Some scholars have raised the potential functional role of fictive kinship for religion, generally. This paper seeks to develop that idea. It is argued in this paper that fictive kinship language in religion (and some other non-religious contexts) recruits traits connected to Hamilton’s rule as it is expressed in Homo sapiens psychology. The effect is that cooperation is augmented within a population that generally shares the same religious worldview. The general position is that if religions are in the business of (...) cooperation and this partially accounts for their evolution and preservation, then it follows that we should take particular note of any significant feature of religions that might lend itself to the cooperation account of religion’s apparent evolutionary success. Fictive kinship is one such feature. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the association of foreign language use and religiosity to moral decision-making in the context of a realistic set of scenarios about the COVID-19 pandemic. We used the CNI model in which four variants of a single dilemma manipulated norms and consequences, which are the defining characteristics of deontology and utilitarianism, respectively. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate the role of in-group versus out-group membership in shaping moral judgment. 461 (...) participants responded to COVID-19 scenarios either in their native language (Persian) or foreign language (English). Contrary to findings of prior research on moral judgment, the results of the current study indicated that those using their native language showed more sensitivity to consequences compared to those using a foreign language and that less religious individuals were more likely to endorse norms compared to more religious participants. These unexpected findings may be attributed either to the use of more realistic scenarios or to some problems associated with the use of the CNI model. Further, participants’ responses did not significantly differ as a result of group membership, but in line with prior research, exploratory analyses revealed that men showed greater sensitivity to consequences. (shrink)

People across cultures consider everyday choices in the context of perceived various external life-determining forces: such as fate and gods (two teleological forces) and such notions as luck and chance (two non-teleological forces). There is little cross-cultural evidence (except for a belief in gods) showing how people relate these salient notions of life-determining forces to prosociality and a sense of well-being. The current paper provides preliminary cross-cultural data to address this gap. Results indicate that choice is the most important life-determining (...) factor. Regression analyses indicate that choice and belief in gods and fate emerged as significant predictors of prosociality towards strangers. Moreover, luck was a significant predictor of decreased prosociality. A relation between life-determining forces and life satisfaction followed the same pattern: choice, gods, and fate emerged as significant predictors of greater life satisfaction, whereas luck was associated with decreased life satisfaction. The overall pattern of results indicates that participants across different cultures might sense being bounded to share or not to care depending on the perceived intentional agency and meaning in the external forces. (shrink)

This study investigates the cultural conceptualization of congratulatory happy events in British English and Turkish and discusses them cross-culturally. A lexical search was carried out in various corpora from the newspaper genre using the verbs congratulate in English and its dictionary counterparts tebrik etmek and kutlamak in Turkish along with their various lexical forms, which not only report the act of congratulating but also perform it. The results of the study showed that there were cultural differences and similarities in the (...) conceptualization of congratulatory happy events. It was found that there were subtle differences between the events of tebrik etmek and kutlamak in the Turkish data and that the Turkish tebrik etmek was closer to congratulating although congratulating events were relatively more restricted. This study contributes to the socio-cultural dimension of congratulating and provides a cross-cultural understanding of congratulatory happy events with implications for foreign language education and intercultural communication. (shrink)

In the research on literacy learning the concept of language awareness has come forward as a unifying framework for understanding the underlying knowledge that supports ability in reading and writing. Consensus is gathering around the idea that language awareness is an essential foundation. If subsequent work in this area confirms it, this factor may turn out to be the key cognitive-domain explanation for successful literacy learning in school (and for academic purposes in general). In this review we examine two cross-cultural (...) comparisons regarding this claim. The comparisons point to the need to examine cases that juxtapose contrasting conditions. Relevant contrasts place side by side examples that appear to be typical and examples that appear to be exceptional. Taking what appear on the surface as sharply diverging cases, how is access to requisite underlying competencies similar, and how different, from one instance to the other? (shrink)

