Publications

Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge

2010-03-01T06:00:00Z

Daniel M. Hausman and Brynn Welch

One of the hottest ideas in current policy debates is “libertarian paternalism,” the design of policies that push individuals toward better choices without limiting their liberty. In their recent book, Nudge, Richard Thaler and then Obama advisor (now head of the White House’s Office of Information and regulatory Affairs), Cass Sunstein, suggest several ways in which government agencies and private organizations might “nudge” individuals toward actions that are better or them. They hope to promote libertarian paternalism as a promising foundation for bipartisanship—a way of maintaining our firm commitment to freedom of choice while also helping people make better decisions for themselves” (p. 14). They suggest “that libertarian paternalism offers a real Third Way—one that can break through some of the least tractable debates in contemporary democracies” (p. 252/255).
In this article, we address questions both about paternalism—what is it, and could there be a variety that does not limit freedom?—and about nudges—what are they, and should those who value freedom find them unobjectionable? We deny libertarian paternalism is both libertarian and paternalist and that it is as benign as Thaler and Sunstein maintain. We argue that some of their proposals constitute a istinctive variety of paternalism, whose libertarian credentials are dubious, even though their implementation would not be coercive4 and would not significantly limit freedom of choice. Our focus is on their concepts, not their policies.
After a first section that clarifies what Thaler and Sunstein take libertarian paternalism to be, section II addresses the question of what constitutes paternalism. In our view, what makes some of the policies Thaler and Sunstein call “libertarian paternalism” paternalistic is that they push people to make choices that are good for themselves by taking advantage of imperfections in human decision-making abilities. Section III then addresses the broader question concerning what limits there ought to be on nudges—that is, the use of flaws in human judgment and choice to influence people’s behavior.

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Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience

2010-03-01T06:00:00Z

Stephen S. Hall

"A compelling investigation into one of our most coveted and cherished ideals, and the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue.

We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science, Stephen S. Hall gives us a dramatic history of wisdom, from its sudden emergence in four different locations (Greece, China, Israel, and India) in the fifth century B.C. to its modern manifestations in education, politics, and the workplace. We learn how wisdom became the provenance of philosophy and religion through its embodiment in individuals such as Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus; how it has consistently been a catalyst for social change; and how revelatory work in the last fifty years by psychologists, economists, and neuroscientists has begun to shed light on the biology of cognitive traits long associated with wisdom — and, in doing so, begun to suggest how we might cultivate it.

Hall explores the neural mechanisms for wise decision making; the conflict between the emotional and cognitive parts of the brain; the development of compassion, humility, and empathy; the effect of adversity and the impact of early-life stress on the development of wisdom; and how we can learn to optimize our future choices and future selves.

Hall's bracing exploration of the science of wisdom allows us to see this ancient virtue with fresh eyes, yet also makes clear that despite modern science's most powerful efforts, wisdom continues to elude easy understanding."

An open letter to President Obama.

2010-03-01T05:00:00Z

Dear Mr. President; You have the opportunity to bring real change not only to Washington and the entire country ; you have an opportunity to change the world for ever.

Will someone with access to Preident Obama please bring this to his attention.

Mr. President, you have the power; please let me show you how to use it to really fix much of the mess in the world. If you want to bring real positive change across the board in one stroke, you will have to consider making emotional intelligence education a compulsory subject form Pre-K to the post graduate level and beyond.

Mr. President you have the opportunity to become the greatest Education President ever.

Commission after commission has been set up to fix the mess in education. Each time the experts are called to find the solutions to the education mess they look to improve main stream education. No one is thinking of fixing emotional intelligence education. It is below the radar screen and even those who have some clue to this problem are not sure how to handle this emotional intelligence education crisis.

In fact the $670,000,000.00 fund that your current central administration is giving out to the states to come up with innovations in education, I am sure each one of them will again send back proposals of how to teach math and science better and will again miss the central issue of the real mess in education; the lack of emotional intelligence education.

When we try to understand and fix the mess in education we keep going back to trying to improve how we teach subjects like math and science. Actually our math and science education is well set and the mess lies elsewhere. It is due to lack of even a single subject that teaches emotional intelligence. As emotional intelligence itself is still fuzzy, it is neglected by mainstream education even though its importance is now well recognized by main stream science.

