While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed 6723 participants from 36 countries. In line with predictions, propensity to believe conspiracy theories was negatively associated with perceptions of current and future national economic vitality. Furthermore, countries with higher GDP per capita tended to have lower belief in conspiracy theories. The data suggest that conspiracy beliefs are not just caused by intrapsychic factors but are also shaped by difficult economic circumstances for which distrust might have a rational basis.

Reporting on trauma is part of the journalists’ job, and it needs to be conducted with care for their mental health of the interviewees and audiences. Data from focus groups and online survey with journalism students in Macedonia identified that: reporting on traumatic events can affect mental health; education can be a factor for coping and building resilience; educators lack adequate training; there are no adequate teaching materials in journalism courses at faculties; and at the end, students are not equipped with strategies and skills for dealing with trauma when reporting on trauma.

Student organizations exist to protect the rights and interests of their members. Therefore, if they are organized into representative student governments, students can be a very influential agent who shapes the policy of higher education, and build themselves as democratic force in the society. The purpose of this study conducted by Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research (ISPJR), Skopje was to consider student activism at university level in light of social justice motive. The data show that components of social justice motive influence the activism in Student Organization but also certainly proved that educational system of the country has serious omissions and errors in developing responsible and active youth and the country has to invest in its students because good student organization, in addition to exercising rights, freedoms and needs, and engaging in improving students’ standard and their well-being, means investing in an active, efficient, motivated and democratic youth.

Macedonian folk songs, as a part of Macedonian traditions and culture, represent an integral part of Macedonian history marked by resistance, military feats, and tendencies for maintaining the Macedonian national identity. This paper is focused on the issue of whether two Macedonian folk songs With Torments I was Born and Listen Patriots created in the course of the 19 th century-a period marked with active struggle for liberation and independence of the Macedonian nation-additionally intensify the emotions provoked by the storyline and action of the films, in which they have been incorporated. During the research process, the authors of the paper used the mechanism of cognitive appraisal as a model for content analysis, as well as psychological and ethnomusicological analysis of the resulting data. The units of content analysis were the sequences of scenes of the film, in which the two Macedonian folk songs were used. The selected songs and films, as well as the interaction between the sound and visual senses, clearly present the deep relationship between music and emotions in a specific, identity-related context. The findings of the study are in favor of the thesis that Macedonian folk songs, created as a result of the centuries-old struggle of the Macedonian people, when used in Macedonian films, intensify the patriotic emotions of the viewers and strengthen the concept of uniqueness in the Macedonian identity, due to the processes of repetition and revitalization of collective memories.

No abstract