The experienced qualities of memories of factual and fictional events have been little researched previously. The few studies that exist find no or few differences. However, one reason to expect differences in memory qualities is that processing of fact and fiction seem to involve activation of different brain areas. The present study expands earlier research by including a wider range of memory qualities, using positive and negative events, and three time-points: immediately after, after a ten-minute delay and after a five-week (...) delay. Participants (N = 52) read four short stories in English, labelled either fact or fiction, and rated memory qualities on 7-point scales. Results show no differences; however, an interaction was found between fictionality and story emotional valence, in that memories of negative fictional stories are rated as more clear. The higher clarity can be explained by previous findings that negative events from stories are in general remembered in more detail, in combination with the idea that fiction entails simulation to a higher degree than fact. The conclusion is that although a difference in memory qualities between fact and fiction was found in one case, memory qualities seem not to play an operative role when the memory system distinguishes fact from fiction. (shrink)

Based on “laws” of contagion and similarity, it is understood that people tend to believe that meanings associated with one object may be transferred onto another, and the meanings of the first may “contaminate” the second. The perceived contamination may influence the individual’s way of interacting with the object. We aimed to produce a rich description of individual differences that predict intuitive judgments in response to scenarios involving activation of contagion heuristics. Adolescents and adults in Germany completed a survey and (...) provided rated responses to hypothetical scenarios. They also gave open-ended remarks on one scenario: whether they would wear a sweater that had belonged to Adolf Hitler if they were cold. Content analysis produced a composite description of reflections with insights into historical consciousness in contemporary Germany. Also examined was the extent to which quantitative responses were related to demographics, personality characteristics, supernatural beliefs, and responses to other scenarios. (shrink)

Causal cognition – how we perceive, represent and reason about causal events – are fundamental to the human mind, but it has rarely been approached in its cultural specificity. Here, we investigate this core concept among Wichi people, an indigenous group living in Chaco Forest. We focus on the Wichi, because their epistemological orientations and explanatory frameworks about ecosystem differ importantly from those documented among most Western majority-culture populations. We asked participants to reason about causes of events that involve the (...) hunhat lheley (inhabitants of the earth: humans, non-human animals, plants and spiritual beings) and other entities of their ecosystem (e.g., lagoon). We find a native ontological framework that encompasses three interacting organizing principles. This new evidence highlights ways in which native categories guide causal reasoning. Our research challenge long-held assumptions that dichotomies – nature-culture or natural-supernatural – are universal features of the human mind. (shrink)

Emotion understanding (EU) is the capacity to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of the emotional experience of the self and others. The cultural differences and similarities in the development of EU are still not well recognized, especially within Slavic culture and language. We tested 180 Polish children aged 5–11 years using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and compared their results with data from British and Italian children. We revealed a similar pattern of EU development between the three groups, showing (...) a growing number of the core EU components with age. In all samples, the three difficulty-differentiated clusters of EU components were distinguishable. Some cultural differences were observed only in a few EU components – especially, British and Italian children recognized the cognitively-based individualistic aspect of emotions to a higher degree than Polish children. These results supplement the current knowledge about EU development in children within European cultures. (shrink)

Despite their growing popularity, little is known about the psychological effects of participating in past-life meditation groups in contemporary western contexts. We conducted a study to re-create some of the conditions observed in the field by facilitating a group of adults interested in exploring past life meditation. Before the session, participants completed a survey about their afterlife beliefs and associated experiences. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring meaningfulness in life and fear of death before and after the session. In the sample (...) (n = 125), just over half of the participants (52%) reported having a past life memory or vision during the session. Higher paranormal beliefs predicted reporting a past life memory or vision. We also found that having prior memories or visions of having lived before, but not the general belief in having a past life, predicted reporting having past life experiences during the session. Consistent with our predictions, participants who reported having a past life memory or vision also reported reduced existential death distress and increased meaningfulness in life following the session, compared to those who did not report these experiences. (shrink)

The metaphor of culture as a space or environment of meaning is widely employed. Going beyond metaphor, we present a model of culture as a 3-dimensional Euclidean space, using data from Brazil on cultural models of life goals. The dimensions of this space are defined by degree of sharing of culture (cultural competence); alternate configurations of that shared meaning (residual agreement); and social practice (cultural consonance). A cultural distance metric calculated within those dimensions identifies an individuals’ proximity to prototypical goals; (...) greater distance from these goals is associated with higher psychological distress. Cultural distance is in turn influenced by one’s sense of personal agency. Finally, in a set of open-ended interviews, the more individuals employ spatial metaphors in talking about culturally defined life goals, the higher their sense of personal agency and cultural consonance. This model moves the discussion of culture as a space of meaning from metaphor to measurement. (shrink)