It is understandable that the Holy Grail of education, self mastery and wisdom is not even perused by main stream education. The reason is that we do not have precise and clear definitions of the self, wisdom and even the mind and brain. How can we even attempt to fix something we do not even know? I have figured out these issues and you can examine my work by googling, 'wisdom by sajid khan'.

I have a very clear idea of how to create a new subject that teaches emotional intelligence. Mr. President you have a chance to enact a new law calling for the teaching of a compulsory subject that teaches emotional intelligence. I will help you write this law.

One reason why even those who try to teach emotional intelligence at the school level do not have much success is because while math and science education starts at age 3/4/5. Emotional intelligence education starts at conception or at least from the mid part of pregnancy. And by the time the child is 6 years old his emotional intelligence education is well set.

As the most important part of emotional intelligence education takes place by the age of six years it is essential that we make it compulsory for parents to learn to prepare the mothers womb even before conception and to learn how to create the right learning environment for the fetus and later for the child to get the right emotional intelligence education. Unless we take this issue seriously emotionally unstable and unprepared brains will keep entering the classroom en mass and we will continue to be confused of how to handle such students.

I am very hopeful that you will look into my proposal to create a new compulsory subject that teaches emotional intelligence. After all Mr. President you are asking for innovative proposals and not the same old same old proposals to fix regular education. Especially as your own life has been a shining example of trail blazing leadership. And I am sure you will do all you can to improve education not only for the whole United States and also for the whole world.

Wisdom is a tree.

2010-03-01T05:00:00Z

Wisdom is a tree. The attributes of wisdom are its fruit. As man knows the attributes of wisdom man tries to teach these attributes. It is very difficult and frustrating to cultivate these attributes because it is the same as trying to produce bananas without the banana tree. Cultivate the tree and the bananas will emerge automatically.One must be fully trained to play the game of life to the best of one’s fully developed potential. While the world is focused on researching and refining ways of how to develop one’s regular intelligence potential one’s other equally important emotional intelligence potential is more or less neglected. And as result most people live their lives struggling with a partially developed emotional intelligence potential. By the time experience grinds down this gap in potential they are ready to retire having missed out on playing the game of life as it is supposed to be played in full prime of life.

Most people are unaware that the means to a maximum ability to play the game of life lies in getting the right knowledge to develop one’s brain to the super mature level. And main stream science/education does not help either. Recently there was an article in the NY Times about some scientist having proved in one more way that relaxation helps the brain become more physically healthy. This is a more or less well established fact, yet the scientist says, “Relaxation may help …” Just imagine this well established fact yet the scientist states it with a ‘may’. Unfortunately it is not his mistake it is the culture of science that once some new insight emerges then instead of taking advantage of it the scientist asks the next question, ‘What next?’. It is like expanding the horizon and instead of cultivating the newly discovered field the gaze shifts to the new horizon. It is a perpetual quest to expand the horizons of science for its own sake.

There is a treasure trove of knowledge right under our chin which we can use to develop the science of emotional intelligence, which at the super mature mind/brain level is the science of wisdom, even the science of universal common sense (though many a times group common sense can be prejudiced and so we can say ‘the science of universal common sense’).

Man since ancient times did figure out that wisdom is the key to man’s emancipation and a good virtuous life. However man tried to define and figure out wisdom and as we did not succeed we decided to list all the attributes of wisdom. So the quest became, ‘How to teach the attributes of wisdom’. Now the very nature of wisdom is such that wisdom can be described as a tree where its attributes are the fruit of the wisdom tree. No wonder it is so very difficult and almost impossible to cultivate the attributes of wisdom like selflessness and humbleness; because it is the same as trying to grow my favorite fruit the mango with out growing the mango tree. No wonder main stream education gave up trying to teach wisdom.

Also just like life needs oxygen wisdom needs a nurturing environment to grow into a wisdom tree and sprout out automatically all its attributes of selfless love and grace etc. So the wisdom tree needs to get its roots nurtured from the womb onwards.

As some parents will always be inadequate to provide this nurturing environment and will only sprout the tree of ignorance we can develop ways to detect the absence of the wisdom tree and take steps to develop pre-K to 12 and beyond wisdom education. Which means making the brain squeaky clean; by removing of all traces of the tree of ignorance. Absence of the ignorance tree is the oxygen for the wisdom tree to sprout automatically.

