Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

The cultural origins of human cognition

Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants--the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human-computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization.

/pdf/on-seeing-human-a-three-factor-theory-of-anthropomorphism-eczur7vai3.pdf

On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism.

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will -- those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/2005v29/6/s15516709HCOG0000_43/s15516709HCOG0000_43.pdf

Acknowledgment: Guest Reviewers

The God issue: We are all born believers

/pdf/the-minds-of-god-mortals-and-in-betweens-children-s-2p9j1pq5yq.pdf

The minds of God, mortals, and in-betweens: Children’s developing understanding of extraordinary and ordinary minds across four countries.

Toward a Cognitive Science of Christianity

Virtual reality (VR) is often described as a gateway to a religious or spiritual experience - but why? In this article, using theories and evidence taken from the cognitive science of religion (CSOR), we hypothesize that human minds may interact with VR-hosted phenomena in a manner highly similar to that in which they interact with supernatural concepts. Specifically, we note that both VR inputs and supernatural concepts contain information that (1) contradicts the intuitive set of expectations we bring to an ontological category of phenomena (for example, natural objects, animals) and (2) allows us to draw a superabundance of inferences from our social cognitive mechanisms with minimal effort. We then summarize these points by illustrating a common VR phenomenon - 'virtual touch' - wherein counterintuitive representations and strategic information coalesce to create an emotionally salient experience that is itself counterintuitive and by some accounts spiritual-like.

Justin L. Barrett

Papers

Acknowledgment: Guest Reviewers

The God issue: We are all born believers

The minds of God, mortals, and in-betweens: Children’s developing understanding of extraordinary and ordinary minds across four countries.

Toward a Cognitive Science of Christianity

Virtual reality as a 'spiritual experience': a perspective from the cognitive science of religion