{"title":"The Associations among Moral Foundations, Political Ideology, and Social Issues: A Study of These Associations in an Asian Sample","authors":"I. Hsieh, Yung Y. Chen","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340100","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This study examined the relationships among moral foundations, political ideology, and controversial social issues in an Asian culture. The study sample included 835 participants who completed a moral foundations questionnaire and three questions regarding attitudes toward social issues (i.e. nuclear power usage, the death penalty, and euthanasia), and a political ideology questionnaire. Results indicated that binding foundations (i.e. Ingroup, Authority, and Purity) were associated conservative tendencies, and individualizing foundations (i.e. Harm and Fairness) were associated liberal tendencies. Also, participants who scored higher on Authority showed higher approval of the death penalty, and those scored higher on Purity showed lower approval of the euthanasia. These results may provide a better understanding of the underlying differences for variations in opinions on social issues. Results also have implications for cultural differences in the associations among political ideology, social issues, and moral foundations.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"138-151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44508359","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":"Rethinking Religious Cognition and Myth: A New Perspective on how Religions Balance Intuitiveness and Interest-Provokingness/Memorability","authors":"Aria Nakissa","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340099","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In his influential work on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), Pascal Boyer argues that the spread of religious ideas involves a tradeoff between their “intuitiveness” and their interest-provokingness/memorability (i.e.,their capacity to provoke interest and be remembered). For Boyer, religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to understand and learn. However, other CSR studies suggest that religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to believe. In analyzing the spread of religious ideas, no study has considered the tradeoff between interest-provokingness/memorability and intuitiveness in the sense of being easy to believe. The present article takes up this task by considering several religious concepts that are intuitively easy to believe (e.g., immortal souls, spirit beings, a Creator God, a just world). It is argued that, in typical religions, such concepts are incorporated into myths. Through incorporation, these concepts lose some of their intuitive believability but gain interest-provokingness/memorability.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"112-137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47941861","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":"A Prototype Analysis of the Cultural and Evolutionary Construction of Romantic Love as a Synthesis of Love and Sex","authors":"V. D. Munck, D. Kronenfeld, C. Manoharan","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340095","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Our goal is to use prototype analysis to distinguish the folk or culturally held understandings of love, romantic love, and sex and to specify, from the obtained data, the semantic relationship among these three associated concepts. By considering the semantic distinctions between these three concepts, we come to an unintended insight: if romantic love is a socio-cultural universal it does not appear to have the same evolutionary history as love or sex and this may account for its somewhat ambiguous status in the scholarly literature on romantic love. We demonstrate that, in the United States, sex, in and of itself, is seldom conceived of as a relationship while love and romantic love are primarily viewed as relational. Our findings, though preliminary, strongly suggest that romantic love is a synthesis of two evolutionary drives: love (or bonding) and sex.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44639515","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 Sense of Supernatural Agency","authors":"F. Peters","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340094","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The sense of supernatural agency constitutes a defining characteristic of the religious sphere of life. But what accounts for the continued cross-cultural recurrence of this psychological phenomenon over the course of human history? This paper reviews evidence indicating that the source of panhuman or universal cognitive patterns of thought and behaviour such as this lies in the common characteristics of the evolved human mind. Further, that the sense of the supernatural is constituted by a unique combination of commonly recurring cognitive processes that together give rise to a panhuman conviction in the reality of supernatural agencies able and (when minded) willing to assist each individual in situations deemed beyond the capacities of that individual. These cognitive processes are driven most acutely by existential anxiety in response to extrinsic physical, economic and social pressures indicating that religiosity is best understood as a social-psychological phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44663426","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 Ontogeny of Kinship Categorization","authors":"Alice Mitchell, Fiona M. Jordan","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340101","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Human kinship systems play a central role in social organization, as anthropologists have long demonstrated. Much less is known about how cultural schemas of relatedness are transmitted across generations. How do children learn kinship concepts? To what extent is learning affected by known cross-cultural variation in how humans classify kin? This review draws on research in developmental psychology, linguistics, and anthropology to present our current understanding of the social and cognitive foundations of kinship categorization. Amid growing interest in kinship in the cognitive sciences, the paper aims to stimulate new research on the ontogeny of kinship categorization, a rich domain for studying the nexus of language, culture, and cognition. We introduce an interdisciplinary research toolkit to help streamline future research in this area.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46148391","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}
Anondah Saide, Kevin McCaffree, Rebekah A. Richert
