{"title":"When roles replace minds: The gendered costs of the institutional stance.","authors":"Konrad Szocik, Andrzej Rozmus","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26105524","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0140525X26105524","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Jara-Ettinger and Dunham argue that people often adopt an institutional stance, predicting behavior through roles and rules rather than individual minds. In our paper, we show that in feminized domains such as care, service, and administration, role-based processing more readily turns persons into functions, reproducing gender inequality. We propose institutional design interventions that rehumanize through individuation cues and interactional norms.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e388"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Infants' early understanding of interactions enables the acquisition of institutional roles.","authors":"Tibor Tauzin","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26105500","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0140525X26105500","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Infants demonstrate a number of early-emerging sophisticated communicative and linguistic skills that allow them to infer situational constraints, interpret instrumental and communicative interactions, attribute goals to others, recognize group membership, and construct higher-level, abstract distinctions through language. Here, I argue that the understanding of institutional roles develops gradually from these uniquely human cognitive capacities, rather than as an independent skill.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e389"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"There are no institutions without rules commentary on Jara-Ettinger & Dunham: The institutional stance.","authors":"Ana Gantman, Jordan Wylie, Brendan Fee","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26105639","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0140525X26105639","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The authors contend that the \"institutional stance\" paves the way for uniquely human institutions. However, it is formalized rules that are the integral ingredients for modern institutions and sufficient for understanding people within them. We suggest that formalized rules are a technology for norm conformity that codify, legitimize, enforce, and explain permissible behavior across roles and contexts - and literally establish institutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e378"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148988061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interpreting and reimagining social kinds using the institutional stance?","authors":"Katherine Ritchie","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26105573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26105573","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Jara-Ettinger and Dunham argue that the institutional stance is used to interpret the behavior of individuals and represent alternative structures. While they focus on roles like barista, they argue that the stance also applies to kinds like race and gender. I argue that there are several differences suggesting this is incorrect, or at least not yet supported by their arguments.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e386"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of know-how copying in and beyond social tinkering.","authors":"Claudio Tennie, Ronald J Planer","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26106517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26106517","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Stage 2 of Chater and Christiansen's (henceforth CC) model involves the ability to copy. Our comment concerns not the order of copying in CC's model, but their time estimate of its origins. CC treat copying as present in apes and implied by early stone tools, and hence (presumably) had by the last common ancestor. Here we argue for a later onset.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e415"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Now we see the violence inherent in the tinkering.","authors":"Paul E Smaldino","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26106414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26106414","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The concept of social tinkering is useful, but insufficient to explain the evolution of human cultural complexity due to its overemphasis on cooperative interactions. The importance of conflict, violence, and inequality in the evolution of complex cultures complicates the social tinkering hypothesis. Who gets to tinker, and what determines which products of that tinkering are selected?</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e411"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social tinkering is not <i>motivationally</i> myopic.","authors":"Edgar Dubourg","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26106402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26106402","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chater and Christiansen argue that social tinkering is intentionally myopic. I agree. But social tinkering is not <i>motivationally</i> myopic. Evolved motivational systems impact which problems feel urgent and which solutions feel satisfying. These systems are functionally specialized yet often input-flexible. I argue that integrating motivational structure into the social tinkering framework strengthens it.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e400"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148988026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is the institutional stance about prediction or normative regulation?","authors":"Christopher Joseph An","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26105718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26105718","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>I argue that, in light of grounding the institutional stance in role-based norms, this stance is not a causal or predictive model of social cognition. Instead, it is fundamentally normative in that it facilitates practices of holding responsible that mere predictive models would have difficulty explaining. The institutional stance, as such, facilitates robust ought-based claims and demands directed towards role-holders.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e369"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jason W Burton, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Ralph Hertwig
{"title":"Social tinkering in designed environments.","authors":"Jason W Burton, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Ralph Hertwig","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26106438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26106438","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human culture and cognition evolve in designed environments, like business organizations and online platforms, which are engineered to elicit some behaviors and suppress others. Emergent cultural complexity should thus be understood as a function of both bottom-up self-organization and properties of designed environments. Glossing over the role of top-down design risks misrepresenting the evolution of culture and cognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e397"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148987998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dark side of the sighted watchmaker: How retrospective tinkering builds cultural traps.","authors":"Ze Hong","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X26106372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X26106372","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chater and Christiansen's social tinkering framework powerfully explains how directed, local innovations accumulate into complex cultural systems. However, the framework undertheorizes how the same cognitive and coordinative machinery systematically generates and entrenches maladaptive practices - magic, divination, taboo systems - that are socially coordinated and culturally cumulative yet instrumentally ineffective. I argue that retrospective causal reasoning under uncertainty, combined with the coordinative pressures central to social tinkering, predictably produces elaborate but materially costly cultural complexes.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"49 ","pages":"e401"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148988058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}