心智化社会认知观的演变及发展——来自潜心智化的思考

社会认知的机制一直存在心智化与具身认知观点的争论。前者认为社会认知是对心理状态的推测,而后者则认为社会认知是具身实践活动。虽然,心智化研究者认为具身认知有关灵长类动物和婴儿的社会认知的解释可以兼容于内隐心智化,但内隐心智化在解释社会互动时仍然存在间接性的问题。近期,潜心智化理论旨在挑战上述立场中有关社会认知先天论的预设,该理论将个体的潜心智化视为内隐心智化的替代,通过检验与分析相关研究的构想效度,强调社会认知是从非社会性的一般认知功能中衍生而来的,这种立场在社会认知的领域特殊性与非社会认知的领域一般性之间建立起了纽带,从而挑战了心智化与具身认知的争论。未来研究应设计更为严谨的心智化研究方法并对其进行方法学验证,借助先进的技术手段,尝试在神经科学层面探索一般认知功能与社会认知的关系。     

能以貌取人吗? 面孔宽高比研究述评

面孔宽高比是左右颧骨点之间的距离除以上面高所得到的比值,被认为是人类面孔性别二态特征之一。男性面孔宽高比被认为是男性睾酮水平的可信外显指标,与攻击行为、欺诈等不道德行为存在显著关联,并受到社会经济地位的调节;面孔宽高比与上进心、对内群体成员的牺牲精神等男性化积极社会行为亦存在显著关联。睾酮水平被认为是面孔宽高比和社会行为两者背后的共变因素,并引起激烈争论:面孔宽高比的性别差异在多个研究中未获支持,男性面孔宽高比与睾酮水平存在关联的直接证据亦有待进一步夯实。     

Dark and bright sides of thriving – school burnout and engagement in the Finnish context

School burnout is defined as exhaustion, cynicism and inadequacy as a student, and engagement can be conceptualized as study-related vigor, absorption and dedication. School burnout is increasing, particularly among students on an academic track, while at the end of elementary school almost half of the students no longer find school meaningful. School burnout and engagement were investigated by applying the demand-resource and stage-environment models. The results show that high school demands lead to burnout, while personal and school resources lead to school engagement. Burnout from school-context can also spillover to later depression, drop out and internet addiction, and engagement to overall satisfaction with life and success in educational pathways. In line with the stage-environment fit theory, educational transitions play a role in changes in school burnout trajectories. Adoption of a person-oriented approach revealed several different burnout-engagement profiles, including a profile in which students are at the same time both exhausted and engaged. The social context of peers, immigrant status, parents and teachers also play an important role in engagement and burnout.     

Knowledge central: A central role for knowledge attributions in social evaluations

Five experiments (N?=?1710) demonstrate the central role of knowledge attributions in social evaluations. In Experiments 1–3, we manipulated whether an agent believes, is certain of, or knows a true proposition and asked people to rate whether the agent should perform a variety of actions. We found that knowledge, more so than belief or certainty, leads people to judge that the agent should act. In Experiments 4–5, we investigated whether attributions of knowledge or certainty can explain an important finding on how people act based on statistical evidence, known as “the Wells effect”. We found that knowledge attributions, but not certainty attributions, mediate this effect on decision making.     

Children’s understanding of depreciation in scenarios of envy and modesty

The aim of this study was to explore children’s understanding of depreciation when being presented with scenarios of envious or modest behavior. 123 Spanish children, six to eight years of age, decided how a character should respond when faced with a situation of envy or modesty. These situations were described in vignettes. The children chose between a response of either depreciation or admiration in the case of envy and between a response of either modesty or immodesty when faced with modest behavior. They were then asked to explain the reasons for their choices. Generally speaking, the results indicated that children rated self-depreciation in scenarios of modesty more highly than they did depreciation of another in situations of envy. An interaction effect showed that eight-year-old chose modest responses more than immodest ones, in contrast to the six-year-old. Conversely, age differences were not observed for the scenarios of envy. We discuss these results in light of the children’s explanations. Furthermore, the acquisition of emotional display rules is discussed, as well as the ability to manage emotions. Also, we discuss the truths and falsehoods of expression within the framework of social pragmatism in the selection of responses in both scenarios.     

‘If I only had a little humility,I would be perfect’: Children’s and adults’ perceptions of intellectually arrogant,humble, and diffident people

Abstract

Intellectual humility is usually regarded as a virtue. In this paper, we conceptualized intellectual humility along two dimensions: (1) placing an adequate level of confidence in one’s own beliefs; (2) being willing to consider other people’s beliefs. We tested whether children (ages 4 to 11 years) and adults perceived intellectual humility as positive and how these perceptions changed across development. To do so, we asked participants to evaluate an intellectually humble person as compared to an intellectually arrogant person, who readily dismissed other people’s beliefs, or to an intellectually diffident person, who was unsure of a well-supported belief. Young children did not favor the intellectually humble person over the others, but older children and adults liked this person better and tended to consider her nicer than the arrogant one and smarter than the diffident one. These findings suggest that the virtuousness of intellectual humility in others is recognized from mid-childhood on.     

Epistemic Contextualism: An Idle Hypothesis

Epistemic contextualism is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary epistemology. Contextualists claim that ‘know’ is a context-sensitive verb associated with different evidential standards in different contexts. Contextualists motivate their view based on a set of behavioural claims. In this paper, I show that several of these behavioural claims are false. I also show that contextualist test cases suffer from a critical confound, which derives from people's tendency to defer to speakers’ statements about their own mental states. My evidence consists in results from several behavioural experiments. I conclude that contextualism is an idle hypothesis and I propose some general methodological lessons.