Javier Granados Samayoa

Javier Granados Samayoa, the Vartan Gregorian Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from The Ohio State University. Javier has applied his interest in attitudes and social cognition to the development of several lines of research. In one line of work, he has examined the role of individual differences in attitude generalization tendencies -- whether people’s positive or negative attitudes generalize more strongly -- in shaping behavior as people pursue their goals. This research has led to the development of a theoretical model of self-regulation in which goal-relevant assessments afforded by the situation (e.g., “am I prepared?”) interact with people’s attitude generalization tendencies to shape judgments about goal-directed behavior. In addition, Javier has explored the consequences of believing specific conspiracy theories (e.g., conspiracy theories about COVID-19). For instance, he finds that believing Covid-19 conspiracy theories predicts increases in conspiracist ideation -- the general tendency to believe conspiracy theories -- over time. That is, endorsing specific conspiracy theories appears to pave the way for greater receptiveness to a variety of different conspiracy theory beliefs down the road.