THE IMPORTANCE OF MAGIC TO SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Many anthropological explanations of magical practices are based on the assumption that the immediate cause of performing an act of magic is the belief that the magic will work as claimed. Such explanations typically attempt to show why people come to believe that magical acts work as claimed when such acts do not identifiably have such effects. We suggest an alternative approach to the explanation of magic that views magic as a form of religious behavior, a form of communication that promotes or protects cooperative social relationships. We suggest that all forms of religious behavior involve persons communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim and that this act communicates a willingness to accept nonskeptically the influence of the person making such a claim. Thus, religious behavior communicates a willingness to cooperate with the claim maker and others who accept his or her influence. We suggest that magic, which can be distinguished by the communicated acceptance of the claim that certain techniques have supernatural effects, also promotes cooperation. Different types of magic, including sorcery, love magic, and curing magic, can be shown to communicate different types of messages, such as a threat to use violence to punish unsocial behavior, sexual desire, or concern for a person's well‐being. Ethnographic examples are used to support this hypothesis. This approach requires no assumptions about whether the practitioners of magic do or do not believe that the magical acts work as claimed. It attempts only to account for the identifiable talk and behavior that constitute magical acts by examining the identifiable, and often important, effects of these acts on the behavior of others.     

Endogenous cueing effects for detection can be accounted for by a decision model of selective attention

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Spatial cues help participants detect a visual target when it appears at the cued location. One hypothesis for this cueing effect, called selective perception,...     

Of holes and wholes: the perception of surrounded regions.

Fully enclosed regions in a two-dimensional image can often be perceived either as an object in front of a surface or as a hole through a surface. Several experiments were conducted to determine what factors affect perception of holes versus objects. Three types of factors were tested and found to influence this outcome. First, depth factors directly indicate that the enclosed region lies behind its surrounding surface. Second, grouping factors relate the enclosed region to an outer region that is generally perceived as a continuation of the surface seen through the hole. Finally, figural factors indicate whether the enclosed region is to be perceived as figure or ground. Relations among these factors and their implications for perceptual organization are discussed.     

Grouping based on phenomenal similarity of achromatic color.

It is widely acknowledged that a precondition for the perception of the world of objects and events is an early process of organization, and it has generally been assumed that such organization is based on the Gestalt laws of grouping. However, the stage at which such grouping occurs, whether early or late, is an empirical question. It is demonstrated in two experiments that grouping by similarity of neutral color is based not on similarity of absolute luminance at the level of the proximal stimulus, but on phenomenal similarity of lightness resulting from the achievement of lightness constancy. An alternative explanation of such grouping based on the equivalence of luminance ratios between elements and background is ruled out by appropriate control conditions.     

A Behavioral Interpretation of Aesthetics

The Psychological Record - A behavioral interpretation of aesthetics will doubtless require a series of successive approximations to reach a wholly satisfactory formulation. The present article is...