Editor's Statement

The third issue of Volume 41 contains five studies. Moral judgement, paranormal beliefs, imagery and psychosis, and online dating are examined. Additionally, when this preface is written, we are entering the second year of the COVID19 pandemic. One of the studies examines the effects of the pandemic are children personification of objects. We briefly preview each of these enticing studies. The first study by Brian Ruedinger and Jennifer Barnes examines moral action and judgement. This is a series of three experiments. There is a lot of research indicating that a person’s real-world morality affects the way they approach fictional media, and that fictional media can affect real world morality in a self-fulfilling prophecy loop. They examine the degree to which morality was imported into realistic and fantastical fictional stories. In the first pair of studies, participants had to choose whether or not to behave in an immoral fashion for personal (in-story) gain. In the third study, participants read a non-interactive version of the story in which a story character repeatedly behaved immorally for personal gain and were asked to rate the morality of those actions. It is intriguing that across studies, those who were more transported into the narrative were more likely to import real-world morality, choosing less immoral actions (interactive story, Studies 1 and 2) and judging a character’s Machiavellian actions as more immoral (Study 3). The next pair of studies study examine psychosis and in cognition and mental imagery respectively. The second study is by Chris Williams, Andrew Denovan, Kenneth Drinkwater, and Neil Dagnall. They investigated how much cognitive bias mediated the relationship between thinking style and belief in the paranormal. A wide array of intriguing results is reported. An example of one of their findings is that catastrophising was associated belief in the paranormal and other cognitive biases. Their conclusion that even though belief in the paranormal is typically benign, it can have effects on weakening political involvement and public health messages. This conclusion is particularly relevant in the current political climate and uncertainty dealing with the COVID19 pandemic, where there are numerous conspiracy theories about the cause of the virus and the effectiveness of masking and vaccine spreading and halting variant spread. The third study conducted by Laura Auvinen-Lintunen, Tuula Ilonen, Tuula Kieseppä, Jaana Suvisaari, and Maija Lindgrenon examines additional associations between psychosis, and mental imagery. They studied the vividness and controllability Editorial