We must establish a process where effective and urgently required/needed new knowledge contained in knols must be promoted in every possible manner. Consider this latest knol, 'Wisdom is a tree'. How can I claim that this contains urgently required knowledge. Just take the state of the world today. Lets take the conflict in the Middle East. Both sides are desperate for peace. They are trying for hundreds of years to produce peace which is an attribute of wisdom. They are trying to produce peace (fruit) without cultivating the fruit producing tree (wisdom)! They can keep trying to produce peace for another 1000 years but unless they create the environment to produce the wisdom tree they will and can never produce peace. It is the very nature of peace that it exists only on the wisdom tree. So they come to the peace table while all along their brains/minds are powered by the attributes of ignorance - hate and the desire for revenge etc. When the fruit from the tree of ignorance thrive they choke the fruit of the wisdom tree and it does not even bloosm. (Someone must awaken both sides to the very nature of peace!). Peace is an all or nothing entity, it only comes with the wisdom package. Even today the states of Europe on the surface are at peace yet their defense budgets do not reflect peace! What a waste of resources at least partly due to ignorance of the very nature of peace.

There are three ways to achieve peace:

1) Both sides have a change of 'heart' (brain) and this is possible. (This is the best way for permanent peace)
2) Both warring factions find out the wisdom way and stick to implementing it.
3) Or a stronger power enforces the wisdom way.

Neural Evidence for Inequality-averse Social Preferences

2010-02-01T06:00:00Z

Elizabeth Tricomi, Antonio Rangel, Colin F. Camerer, John P. O’Doherty

A popular hypothesis in the social sciences is that humans have social preferences to reduce inequality in outcome distributions because it has a negative impact on their experienced reward. Although there is a large body of behavioural and anthropological evidence consistent with the predictions of these theories, there is no direct neural evidence for the existence of inequality-averse preferences. Such evidence would be especially useful because some behaviours that are consistent with a dislike for unequal outcomes could also be explained by concerns for social image or reciprocity, which do not require a direct aversion towards inequality. Here we use functional MRI to test directly for the existence of inequality-averse social preferences in the human brain. Inequality was created by recruiting pairs of subjects and giving one of them a large monetary endowment. While both subjects evaluated further monetary transfers from the experimenter to themselves and to the other participant, we measured neural responses in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, two areas that have been shown to be involved in the valuation of monetary and primary rewards in both social and non-social contexts. Consistent with inequality-averse models of social preferences, we find that activity in these areas was more responsive to transfers to others than to self in the ‘high-pay’ subject, whereas the activity of the ‘low-pay’ subject showed the opposite pattern. These results provide direct evidence for the validity of this class of models, and also show that the brain’s reward circuitry is sensitive to both advantageous and disadvantageous inequality.

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The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning

2010-02-01T06:00:00Z

(A Collaborative Project of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras)

"The Talking Point is all about how people learn within groups. People can be much smarter than crowds if you measure “smart” as decision-making speed. Crowds can be much wiser than individuals if you measure wisdom by depth of understanding. It is possible to understand a great deal of information yet (or maybe because of this) you can also be slow to make decisions. If rushed, crowds will make poor decisions in spite of their wisdom. So... to get good group decisions on a time scale that will keep pace with policy development needs and social necessities, groups have to be supported so that their decision-making process can be accelerated. Much has been said and written about this problem over the years. It is dangerous to have the power of groups without the wisdom of groups, and it is tragic to have the wisdom of groups without the power of groups. The Talking Point presents a meeting point for the wisdom and power of groups through the use of Structured Dialogic Design.

With hopeful intentions, as a culture we have poisoned the well just when we need it most. We have touted design charettes and stakeholder processes as engagement vehicles and then ignored, marginalized or corrupted the very input that we swore to hold as sacred. This has created a myth that large scale collaboration is not possible, and the myth has led to considerable disillusionment among would-be participants and could-be sponsors. Structured Dialogic Design seeks to bust the myth about our limited capabilities to sustain boundary spanning collaboration. To bust this myth, Structured Dialogic Design needs to usher in a new wave of collaborative planning. Scholars have identified the Structured Dialogic Design methodology as the cutting edge of “third phase” science - where the reality of a situation embraces interactions between objective findings and subjective intentions.

The Talking Point provides a window for observing how Structured Dialogic Design has been put into practice and paints a panorama of the issues that confront complex social system design. This book is itself a bridge between scholarship and practice, written to be accessible yet anchored to major themes in cognitive psychology, information systems, social systems, and models of group learning. The book is an invitation for transformational leaders and those who support transformational leaders to pick up a new tool in the essential quest to put our nation and our world back on track toward sustainable futures. The Talking Point is a fresh source of water in a world that is thirsty for new ways of solving complex problems."

