways of maintaining and reproducing them. And, conversely, the destruction of this consensus is a sign of the loss of stability and divergence of positions of social ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Сравнительное конституционное обозрение 2025 Т. 34 № 4 С. 135–166
The communist morality created in the USSR to form a “new man” was based on a code of moral values that replaced traditional religious ideas with the ideological postulates of a one-party dictator ship. The crisis and collapse of this ideology in post-Soviet Russia led to the emergence of an “ethi cal vacuum” — moral ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Medushevsky A. N., Российская юстиция 2025 № 11 С. 14–25
Globalization has exacerbated the eternal conflict between law and ethics: should national laws be respected when they conflict with universal international principles of human rights; should the law-abiding attitude operate in the same way in democracies and authoritarian states, and calls for emancipation take into account the degree of internal freedom of society and its ...
Added: August 26, 2026
Zhdanov V., AI and Society 2026 P. n.d.–n.d.
The article reinterprets Plato’s famous allegory of the cave in the context of contemporary digital presence. Its starting point is the Argentina–England match at the 2026 World Cup, where the author notices spectators who, despite being able to watch Lionel Messi directly from the stands, prefer to record the action on their smartphones.
Unlike Plato’s prisoners, ...
Added: August 25, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Parsamov V., Ананьев Д. А. et al., М.: ООО «Паблис», 2026.
The third volume of the anthology is publishing the writtings of the eariy Russian conservative thinkers: Seraphim of Sarov, N.M. Karamzin, A.S. Shishkov, F.V. Rostopchin, S.N. Glinka, A.S. Sturdza, M.L. Magnitsky, Archimandrite Photius, V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Vyazemsky. ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Воронеж: Новый взгляд, 2012.
The study is a first integral research of the ideologic and socio-political biography of Sergey Nikolaevich Glnka, who was the one of distinguished representative of the early Russian conservatism. ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Русско-византийский вестник 2021 № 2(5) С. 166–182
The article is devoted to a problem of national identity in Russian conservative thought of the first quarter of XIX century. The provocative factor of the search of Russian self-identity was an aggressive westernism, which was translated in Russian aristocracy’s Gallomania and Alexander’s I liberal reforms conjoined with Napoleonic wars and European reaction on the ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Вопросы истории 2019 № 5 С. 22–37
The publication is devoted to ideological and political biografy of Sergey Nikolaevich Glinka - a famous Russian conservativeof the first quater of XIX century. Glinka was a literateur, political writer, publisher of the "Russian messenger" magazine, author of the voluminous "Russian history" fnd one of the organizer of Moscow militia. In his writings and socio-political activity ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Русско-византийский вестник 2019 № 1 С. 346–368
The article is devoted to “The Russian Messenger”, published by Sergey Nikolayevich Glinka in 1808-1824. The magazine was inspired by presentiment of the great war between Russia and France and analyzing the basic questions of Russian conservative thought of the first quarter of 19th century — criticism of Gallomania, importance of Russian historical tradition and ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Русско-византийский вестник 2018 № 1 С. 113–119
The article is devoted to the aspect of the views of Sergei Nikolayevich Glinka — a well known social and political figure, publisher and publicist, representative of the conservative thought of the first quarter of the 19th century — which had not previously been studied in domestic and foreign historiography, and especially to his views ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Христианское чтение 2018 № 5 С. 175–186
The article is devoted to the “Russian Messenger” of Sergey Nikolayevich Glinka. The magazine was created in the period of Napoleonic wars for the purpose of preparing Russian society to political-military and socio-cultural fight with France. Seeing that France and French culture were associated with revolution, “Russian Messenger” made actual the main questions of Russian ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Лупарева Н. Н., Христианское чтение 2017 № 2 С. 276–287
In the present article, the author considers the role of Orthodoxy in the conception of social and political organization created by Sergey Glinka, a well-known representative of the conservative political wing during the reign of Alexander I, publisher of the patriotic journal Russian Messenger, and author the famed Russian History at the beginning of the ...
Added: August 24, 2026
Moiseev D., Multipolar Press, 2026.
Bushidō, the ethical tradition of the samurai, long ago transcended Japan’s feudal past to become a powerful element of cultural identity and an enduring presence in the global imagination. For Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), one of Japan’s most celebrated and controversial novelists and playwrights, a Nobel Prize nominee, actor, and public intellectual, bushidō was a living ...
Added: August 19, 2026
Vlasenko D., Saranskaia I., Zakharov D., European Physical Journal: Special Topics 2026 P. 1–16
Hypergraphs provide a natural framework for representing neurophysiological interactions distributed across sets of sensors. A key methodological question is how hyperedges should be defined from frequency-resolved electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) data. We demonstrate a construction strategy in which hyperedges are obtained from canonical coherence (caCOH), an extension of coherence that estimates coupling between multidimensional signal spaces. To ...
Added: August 18, 2026
Gallyamova A., Komyaginskaya E., Grigoryev D., Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 2026 Vol. 67 No. 4 P. 1119–1141
Introduction: This study tests the dimensionality hypothesis, according to which diverse epistemically unfounded beliefs share a single underlying liability in addition to domain-specific components. We focus on conspiracy, paranormal, pseudoscientific, religious, and pseudo-profound (“bullshit”) beliefs and examine whether their covariance structure is best captured by a common factor plus residual domain-specific factors.
Methods: Using a nationally representative Russian ...
Added: March 16, 2026
Микляева А. В., Samoilov O., Социальная психология и общество 2024 Т. 15 № 4 С. 154–171
Objective. The analysis of social beliefs and the foundations for moral choice as predictors of the civic identity of adolescents. Background. Despite the expressed interest of researchers in the patterns of formation of civic identity in adolescence, at this stage there is no unambiguous data on the influence of social beliefs and foundations for moral ...
Added: February 4, 2026
Toribio-Florez D., Altenmüller M., Douglas K. et al., European Journal of Social Psychology 2025 Vol. 55 No. 7 P. 1252–1269
Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim (i.e., victim justice sensitivity; VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370,373) indicated a positive association between ...
Added: June 23, 2025
Maksimenko A., Загладина А. Р., Дейнека О. С., Психология и право 2025 Т. 15 № 3 С. 224–239
Context and relevance. In the context of the persistent spread of corrupt practices, which pose a threat both to the functioning of state institutions and to public trust, there is an increasing need to analyze not only institutional, legal, and economic, but also psychological factors that contribute to their reproduction. In recent years, growing attention in ...
Added: October 2, 2024
Gallyamova A., Komyaginskaya E., Grigoryev D., Personality and Individual Differences 2024 Vol. 230 Article 112780
This meta-analysis examines the relationship between paranormal beliefs and Core Knowledge Confusions (CKC), a concept introduced by Lindeman and Aarnio (2007) to explore the link between ontological errors and belief in the paranormal. The CKC, which uses metaphor classification to assess ontological confusion, suggests that cognitive processes organize information into ontologies, and our interpretation of ...
Added: June 24, 2024
Grigoryev D., Gallyamova A., The Spanish Journal of Psychology 2023 Vol. 26 P. 1–14
Even though wide access to any warranted information in the modern age, the problem of unfounded belief is still relevant, since these beliefs often lead to negative consequences (e.g., vaccination refusal, homeopathic treatment, etc.). The aim of this study was testing the relationship of social worldviews with paranormal beliefs and conspiracy beliefs. We assumed dimensionality ...
Added: April 18, 2023