Memory accessibility shapes explanation: Testing key claims of the inherence heuristic account

People understand the world by constructing explanations for what they observe. It is thus important to identify the cognitive processes underlying these judgments. According to a recent proposal, everyday explanations are often constructed heuristically: Because people need to generate explanations on a moment-by-moment basis, they cannot perform an exhaustive search through the space of possible reasons, but may instead use the information that is most easily accessible in memory (Cimpian & Salomon 2014a, b). In the present research, we tested two key claims of this proposal that have so far not been investigated. First, we tested whether—as previously hypothesized—the information about an entity that is most accessible in memory tends to consist of inherent or intrinsic facts about that entity, rather than extrinsic (contextual, historical, etc.) facts about it (Studies 1 and 2). Second, we tested the implications of this difference in the memory accessibility of inherent versus extrinsic facts for the process of generating explanations: Does the fact that inherent facts are more accessible than relevant extrinsic facts give rise to an inherence bias in the content of the explanations generated (Studies 3 and 4)? The findings supported the proposal that everyday explanations are generated in part via a heuristic process that relies on easily accessible—and often inherent—information from memory.     

Why Believe Infinite Sets Exist?

The axiom of infinity states that infinite sets exist. I will argue that this axiom lacks justification. I start by showing that the axiom is not self-evident, so it needs separate justification. Following Maddy’s (J Symb Log 53(2):481–511, 1988) distinction, I argue that the axiom of infinity lacks both intrinsic and extrinsic justification. Crucial to my project is Skolem’s (in: van Heijnoort (ed) From Frege to Gödel: a source book in mathematical logic, 1879–1931, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 290–301, 1922) distinction between a theory of real sets, and a theory of objects that theory calls “sets”. While Dedekind’s (in: Essays on the theory of numbers, pp. 14–58, 1888. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21016) argument fails, his approach was correct: the axiom of infinity needs a justification it currently lacks. This epistemic situation is at variance with everyday mathematical practice. A dilemma ensues: should we relax epistemic standards or insist, in a skeptical vein, that a foundational problem has been ignored?     

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter‐group relations?

Psychological essentialism is a pervasive conceptual bias to view categories as reflecting something deep, stable, and informative about their members. Scholars from diverse disciplines have long theorized that psychological essentialism has negative ramifications for inter‐group relations, yet little previous empirical work has experimentally tested the social implications of essentialist beliefs. Three studies (N = 127, ages 4.5–6) found that experimentally inducing essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led children to share fewer resources with category members, but did not lead to the out‐group dislike that defines social prejudice. These findings indicate that essentialism negatively influences some key components of inter‐group relations, but does not lead directly to the development of prejudice.     

Ethical Predispositions to Violate or Obey Traffic Rules and the Mediating Role of Driving Styles

Traffic law violations are the most important determinants of traffic accidents. This study examined the influence of drivers' ethical perspective on their traffic violations and the mediating role of driving styles in these relationships. A sample of 313 drivers participated in the study. Contrary to expectations, high ethical relativism was found to be associated with fewer aggressive traffic violations. This suggests that the informal normative system that parallels the official traffic regulations is the more salient reference against which drivers usually assess the adequacy of their behaviors, highly relativistic drivers being more willing to also take into consideration the official traffic code in these appraisals. We also found significant interactions between idealism and relativism on both ordinary and aggressive violations. Idealism emerged as a predictor of these violations only in drivers low in relativism. In this group, one's concern about the harm that he/she might cause to other traffic participants induces higher traffic law abidingness. These influences of idealism were mediated by certain driving styles. Drivers' general ethical perspective fosters a specific pattern of driving styles and, consequently, the tendency to commit or to refrain from traffic violations.     

An Institution-Independent Proof of the Robinson Consistency Theorem

We prove an institutional version of A. Robinson’s Consistency Theorem. This result is then appliedto the institution of many-sorted first-order predicate logic and to two of its variations, infinitary and partial, obtaining very general syntactic criteria sufficient for a signature square in order to satisfy the Robinson consistency and Craig interpolation properties. Presented by Robert Goldblatt     

Remembering kinds: new evidence that categories are privileged in children's thinking

What are the representations and learning mechanisms that underlie conceptual development? The present research provides evidence in favor of the claim that this process is guided by an early-emerging predisposition to think and learn about abstract kinds. Specifically, three studies (N = 192) demonstrated that 4- to 7-year-old children have better recall for novel information about kinds (e.g., that dogs catch a bug called “fep”) than for similar information about individuals (e.g., that a particular dog catches a bug called “fep”). By showing that children are particularly likely to retain information about kinds, this work not only provides a first empirical demonstration of a phenomenon that may be key to conceptual development but also makes it apparent that young children’s thinking is suffused with abstractions rather than being perceptually-based and concrete.     

Children expect generic knowledge to be widely shared

The ability to acquire and store generic information (that is, information about entire categories) is at the core of human cognition. Remarkably, even young children place special value on generic information, often inferring that it holds important insights about the world. Here, we tested whether children's assumptions about the nature of generic information guide their expectations about how widely known this information is. Across four experiments, 4- to 7-year-old children (N=192) were presented with novel facts in either generic (e.g., "Hedgehogs eat hexapods") or non-generic (e.g., "This hedgehog eats hexapods") format and were asked whether other people (e.g., their moms, grown-ups in general) knew these facts. Overall, children were more likely to say that others knew the generic than the non-generic facts. In addition to highlighting the centrality of generic knowledge in early cognitive life, children's assumption that generic facts are widely known has implications for their social cognition and academic achievement, as well as for the process of language acquisition.     

Quantum-like generalization of the Bayesian updating scheme for objective and subjective mental uncertainties

In this paper we develop a general quantum-like model of decision making. Here updating of probability is based on linear algebra, the von Neumann–Lüders projection postulate, Born’s rule, and the quantum representation of the state space of a composite system by the tensor product. This quantum-like model generalizes the classical Bayesian inference in a natural way. In our approach the latter appears as a special case corresponding to the absence of relative phases in the mental state. By taking into account a possibility of the existence of correlations which are encoded in relative phases we developed a more general scheme of decision making. We discuss natural situations inducing deviations from the classical Bayesian scheme in the process of decision making by cognitive systems: in situations that can be characterized as objective and subjective mental uncertainties. Further, we discuss the problem of base rate fallacy. In our formalism, these “irrational” (non-Bayesian) inferences are represented by quantum-like bias operations acting on the mental state.     

Investigating the origins of political views: biases in explanation predict conservative attitudes in children and adults

We tested the hypothesis that political attitudes are influenced by an information‐processing factor – namely, a bias in the content of everyday explanations. Because many societal phenomena are enormously complex, people's understanding of them often relies on heuristic shortcuts. For instance, when generating explanations for such phenomena (e.g., why does this group have low status?), people often rely on facts that they can retrieve easily from memory – facts that are skewed toward inherent or intrinsic features (e.g., this group is unintelligent). We hypothesized that this bias in the content of heuristic explanations leads to a tendency to (1) view socioeconomic stratification as acceptable and (2) prefer current societal arrangements to alternative ones, two hallmarks of conservative ideology. Moreover, since the inherence bias in explanation is present across development, we expected it to shape children's proto‐political judgments as well. Three studies with adults and 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children (N = 784) provided support for these predictions: Not only did individual differences in reliance on inherent explanations uniquely predict endorsement of conservative views (particularly the stratification‐supporting component; Study 1), but manipulations of this explanatory bias also had downstream consequences for political attitudes in both children and adults (Studies 2 and 3). This work contributes to our understanding of the origins of political attitudes.