Link to the publisher.

The role of therapist self-disclosure in psychotherapy: A qualitative review.

2010-02-01T06:00:00Z

Jennifer R. Henretty, Heidi M. Levitt

Over 90% of therapists self-disclose to clients (Mathews, 1989; Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987; Edwards & Murdock, 1994), however, the implications of therapist self-disclosure are unclear, with highly divergent results from one study to the next. The goal of this paper was to review the empirical literature relevant to therapist self-disclosure, and provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the factors that affect, and are affected by, therapist self-disclosure. Findings are organized into an integrated model examining the who, what, when, why, and how of therapist self-disclosure. In addition, training implications and suggestions for future research are provided.

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

Susannah B. F. Paletz, Christian D. Schunn

The psychology of science typically lacks integration between cognitive and social variables. We present a new framework of team innovation in multidisciplinary science and engineering groups that ties factors from both literatures together. We focus on the effects of a particularly challenging social factor, knowledge diversity, which has a history of mixed effects on creativity, most likely because those effects are mediated and moderated by cognitive and additional social variables. In addition, we highlight the distinction between team innovative processes that are primarily divergent versus convergent; we propose that the social and cognitive implications are different for each, providing a possible explanation for knowledge diversity's mixed results on team outcomes. Social variables mapped out include formal roles, communication norms, sufficient participation and information sharing, and task conflict; cognitive variables include analogy, information search, and evaluation. This framework provides a roadmap for research that aims to harness the power of multidisciplinary teams.

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The Freedom of Desire: Hegel's Response to Rousseau on the Problem of Civil Society

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

Jeffrey Church

The ever-growing body of literature on civil society can benefit from a return to the original theoretical articulation and defense of the concept in the work of G.W.F. Hegel. Specifically, this article suggests that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential critique of civil society remains unanswered and argues that Hegel responded with a sweeping and sympathetic institutional design that remains relevant today. Hegel agrees with Rousseau that commercial society aggravates the dissatisfaction of its members, and that educating individual desire through institutional design is necessary to solve this difficulty. However, modern states need not adopt Rousseau's extreme and impracticable solution. Hegel's concrete, market-based associations of civil society render desires satiable and elevate them to accord with the common good, while still maintaining the freedom and distinctness of a pluralistic modern society.

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Good and Good For You: An Affect Theory of Happiness

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

Laura Sizer

Happiness is something we all want and strive for. But what is it and why do we want it so badly? Philosophers have offered two sorts of answers to the first question, identifying happiness either with a psychological state or condition (a feeling, emotion or set of judgments), or with the conditions of a life—how well the life is going for the person living it, often measured by some objective standard of value. These two approaches, what I’ll henceforth refer to as subjective, or ‘good feelings,’ and objective, ‘good lives’ accounts of happiness, reflect tensions in our intuitions about the nature of happiness. Each approach captures different, but important, features of our intuitions, making it difficult to accept either a purely subjective or objective view. This has led some philosophers to suggest that these are not competing accounts of one thing, ‘happiness,’ but accounts of several different things to which everyday language has, unfortunately, given the same name (Thomas 1968; Haybron 2000). Others propose that each is a
necessary component of happiness, that happiness is a matter of possessing both the relevant subjective and objective properties (*** 1979; Nozick 1989, e.g.). I think this latter view is right, but that we need to better understand why or how these two elements are important and how they might be linked. In this paper I argue that an affect theory of happiness is able to reconcile both the subjective and objective strands of our intuitions about happiness.

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Parents and peers as providers of support in adolescents' social network: a developmental perspective

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

Jorge F. del Valle, Amaia Bravo, Mónica López

The authors carried out an assessment of social support networks with a sample of 884 Spanish adolescents aged 12 to 17. The main goal was to analyze the development of the figures of parents and peers as providers of social support in the two basic dimensions of emotional and instrumental support. In peers, they distinguished between the contexts from which they came (school, associations, and friends from the community) to observe whether there were different tendencies. The results of the MANOVA indicate significant effects on both dimensions for the factors age, provider, and interaction between the two. The authors conclude that the tendencies for decline in the provision of support from parents and the corresponding increase in support from peers during adolescence are different for each dimension, and also for the different types of friends, according to context. Parents maintain a good level of instrumental support, but not of emotional support.

