Biology, Society, or Choice: How Do Non-Experts Interpret Explanations of Behaviour?

Explanations for human behaviour can be framed in many different ways, from the social-structural context to the individual motivation down to the neurobiological implementation. We know comparatively little about how people interpret these explanatory framings, and what they infer when one kind of explanation rather than another is made salient. In four experiments, UK general-population volunteers read vignettes describing the same behaviour, but providing explanations framed in different ways. In Study 1, we found that participants grouped explanations into 'biological', 'psychological' and 'sociocultural' clusters. Explanations with different framings were often seen as incompatible with one another, especially when one belonged to the 'biological' cluster and the other did not. In Study 2, we found that exposure to a particular explanatory framing triggered inferences beyond the information given. Specifically, psychological explanations led participants to assume the behaviour was malleable, and biological framings led them to assume it was not. In Studies 3A and 3B, we found that the choice of explanatory framing can affect people's assumptions about effective interventions. For example, presenting a biological explanation increased people's conviction that interventions like drugs would be effective, and decreased their conviction that psychological or socio-political interventions would be effective. These results illuminate the intuitive psychology of explanations, and also potential pitfalls in scientific communication. Framing an explanation in a particular way will often generate inferences in the audience-about what other factors are not causally important, how easy it is to change the behaviour, and what kinds of remedies are worth considering-that the communicator may not have anticipated and might not intend.

The Perception of Relations.

The world contains not only objects and features (red apples, glass bowls, wooden tables), but also relations holding between them (apples contained in bowls, bowls supported by tables). Representations of these relations are often developmentally precocious and linguistically privileged; but how does the mind extract them in the first place? Although relations themselves cast no light onto our eyes, a growing body of work suggests that even very sophisticated relations display key signatures of automatic visual processing. Across physical, eventive, and social domains, relations such as support, fit, cause, chase, and even socially interact are extracted rapidly, are impossible to ignore, and influence other perceptual processes. Sophisticated and structured relations are not only judged and understood, but also seen - revealing surprisingly rich content in visual perception itself.

Coping and Co-creation: One Attempt and One Route to Well-being. Part 2. Application to Identity and Social Well-being.

Background: This is the application part of a two-part paper that starts from the assumption that core cognition for promoting agent well-being is shared by all living beings. In Part 1, we derived a number of key terms of core cognition and two behavioral ontologies: coping and co-creation. Objective: Our first aim is to extend the conceptual framework and two behavioral ontologies, while explaining, from first principles, the observed basic structure in identity development. The second is to apply core cognition on a metatheoretical level to explain how the two theories about fostering well-being show the characteristic features of our two behavioral ontologies. Results: We demonstrate that the four different combinations of coping, co-creation, adequacy, and inadequacy explain from first principles the underlying structure of identity. Among other things, these accurately leads us to the defining features of authoritarianism. The notion of ontological security, as it is known in the literature, accurately describes the coping mode's restricted capacity for the creation and protection of well-being. Ontological security leads to a self-limiting form of well-being that has been described as "abnormal normality." In contrast, psychological safety provides the preconditions for high wellbeing and a safe environment, thus promoting the healthy development of coping and co-creation adequacy.

Essentialist Biases in Reasoning About Emotions.

A large literature debates whether emotions are universal and innate. Here, we ask whether reasoning about such matters is shaped by intuitive Essentialist biases that link innateness to the material body. To gauge the perception of innateness, we asked laypeople to evaluate whether emotion categories will be recognized spontaneously by hunter-gatherers who have had no contact with Westerners. Experiment 1 shows that participants believe that emotions are innate and embodied (facially and internally) and these two properties correlate reliably. Experiment 2 demonstrates that the link is causal. When told that emotions are localized in specific brain areas (i.e., embodied), participants concluded that emotions are innate. Experiment 3 shows that this naïve view persists even when participants are explicitly informed that these emotions are acquired. Our results are the first to suggest that laypeople incorrectly believe that, if emotions are embodied, then they must be innate. We suggest that people's failure to grasp the workings of their psyche arises from the human psyche itself.

Encoding of event roles from visual scenes is rapid, spontaneous, and interacts with higher-level visual processing.

A crucial component of event recognition is understanding event roles, i.e. who acted on whom: boy hitting girl is different from girl hitting boy. We often categorize Agents (i.e. the actor) and Patients (i.e. the one acted upon) from visual input, but do we rapidly and spontaneously encode such roles even when our attention is otherwise occupied? In three experiments, participants observed a continuous sequence of two-person scenes and had to search for a target actor in each (the male/female or red/blue-shirted actor) by indicating with a button press whether the target appeared on the left or the right. Critically, although role was orthogonal to gender and shirt color, and was never explicitly mentioned, participants responded more slowly when the target's role switched from trial to trial (e.g., the male went from being the Patient to the Agent). In a final experiment, we demonstrated that this effect cannot be fully explained by differences in posture associated with Agents and Patients. Our results suggest that extraction of event structure from visual scenes is rapid and spontaneous.

Changing predictions, stable recognition: Children's representations of downward incline motion.

Various studies to-date have demonstrated children hold ill-conceived expressed beliefs about the physical world such as that one ball will fall faster than another because it is heavier. At the same time, they also demonstrate accurate recognition of dynamic events. How these representations relate is still unresolved. This study examined 5- to 11-year-olds' (N = 130) predictions and recognition of motion down inclines. Predictions were typically in error, matching previous work, but children largely recognized correct events as correct and rejected incorrect ones. The results also demonstrate while predictions change with increasing age, recognition shows signs of stability. The findings provide further support for a hybrid model of object representations and argue in favour of stable core cognition existing alongside developmental changes. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children's predictions of physical events show limitations in accuracy Their recognition of such events suggests children may use different knowledge sources in their reasoning What the present study adds? Predictions fluctuate more strongly than recognition, suggesting stable core cognition But recognition also shows some fluctuation, arguing for a hybrid model of knowledge representation.

Core Intuitions About Persons Coexist and Interfere With Acquired Christian Beliefs About God.

This study tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult religious adherents, acquired beliefs about the extraordinary characteristics of God coexist with, rather than replace, an initial representation of God formed by co-option of the evolved person concept. In three experiments, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions about persons and acquired Christian beliefs about God were consistent (i.e., true according to both [e.g., "God has beliefs that are true"] or false according to both [e.g., "All beliefs God has are false"]) or inconsistent (i.e., true on intuition but false theologically [e.g., "God has beliefs that are false"] or false on intuition but true theologically [e.g., "All beliefs God has are true"]). Participants were less accurate and slower to respond to inconsistent versus consistent statements, suggesting that the core intuitions both coexisted alongside and interfered with the acquired beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 2 when responding under time pressure participants were disproportionately more likely to make errors on inconsistent versus consistent statements than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of interference requires cognitive resources the functioning of which decreases under cognitive load. In Experiment 3 a plausible alternative interpretation of these findings was ruled out by demonstrating that the response accuracy and time differences on consistent versus inconsistent statements occur for God-a supernatural religious entity-but not for a natural religious entity (a priest).