Magic,Religion, and Science: Secularization Trends and Continued Coexistence

While multiple studies have applied cultural evolutionary perspectives to the study of religion, few studies have examined the cultural evolutionary dynamics of a more secretive but equally ubiquitous form of supernatural belief: magic. We conducted two studies, an American nationally representative survey and a comparative phylogenetic analysis of religious traditions, to test three hypothesized cultural evolutionary drivers for beliefs in magic. We find the greatest support for the hypothesis that magic is employed when it provides its users benefits that are distinct from those provided by either science or religion, some support for secularization (broadly conceived) trends applying to magic, and no evidence that innate and unavoidable features of human cognition are primary drivers of the cultural evolution of magical beliefs. We conclude by suggesting specific hypothesized benefits for magic that may account for the evolution of humanity's facultative (i.e., context-dependent) use of magical beliefs.     

The Imprudence of the Vulnerable

Significant numbers of people believe that victims of violent crime are blameworthy in so far as they imprudently place themselves in dangerous situations. This belief is maintained and fuelled by ongoing social commentary. In this paper I describe a recent violent criminal case, as a foil against which I attempt to extract and refine the argument based on prudence that seems to support this belief. I then offer a moral critique of what goes wrong when this argument, continually repeated as social commentary, is left unchallenged. The effect of failing to challenge this repeated argument is the view, held by many, that the vulnerable are imprudent; indeed, they are believed negatively responsible (partly or wholly) for the violence wrought upon their person. My central claim is that public declarations of blame are morally problematic partly because they focus responsibility away from perpetrators, and partly because they harm vulnerable citizens who, as a result of internalising such public blame, suffer unnecessary constraints on their liberty.     

Visual size difference discrimination: Effect of disc size and retinal locus

Ability to discriminate between the sizes of two adjacently presented discs of light is considered both as a function of the size of the discs and the retinal locus of their presentation. Ss were required to report whether a comparison disc was seen as larger or the same size as a standard disc when the two were presented briefly together. Results showed that the and required for 50% difference discrimination was independent of the size of the disc and was constant at about 30 sec of arc. For peripheral presentations, the jnd was found to increase in a linear manner with increasing eccentricity of presentation. Comparisons are drawn between the results obtained and peripheral visual acuity data and it is speculated that similar processes are involved in both situations.     

Continued word associations and free recall

Two experiments on the short-term free recall of 12-word associated and non-associated lists are reported. Degree of association (derived from norms obtained by continuous controlled association) and word frequency were varied. Significant facilitation as a result of the associative manipulations was obtained and clustering of the responses was positively related to this. Clustering was also affected by the method of presentation of the associated words; this occurred more often when they were grouped in presentation than when they were presented randomly arranged among other words in the list. Low frequency associated word lists were generally found to be more efficiently recalled than those of comparable association values but consisting of high frequency words.     

Signal probability effects on high-workload vigilance tasks

Signal probability is an important influence on vigilance. Typically, higher signal probability is associated with higher hit rate, lower response criterion, and lower response:signal ratio. However, signal probability effects on demanding, high-workload vigilance tasks have not been investigated. It is believed that attentional resources become depleted during performance of such tasks, leading to perceptual sensitivity decrements. Forty subjects performed high- (.35) and low- (.10) probability versions of a demanding vigilance task. Results differed in two important respects from those previously obtained with less demanding tasks. First, the decrement in perceptual sensitivity over time was greater for the high-probability task. Second, there were no effects of signal probability on response criterion. Subjective workload was higher for the high-probability task. Implications of the data for resource-depletion and expectancy theories of vigilance are discussed.     

Fimbria/fornix lesions facilitate the learning of a nonspatial response task

The spatial cognitive map theory of O’Keefe and Nadel (1978) predicts that lesions of the hippocampal system should impair learning on spatial tasks but not learning on nonspatial tasks. However, there is evidence that such lesions can facilitate learning on certain nonspatial tasks. Their theory does not predict such facilitation. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect that animals possessing a spatial cognitive map would have an inherent bias to engage a mapping strategy and thus be at a disadvantage on certain nonspatial tasks in comparison with animals without the mapping capacity and bias. In the present study, fimbria/fornix lesions impaired learning on a spatial task, but actually facilitated learning on a nonspatial task of equal difficulty. Thus, brain lesions that interfere with map functioning can facilitate learning on tasks for which a mapping strategy interferes with task solution. The results require a modification of the spatial cognitive map theory.     

Asian-American Acculturation,Gender, and Willingness to Seek Counseling

Neither acculturation nor gender were found to significantly relate to Asian-American willingness to see a counselor for either a personal or an academic problem. Participants were more willing to see a counselor for an academic problem than for a personal problem.     

Pervasiveness of framing effects among physicians and medical students

Researchers have been documenting the influence of framing upon decision making for more than two decades; decisions appear to change in response to superficial changes in the presentation of possible outcomes. Several studies of medical decision making have revealed; for instance, that clinical decisions differ when options are presented as gains (survival rates) rather than losses (mortality rates). However, most studies of framing effects in the medical domain have utilized a very limited number of clinical problems that have not allowed an adequate test of the prevalence of the phenomena. To extend previous studies, we presented three groups of subjects (experienced internists, residents, and third-year medical students) with booklets containing twelve hypothetical medical cases. Half of the subjects received gain versions and half received loss versions of the same cases. Chi-square analyses revealed that framing did not influence any of the decisions of medical students and influenced the decisions of residents and experienced physicians on only two of the clinical problems (the same two problems). It appears that the prevalence of framing effects in the clinical domain may be limited.