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Cognitive Management in an Enduring National Rivalry: The Case of India and Pakistan

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

Peter Suedfeld, Rajiv Jhangiani

Using integrative complexity scoring, the current study addresses how communications by leaders of India and Pakistan have revealed their information processing and decision-making strategies. The hostility between India and Pakistan started with the official creation of the two states and has lasted through more than a half-century. It has been marked by four full-scale wars and almost constant ethnopolitical, terrorist, and guerrilla violence. It is one of the most enduring and bloody binational rivalries of recent decades. Shared aspects of history and culture make the comparisons relatively free of confounding factors. In common with previous findings, complexity scores have shown reliable associations with impending war and with continued peace (or low-intensity conflict).

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Dynamic Cultural Influences on Neural Representations of the Self

2010-01-01T06:00:00Z

2009-12-01T06:00:00Z

Melissa J. Ferguson and Vivian Zayas

Humans continuously evaluate aspects of their environment (people, objects, places) in an automatic fashion (i.e., unintentionally, rapidly). Such evaluations can be highly adaptive, triggering behavioral responses away from threats and toward rewards in the environment. Even in the absence of immediate threats and fleeting rewards, the ability to automatically evaluate aspects of the environment enables individuals to effortlessly make sense of their world without depleting limited and valuable cognitive resources. We discuss two lines of research on automatic evaluation: The first demonstrates that people can evaluate a stimulus even when they are not conscious of the stimulus and thus unaware of having evaluated it. The second line of work shows that even when people are conscious of a stimulus, they may evaluate it without intending to do so. We end by discussing current theoretical questions regarding this topic.

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The Process of Personal Change Through Reading Fictional Narratives: Implications for Psychotherapy Practice and Theory.

2009-12-01T06:00:00Z

"Can Do" Attitudes: Some Positive Illusions Are Not Misbeliefs

Owen Flanagan

McKay & Dennett (M&D) argue that positive illusions are a plausible candidate for a class of evolutionarily “selected for” misbeliefs. I argue (Flanagan 1991; 2007) that the class of alleged positive illusions is a hodge-podge, and that some of its members are best understood as positive attitudes, hopes, and the like, not as beliefs at all.

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Adaptive Misbelief or Judicious Pragmatic Acceptance?

Keith Frankish

This commentary highlights the distinction between belief and pragmatic acceptance, and asks whether the positive illusions discussed in section 13 of the target article may be judicious pragmatic acceptances rather than adaptive misbeliefs. I discuss the characteristics of pragmatic acceptance and make suggestions about how to determine whether positive illusions are attitudes of this type.

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Why We Don't Need Built-in Misbeliefs

Carol S. Dweck

In this commentary, I question the idea that positive illusions are evolved misbeliefs on the grounds that positive illusions are often maladaptive, are not universal, and may be by-products of existing mechanisms. Further, because different beliefs are adaptive in different situations and cultures, it makes sense to build in a readiness to form beliefs rather than the beliefs themselves.

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2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

Joaquín M. Fuster

Converging evidence from humans and nonhuman primates is obliging us to abandon conventional models in favor of a radically different, distributed-network paradigm of cortical memory. Central to the new paradigm is the concept of memory network or cognit—that is, a memory or an item of knowledge defined by a pattern of connections between neuron populations associated by experience. Cognits are hierarchically organized in terms of semantic abstraction and complexity. Complex cognits link neurons in noncontiguous cortical areas of prefrontal and posterior association cortex. Cognits overlap and interconnect profusely, even across hierarchical levels (heterarchically), whereby a neuron can be part of many memory networks and thus many memories or items of knowledge.

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Optimal Predictions in Everyday Cognition: The Wisdom of Individuals or Crowds?

2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

by Michael C. Mozer, Harold Pashler and Hadjar Homaei

Griffiths and Tenenbaum (2006) asked individuals to make predictions about the duration or extent of everyday events (e.g., cake baking times), and reported that predictions were optimal, employing Bayesian inference based on veridical prior distributions. Although the predictions conformed strikingly to statistics of the world, they reflect averages over many individuals. On the conjecture that the accuracy of the group response is chiefly a consequence of aggregating across individuals, we constructed simple, heuristic approximations to the Bayesian model premised on the hypothesis that individuals have access merely to a sample of k instances drawn from the relevant distribution. The accuracy of the group response reported by Griffiths and Tenenbaum could be accounted for by supposing that individuals each utilize only two instances. Moreover, the variability of the group data is more consistent with this small-sample hypothesis than with the hypothesis that people utilize veridical or nearly veridical representations of the underlying prior distributions. Our analyses lead to a qualitatively different view of how individuals reason from past experience than the view espoused by Griffiths and Tenenbaum.

