Moral Compensation and the Environment
Moral Compensation and the Environment: Affecting Individuals’ Moral Intentions Through How They See Themselves as Moral.
(link to the article)
Ann Tenbrunsel, Jennifer Jordan, Francesca Gino & Marijke Leliveld
To maintain a positive moral self-image, individuals engage in compensation: ...
Belief ascription in infants and children: the puzzle
In several recent papers on mindreading and belief-ascription, Ian Apperly and his colleagues have reported evidence suggesting that the process whereby human adults ascribe false beliefs to others is not automatic. They have further argued that efficiency and flexibility make competing and ...
Where and when did languages emerge? The answer
In Science, a new paper by Quentin D. Atkinson "Phonemic Diversity Supports aSerial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa" is generating a lot of well-deserved interest (see here, here, or here for instance).
Abstract:
Human genetic and phenotypic diversity declines with distance ...
Cultural evolution of linguistic structures
Forthcoming in Nature an article by Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Stephen C. Levinson and Russell D. Gray entitled “Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals” available here.
Abstract:
Languages vary widely but not without limit. The central goal ...
What the judge ate for breakfast
How do people make decision? One view is that they arrive at their decisions by reasoning, using as premises their beliefs and desires. Another view is that people’s beliefs, desires, and decisions are largely determined by internalized cultural patterns. Particularly relevant to both approaches ...
Cognitive Migration
Cognitive Migration: The Role of Mental Simulation in the (Hot) Cultural Cognition of Migration Decisions
(link to the article)
David Kyle & Saara Koikkalainen
This paper introduces the novel empirical concept of “cognitive migration” to better understand the role of the prospective ...
Is social cognition reducible to theory of mind?
In an article entitled "Social cognition is not reducible to theory of mind when children use deontic rules to predict the behaviour of others” (coming out in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2011, available here), Fabrice Clément, Stéphane Bernard and Laurence Kaufmann argue ...
If “Religion is natural”, what about atheism?
In 'cognition and culture' circles, it is almost a matter of common wisdom, it seems, to claim that religious belief is natural, whereas atheism, physicalism and other forms of unbelief are unnatural (see for example this paper by Robert McCauley). Sociologist Rodney Stark has announced the death ...