Cultural differences in perceived coherence of the self and ingroup: A Japan–Australia comparison

Past studies have found that East Asians ascribe less consistency to individual selves than Westerners, but ascribe more consistency to social groups than Westerners. Using the concepts of naive dialecticism (i.e. the tendency to tolerate contradiction) and psychological essentialism (i.e. the tendency to attribute a fixed essence to something) as different aspects of consistency perception, we examined patterns of perceived consistency of the self and national ingroup among Japanese and Australians. Compared to Australians, Japanese showed more naive dialecticism and less psychological essentialism for the self; however, this cultural difference was not found for their national ingroups. These findings suggest that lay theories are applied in a domain‐specific manner, and the domains to which they are applied depend on culture.     

Perceived threat to national values in evaluating stereotyped immigrants

The present research examined the psychological reasons behind Americans’ (un)willingness to accept immigrants. Participants read a scenario depicting immigrant groups allegedly expected to arrive in the United States and evaluated how much the immigrants would influence two types of American national values: civic values (e.g., political ideology) and ethnic values (e.g., shared culture and customs). Across three studies, competitive immigrant groups were stereotyped to be untrustworthy and perceived to threaten American civic values, but not ethnic values. Value threat then mediated the predicted competition–prejudice relationship in Study 3. Perceived vulnerability of in-group boundary might specify one motivated cause of derogating immigrants.     

Against Teleological Essentialism

In two recent papers, Rose and Nichols present evidence in favor of the view that humans represent category essences in terms of a telos, such as honey-making, and not in terms of scientific essences, such as bee DNA. Here, I challenge their interpretation of the evidence and show that it is directly predicted by the main theory they seek to undermine. I argue that their results can be explained as instances of diagnostic reasoning about scientific essences.     

The role of magical thinking in forecasting the future

This article explores the role of magical thinking in the subjective probabilities of future chance events. In five experiments, we show that individuals tend to predict a more lucky future (reflected in probability judgements of lucky and unfortunate chance events) for someone who happened to purchase a product associated with a highly moral person than for someone who unknowingly purchased a product associated with a highly immoral person. In the former case, positive events were considered more likely than negative events, whereas in the latter case, the difference in the likelihood judgement of positive and negative events disappeared or even reversed. Our results indicate that this effect is unlikely to be driven by participants’ immanent justice beliefs, the availability heuristic, or experimenter demand. Finally, we show that individuals rely more heavily on magical thinking when their need for control is threatened, thus suggesting that lack of control represents a factor in driving magical thinking in making predictions about the future.     

LOOKING TO CHARLES TAYLOR AND JOSEPH ROUSE FOR BEST PRACTICES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

People discussing science and religion usually frame their conversations in terms of essentialist assumptions about science, assumptions requiring the existence (but not the specification) of criteria according to which science can be distinguished from other forms of inquiry. However, criteria functioning at a level of generality appropriate to such discussions may not exist at all. Essentialist assumptions may be avoided if science is understood within a broader context of human practices. In a philosophy of practices, to label a practice as “scientific” is to make a practically motivated provision for a way of speaking. Charles Taylor and Joseph Rouse have produced complementary philosophies of practice that promote this kind of understanding. In this essay I review the work of Taylor and Rouse, identify apparent residues of essentialism that each seems to harbor, and offer a resolution to some of their disagreements. I also criticize a form of essentialism commonly employed in Christian circles and outline an anti‐essentialist view of science that may be helpful in science‐and‐religion discussions.     

Personal change and the continuity of the self

Five studies explore how anticipating different types of personal change affects people’s perceptions of their own self-continuity. The studies find that improvements are seen as less disruptive to personal continuity than worsening or unspecified change, although this difference varies in magnitude based on the type of feature being considered. Also, people’s expectations and desires matter. For example, a negative change is highly disruptive to perceived continuity when people expect improvement and less disruptive when people expect to worsen. The finding that some types of change are consistent with perceptions of self-continuity suggests that the self-concept may include beliefs about personal development.     

Mental imagery and fiction

Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage philosophers to ‘put the image back into the imagination’. The weakened conclusion is that while an image is not essential to imagining, it should be returned to our theories of imagination.