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The Wisdom of Individuals: Exploring People’s Knowledge About Everyday Events Using Iterated Learning

2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

by Stephan Lewandowsky, Thomas L. Grifﬁths, Michael L. Kalish

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called ‘‘iterated learning,’’ in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people’s predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box ofﬁce gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to discriminate between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model (Grifﬁths & Tenenbaum, 2006) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (MinK; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difﬁcult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the MinK model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reﬂect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals.

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The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life

2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

Arie W. Kruglanski and Edward Orehek

We analyze two conceptions of rationality featured in the social science literature, rationality as a means-ends relation and rationality as logical consistency. The former concerns the rationality of actions; it involves choosing the best means to one's ends and is naturally akin to conceptions of utility. The latter concerns the rationality of judgments, it involves their consistency with other knowledge and is naturally akin to conceptions of truth and probability. We assume that (1) a uniform process of judgment formation is involved in both rational and irrational judgments; it follows that the distinction between more or less rational instances must refer to judgmental outcomes rather than processes; (2) in the moment all judgments are consistent with the available evidence hence all are locally (and trivially!) rational. Accordingly, we present a relativity theory of rationality whereby any meaningful conception of rationality needs to transcend the local context and involve comparisons of local outcomes with detached (inter or intrapersonal) points of reference.

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Fast and Frugal Heuristics: Tools of Social Rationality

2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

Ralph Hertwig and Stefan M. Herzog

Homo economicus cannot help but be puzzled by people's baffling array of social behaviors that conflict with economic theory. To accommodate these “deviant” behaviors within the standard view of rationality, defined in terms of probability theory, logic and rational choice theory, economists and psychologists tend to inject some psychology into the rational choice framework. In contrast, we propose to start afresh: We put forth the thesis that humans' social intelligence is not qualitatively different from their nonsocial intelligence, and that important aspects of both kinds of intelligence can be modeled in terms of boundedly rational fast and frugal heuristics. These heuristics can be ecologically and socially rational in that they exploit the structure of physical and social environments as well as evolved capacities to foster performance both in games against nature and in social games.

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2009-11-01T05:00:00Z

Perceptual Decisions: From Sensory Signals to Behavior

2009-10-01T05:00:00Z

by Joachim Gross and Markus Ploner

Recent non-invasive studies in humans provide new insights into the timing of perceptual decision making and show that integrated sensory evidence is represented in motor areas well before a behavioral response.

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Animal Cognition: Aesop's Fable Flies from Fiction to Fact

2009-10-01T05:00:00Z

by Alex H. Taylor and Russell D. Gray

A new study shows that rooks are able to spontaneously drop stones into a tube of water to obtain a floating worm. This sophisticated problem solving raises intriguing questions about the use of imagination in animals.

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The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

2009-10-01T05:00:00Z

by Wade Davis

"Over the past decade, many of us have been alarmed to learn of the rapidly accelerating extinction of our planet's diverse flora and fauna. But how many of us know that our human cultural diversity is also going extinct at a shocking rate? Biologists estimate that 18% of mammals and 11% of birds are threatened, while botanists anticipate the loss of 8% of flora. Meanwhile, of the 7,000 languages in the world today, 50% will disappear in our lifetime. Languages are merely the canaries in the coalmine: what of the poetry, songs, knowledge, and ways of seeing encoded in these disappearing voices?

In The Wayfinders, acclaimed anthropologist Wade Davis offers a gripping account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures and worldviews while reminding us of the encroaching dangers posed by unchecked globalization. An enlightening, awe-inspiring, and cautionary look at vanishing cultures and languages from one of the world's most celebrated and distinguished anthropologists."

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Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making

2009-10-01T05:00:00Z

"In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much information as possible, compare the options, pin down the goals before getting started. But in practice we make some of our best decisions by adapting to circumstances rather than blindly following procedures. In Streetlights and Shadows, Gary Klein debunks the conventional wisdom about how to make decisions. He takes ten commonly accepted claims about decision making and shows that they are better suited for the laboratory than for life. The standard advice works well when everything is clear, but the tough decisions involve shadowy conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Gathering masses of information, for example, works if the information is accurate and complete—but that doesn't often happen in the real world. (Think about the careful risk calculations that led to the downfall of the Wall Street investment houses.)