Left-wing authoritarianism remains far less understood than right-wing authoritarianism. We contribute to literature on the former, which typically relies on surveys, using a new social media analytic approach. We use a list of 60 terms to provide an exploratory sketch of the outlines of a political ideology – tribal equalitarianism – with origins in 19th and 20th century social philosophy. We then use analyses of the English Corpus of Google Books (n > 8 million books) and scraped unique tweets from (...) Twitter (n = 202,582) to conduct a series of investigations to discern the extent to which this ideology is cohesive amongst the public, reveals signatures of authoritarianism and has been growing in popularity. Though exploratory, our results provide some evidence of left-wing authoritarianism in two forms: (1) a uniquely conservative signature amongst ostensible liberals using measures derived from Moral Foundations Theory and (2) a substantial prevalence of anger, relative to anxiety or sadness, in tweets analyzed for sentiment. In general, results indicate that this worldview is growing in popularity, is increasingly cohesive, and shows signatures of authoritarianism. (shrink)

Göbekli Tepe is an archaeological site that has challenged much prior thought on human history with respect to our Neolithic revolution from animistic, egalitarian, hunter-gatherers to settled, socially stratified, and religious peoples. In the present paper we review the structures and possible purposes of Göbekli Tepe, summarize past considerations of the connection between psychological concepts and matters found thereat, and then introduce social identity theory as an apt theoretical perspective from which to best understand the peoples who constructed and utilized (...) the site. Throughout we show that social-cognitive processes and concepts have merit in interpreting the advent and utility of Göbekli Tepe, suggesting then a greater use for psychology within the framework of cognitive archaeology. (shrink)

Dehumanization is routinely invoked in social science and law as the primary factor in explaining how propaganda encourages support for, or participation in, violence against targeted outgroups. Yet the primacy of dehumanization is increasingly challenged by the apparent influence of revenge on collective violence. This study examines critically how various propaganda influence audiences. Although previous research stresses the dangers of dehumanizing propaganda, a recently published study found that only revenge propaganda significantly lowered outgroup empathy. Given the importance of these findings (...) for law and the behavioral sciences, this research augments that recent study with two additional samples that were culturally distinct from the prior findings, showing again that only revenge propaganda was significant. To explore this effect further, we also conducted a facial electromyography (fEMG) among a small set of participants, finding that revenge triggered significantly stronger negative emotions against outgroups than dehumanization. (shrink)

In the study of the process of radicalization, precedence has been given to answering ‘how’ questions over the exact qualification of the concept of radicalization itself. What does it mean to be radicalized? What are the cognitive entailments of such state? What are the features that make radicalization recognizable? We rely on a game theoretic model to characterize the essence of what it is to be radicalized. Our model of the radicalized agent’s rational behavior elucidates his construal of typical social (...) transactions. We further propose that the rationality of the radicalized mind entails a cognitive calibration specifying a modality of thought we call the R.A.S.H. mentality. It incorporates a particular risk preference (that action is always optimal) and attitude (that one’s temerity calls for requital) which are both essential aspects of the radicalized mind. The R.A.S.H. mentality throw in a new light core findings of the radicalization literature. (shrink)

Shweder et al. (1997) proposed the three domains of morality: Autonomy, Community, and Divinity. This study used situation sampling to explore how people from Japan and the U.S. interpret moral transgressions provided in their own and another cultural context. Specifically, the analysis tested whether participants with one cultural background recognize culturally congruent moral transgressions as violations more frequently and feel more harshly towards them than culturally incongruent domains. Furthermore, the extent of evocation caused by the home and another culture was (...) investigated. This study asked 102 Japanese and 168 U.S. participants to judge which domain would be primarily involved in each transgression and to rate their wrongness. Participants showed a higher perceived magnitude of transgressions in culturally valued domains provided by in-group than outside members. Cross-cultural differences in morality and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

