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"Boyer, Pascal"
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Minds make societies : how cognition explains the world humans create
A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies \"There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.\" Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, he offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as, Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information like rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation.
Book
Minds make societies : how cognition explains the world humans create
A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies \"There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.\" Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as, Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation.
eBook
Threat-Related Information Suggests Competence: A Possible Factor in the Spread of Rumors
Information about potential danger is a central component of many rumors, urban legends, ritual prescriptions, religious prohibitions and witchcraft crazes. We investigate a potential factor in the cultural success of such material, namely that a source of threat-related information may be intuitively judged as more competent than a source that does not convey such information. In five studies, we asked participants to judge which of two sources of information, only one of which conveyed threat-related information, was more knowledgeable. Results suggest that mention of potential danger makes a source appear more competent than others, that the effect is not due to a general negativity bias, and that it concerns competence rather than a more generally positive evaluation of the source.
Journal Article
SUR LA TORSION DANS LA COHOMOLOGIE DES VARIÉTÉS DE SHIMURA DE KOTTWITZ-HARRIS-TAYLOR
(Torsion in the cohomology of Kottwitz–Harris–Taylor Shimura varieties) When the level at
$l$
of a Shimura variety of Kottwitz–Harris–Taylor is not maximal, its cohomology with coefficients in a
$\\overline{\\mathbb{Z}}_{l}$
-local system isn’t in general torsion free. In order to prove torsion freeness results of the cohomology, we localize at a maximal ideal
$\\mathfrak{m}$
of the Hecke algebra. We then prove a result of torsion freeness resting either on
$\\mathfrak{m}$
itself or on the Galois representation
$\\overline{\\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}}_{\\mathfrak{m}}$
associated to it. Concerning the torsion, in a rather restricted case than Caraiani and Scholze (« On the generic part of the cohomology of compact unitary Shimura varieties », Preprint, 2015), we prove that the torsion doesn’t give new Satake parameters systems by showing that each torsion cohomology class can be raised in the free part of the cohomology of a Igusa variety.
Journal Article
When to Blame Victims for Negligence: Noncooperators Are Deemed Responsible for Their Own Hardship
In four preregistered studies, we tested implications from a cooperation model that explains victim-blaming as a strategic move, as a way for people to avoid the costs of helping victims (who seem to be unpromising cooperation partners) without paying the reputational cost of being seen as ungenerous, reluctant cooperators. An implication of this perspective is that, if an individual is identified as a poor cooperation prospect to start with, people would be likely to blame that individual for his/her own misfortune, notably by suggesting that the victim was negligent. The four studies presented here support this interpretation, as participants attributed more negligence to an accident victim if that victim had been initially described as less prosocial, either because they denied benefits to others or because they created costs for others. These results are consistent with a familiar result, that people blame victims more if they feel (or want to be seen as) more socially distant from that victim. The present studies may offer a simple, cooperation-based account of this and other aspects of victim-blaming.
Journal Article
Ownership psychology as a cognitive adaptation: A minimalist model
Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirely ad hoc, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as “this is hers,” “that is not mine.” This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand “cultural appropriation” and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free of ad hoc stipulations.
Journal Article
Ownership psychology, its antecedents and consequences
Commentators discussed the coherence and validity of a minimalist approach to ownership intuitions, in ways that make it possible to clarify the model, re-evaluate its cognitive underpinnings, and sketch some of its implications. This response summarizes the model; addresses issues concerning the need for a special technical lexicon when describing cognitive semantics; the psychology involved in contexts of competitive acquisition and their consequences for possession and use of rival resources; the role of cooperative expectations in creating mutually beneficial allocation of resources; the consequences of ownership psychology for social interaction and the production of social norms of property; and the relations between psychological processes and legal institutions in the domain, before proposing some final thoughts.
Journal Article
Beyond folk-sociology: Extending Pietraszewski's model to large-group dynamics
Folk-sociology is a set of intuitive assumptions that organize our spontaneous theories about society, including the notion that social groups are agent-like. Pietraszewski's model may explain this folk-sociological assumption in an elegant way. However, large-scale group dynamics include features that seem to escape agent-like descriptions. Therefore, one may want to find out whether the “event-grammar” proposed here can account for these features.
Journal Article
Cultural evolution from the producers’ standpoint
Standard approaches to cultural evolution focus on the recipients or consumers. This does not take into account the fitness costs incurred in producing the behaviours or artefacts that become cultural, i.e. widespread in a social group. We argue that cultural evolution models should focus on these fitness costs and benefits of cultural production, particularly in the domain of ‘symbolic’ culture. In this approach, cultural products can be considered as a part of the extended phenotype of producers, which can affect the fitness of recipients in a positive way (through cooperation) but also in a detrimental way (through manipulation and exploitation). Taking the producers’ perspective may help explain the specific features of many kinds of cultural products.
Journal Article