{"title":"Distance from a Cultural Prototype and Psychological Distress in Urban Brazil: A Model","authors":"W. Dressler, M. C. Balieiro, J. E. dos Santos","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340160","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47981077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Three Men Make a Tiger: The Effect of Consensus Testimony on Chinese and U.S. Children’s Judgments about Possibility","authors":"Jenny Nissel, Hui Li, Amanda Cramer, J. Woolley","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340154","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49080588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Computations Underlying Religious Conversion: A Bayesian Decision Model","authors":"Francesco Rigoli","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340161","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Inspired 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49298092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Affective and Motivational Accounts of Moralizing COVID-19-Preventive Behaviors","authors":"Reina Takamatsu, May Cho Min, Jiro Takai","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340156","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135675695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Morality is in the Cultural Eye of the Beholder: A Situation Sampling Study","authors":"Akiko Matsuo","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340155","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135675694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Darwinian Bases of Religious Meaning: Interactionism, General Interpretive Theories, and 6E Cognitive Science","authors":"Robert N. McCauley","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340149","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Interactionism 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45364014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The R.A.S.H. Mentality of Radicalization","authors":"P. Liénard, Michael Moncrieff","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340158","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49215667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding Maternal Rewards and Their Subtypes between Gender and Culture with Adolescents","authors":"Nicole M Summers-Gabr","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340151","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The 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.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45854694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Linguistic Relativity Today. Language, Mind, Society, and the Foundations of Linguistic Anthropology, written by Danesi, M.","authors":"Filippo Batisti","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340162","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42933301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Copying to Coordination: An Alternative Framework for Understanding Cultural Learning Mechanisms","authors":"Mathieu Charbonneau, James W. A. Strachan","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340145","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Copying has been a productive paradigm for the study of cultural learning. Copying is about information transmission, the success of which is measured by the similarity of knowledge between models and learners. In this paper, we identify some shortcomings in the use of copying mechanisms (e.g., imitation, emulation) as explanations of cultural learning, emphasizing their focus on the flow of information (from expert to novice) instead of on the specific interactions involved during episodes of learning. We argue that the micro-interactions between models and learners and how they coordinate with one another better explain how knowledge is passed on between individuals. We propose to understand cultural learning as a form of interpersonal coordination, i.e., as the result of dynamic interactions involving mutual behavioral alignment between two interacting agents. We sketch how a coordination framework provides a richer picture of cultural learning, with more explanatory power than the copying paradigm.</p>","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138530291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}