Interactionism holds that explanatory and interpretive projects are mutually enriching. If so, then the evolutionary and cognitive science of religions’ explanatory theories should aid interpretive projects concerning religious meaning. Although interpretive accounts typically focus on the local and the particular, interpreters over the past century have construed Freud and Marx as offering general interpretive theories. So, precedent for general interpretive theorizing exists. 4E cognitive science, which champions how cognition is embedded in natural and cultural settings, extended into external structures, enacted (...) via motor routines, and embodied via representations rooted in human bodily form, has encouraged interpretive researchers. Theories of embodied cognition especially have embraced a sweeping view of meaning that attends to the emotions’ role and to their evolutionary origins. That inspires a 6E cognitive science that attends to the emotional and evolved dimensions of cognition too and opens up the possibility of general interpretive theories of broadly Darwinian character. Evolved cognitive systems qualify as maturationally natural cognition, which exhibits a distinctive constellation of features. The by-product theory holds that religious representations’ engagement of maturationally natural cognition fosters religions’ success. Representations with some minimal violation of intuitive expectations concerning some ontological category grab attention, stick in memory, and preserve the many automatic inferences accompanying the category. The empirical evidence for this and other elaborations of the by-product view suggests that it discloses dynamics of evolved cognition and associated emotions that tend to guide the pursuit of religious meanings systematically toward well-worn grooves in the semantic landscape. (shrink)

In this study, we ask whether consensus testimony affects children’s judgments of the possibility of improbable and impossible events. Fifty-six U.S. and Chinese 8-year-olds made possibility judgments before and after hearing three speakers affirm or deny the possibility of improbable and impossible events. Results indicated that whereas both U.S. and Chinese children altered their judgments in the direction of the consensus testimony, this effect was stronger for Chinese children. U.S. children were particularly receptive to consensus for improbable events and when (...) the consensus provided correct information, whereas Chinese children were similarly willing to change their judgment regardless of event type and the validity of the testimony. We propose that the extent of the influence of testimony on possibility judgments varies based on cultural setting. Our findings have potential applications for domains that require evaluation of counterintuitive claims, like religious and scientific education. (shrink)

Inspired by recent Bayesian interpretations about the psychology underlying religion, the paper introduces a theory proposing that religious conversion is shaped by three factors: (i) novel relevant information, experienced in perceptual or in social form (e.g., following interaction with missionaries); (ii) changes in the utility (e.g., expressed in an opportunity to raise in social rank) associated with accepting a new religious creed; and (iii) prior beliefs, favouring religious faiths that, although new, still remain consistent with entrenched cultural views (resulting in (...) the phenomenon of syncretism). From the theory, a multifactorial picture of conversion emerges. Based on which factor is primarily engaged in each case, a classification of different types of conversion can be derived, with a remarkable fit with empirical literature. The theory offers a description of the processes underlying religious conversion and, highlighting the links among apparently incompatible previous views, it reconciles these views within a unifying framework. (shrink)

The effects of parent rewards on youth outcomes have been studied extensively; however, research has not systematically categorized parent rewards. Centralizing the analysis of rewards within a given study would help compare the prevalence of reward types at superordinate and subordinate levels. Moreover, it could reveal which level is the most effective for assessing cultural group similarities and differences in a globalizing world. Mother-child conversations between European-American (n = 51) and Hispanic-American (n = 44) dyads were transcribed. A content analysis (...) assessed material and social reward talk themes and created new subthemes. A series of 2 (culture) × 2 (gender) ANCOVAs assessed cultural differences in reward talk themes and subthemes. Results revealed the prevalence of certain reward subthemes, like praise, significantly differed by cultural group. In conclusion, investigations with different cultural groups should consider reward talk on a subordinate level rather than superordinate. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of perceived vulnerability to disease, emotions (disgust, anger), and perceived norms in predicting moral judgments of anti-COVID-19-preventive behaviors in US and Japan. A total of 442 Japanese and 365 American participants completed an online survey. Disgust and anger mediated the link between perceived vulnerability to disease (germ aversion) and moral judgments of preventive behaviors across both cultures. Perceived social norms among friends and family were associated with harsh judgments of anti-preventive (...) behaviors for Japanese but not for American participants. Overall, our results suggest that effective strategies for promoting preventive behaviors may be culturally valid if they focus on the fear for infectious disease and related aversive affect. We also discussed the possibility that some strategies could be characteristic of collectivistic cultures, warranting further cross-cultural comparisons. (shrink)