{"title":"Does “Faith” in Science Correlate with Indicators of Well-Being?","authors":"Anondah Saide, Kevin McCaffree, Rebekah A. Richert","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340102","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Religion has long been theorized to serve important functions for societies and individuals; specifically, as a source of knowledge about what is real and as a source of norms prescribing how individuals should behave. However, science and scientists appear to be playing an increasingly large role in public discourse. A majority of adults in the U.S. report interest in science and an increasing number are obtaining degrees in the sciences – more so among males than females. As a result, we examined (1) whether and how participants’ demographic background, religious background, and two indicators of well-being relate to a “belief in science” index, and (2) whether those relations differed among males and females. 560 young adults from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds participated. The findings presented here suggest that belief in science and religiosity are strongly inversely correlated, and if belief in science does confer emotion-related benefits, it may operate differently across demographic categories. Specifically, we find that belief in science is related to emotion dysregulation and death anxiety among males, but not females, even though females scored lower on these indicators of well-being overall.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"178-199"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49009130","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 Plausible Impossible: Chinese Adults Hold Graded Notions of Impossibility","authors":"Tianwei Gong, Andrew Shtulman","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340097","url":null,"abstract":"Events that violate the laws of nature are, by definition, impossible, but recent research suggests that people view some violations as \"more impossible\" than others (Shtulman & Morgan, 2017). When evaluating the difficulty of magic spells, American adults are influenced by causal considerations that should be irrelevant given the spell's primary causal violation, judging, for instance, that it would be more difficult to levitate a bowling ball than a basketball even though weight should no longer be a consideration if contact is no longer necessary for support. In the present study, we sought to test the generalizability of these effects in a non-Western context China where magical events are represented differently in popular fiction and where reasoning styles are often more holistic than analytic. Across several studies, Chinese adults (n = 466) showed the same tendency as American adults to honor implicit causal constraints when evaluating the plausibility of magical events. These findings suggest that graded notions of impossibility are shared across cultures, possibly because they are a byproduct of causal knowledge.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"76-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47921444","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":"Book Review","authors":"Jason P. Martens, B. Rutjens","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340103","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44975500","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":"How Propaganda Works: Nationalism, Revenge and Empathy in Serbia","authors":"Jordan Kiper, Yeongjin Gwon, R. Wilson","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340091","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000What is the relationship between war propaganda and nationalism, and what are the effects of each on support for, or participation in, violent acts? This is an important question for international criminal law and ongoing speech crime trials, where prosecutors and judges continue to assert that there is a clear causal link between war propaganda, nationalism, and mass violence. Although most legal judgments hinge on the criminal intent of propagandists, the question of whether and to what extent propaganda and nationalism interact to cause support for violence or participation remains unanswered. Our goal here is to contribute to research on propaganda and nationalism by bridging international criminal law and the behavioral and brain sciences. We develop an experiment conducted with Serbian participants that examines the effects of propaganda as identified in the latest international speech crime trial as causing mass violence, and thereby test hypotheses of expert witness Anthony Oberschall’s theory of mass manipulation. Using principal components analysis and Bayesian regression, we examine the effects of propaganda exposure and prior levels of nationalism as well as other demographics on support for violence, ingroup empathy, and outgroup empathy. Results show that while exposure to war propaganda does not increase justifications of violence, specific types of war propaganda increase ingroup empathy and decrease outgroup empathy. Further, although nationalism by itself is not significant for justifying violence, the interaction of increased nationalism and exposure to violent media is significant for altering group empathies. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to international criminal law and the cognitive science of nationalism.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"20 1","pages":"403-431"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44837911","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":"Towards a Standard Model of the Cognitive Science of Nationalism – the Calendar","authors":"Michal Fux, A. A. Barreto","doi":"10.1163/15685373-12340092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340092","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The Cognitive Science of Nationalistic Behavior (CSNB), presented in this paper, integrates the political sciences of nationalities as invented communities with an evolutionary cognitive analysis of social forms as products of the human mind. The framework is modeled after the Cognitive Science of Religion, where decades of cross-disciplinary work has generated standards, predictions, and data about the role of individual cognitive tendencies in shaping societies. We study the nationalistic calendar as a cultural attractor and draw on cue-based behavioral motivation and differential autobiographical memory systems to explain its appeal to the human mind. Calendrical elements are analyzed in the context of essentialist thought patterns and action representation systems. We conclude with the implications of calendrical thinking on the control of elites who aim to forge and reinforce national identities. This paper lays the groundwork for applying a similar approach to the study of other nationalistic elements.","PeriodicalId":46186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Culture","volume":"20 1","pages":"432-457"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15685373-12340092","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44577188","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}