"Klein offers more realistic ideas about how to make decisions in real-life settings. He provides many examples—ranging from airline pilots and weather forecasters to sports announcers and Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander novels—to make his point. All these decision makers saw things that others didn't. They used their expertise to pick up cues and to discern patterns and trends. We can make better decisions, Klein tells us, if we are prepared for complexity and ambiguity and if we will stop expecting the data to tell us everything."

Source: Amazon.com

Social and semantic coevolution in knowledge networks

2009-10-01T05:00:00Z

Camille Roth, Jean-Philippe Cointet

Socio-semantic networks involve agents creating and processing information: communities of scientists, software developers, wiki contributors and webloggers are, among others, examples of such knowledge networks. We aim at demonstrating that the dynamics of these communities can be adequately described as the coevolution of a social and a socio-semantic network. More precisely, we will first introduce a theoretical framework based on a social network and a socio-semantic network, i.e. an epistemic network featuring agents, concepts and links between agents and between agents and concepts. Adopting a relevant empirical protocol, we will then describe the joint dynamics of social and socio-semantic structures, at both macroscopic and microscopic scales, emphasizing the remarkable stability of these macroscopic properties in spite of a vivid local, agent-based network dynamics.

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2009-09-30T22:00:00Z

By Konrad Banicki. The main purpose of this article is to undertake a conceptual investigation of the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm: a psychological project initiated by Paul Baltes and intended to study the complex phenomenon of wisdom. Firstly, in order to provide a wider perspective for the subsequent analyses, a short historical sketch is given. Secondly, a meta-theoretical issue of the degree to which the subject matter of the Baltesian study can be identified with the traditional philosophical wisdom is addressed. The main result yielded by a careful conceptual analysis is that the philosophical and psychological concepts of wisdom, though not entirely the same, are at least parallel. Finally, one of the revealed aspects of the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, i.e. its relative neglect of the non-cognitive and personal aspects of wisdom is brought to the fore. This deficiency, it is suggested, can be remedied by the application of the virtue ethics' conceptual framework.

Fitness “kinematics”: biological function, altruism, and organism–environment development

2009-09-01T05:00:00Z

by Marshall Abrams

Abstract: It’s recently been argued that biological fitness can’t change over the course of an organism’s life as a result of organisms’ behaviors. However, some characterizations of biological function and biological altruism tacitly or explicitly assume that an effect of a trait can change an organism’s fitness. In the first part of the paper, I explain that the core idea of changing fitness can be understood in terms of conditional probabilities defined over sequences of events in an organism’s life. The result is a notion of “conditional fitness” which is static but which captures intuitions about apparent behavioral effects on fitness. The second part of the paper investigates the possibility of providing a systematic foundation for conditional fitness in terms of spaces of sequences of states of an organism and its environment. I argue that the resulting “organism–environment history conception” helps unify diverse biological perspectives, and may provide part of a metaphysics of natural selection.

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Varieties of (Scientific) Creativity: A Hierarchical Model of Domain-Specific Disposition, Development, and Achievement

2009-09-01T05:00:00Z

Dean Keith Simonton

Prior research supports the inference that scientific disciplines can be ordered into a hierarchy ranging from the "hard" natural sciences to the "soft" social sciences. This ordering corresponds with such objective criteria as disciplinary consensus, knowledge obsolescence rate, anticipation frequency, theories-to-laws ratio, lecture disfluency, and age at recognition. It is then argued that this hierarchy can be extrapolated to encompass the humanities and arts and interpolated within specific domains to accommodate contrasts in subdomains (e.g., revolutionary versus normal science). This expanded and more finely differentiated hierarchy is then shown to have a partial psychological basis in terms of dispositional traits (e.g., psychopathology) and developmental experiences (e.g., family background). This demonstration then leads to three hypotheses about how a creator's domain-specific impact depends on his or her disposition and development: the domain-progressive, domain-typical, and domain-regressive creator hypotheses. Studies published thus far lend the most support to the domain-regressive creator hypothesis. In particular, major contributors to a domain are more likely to have dispositional traits and developmental experiences most similar to those that prevail in a domain lower in the disciplinary hierarchy. However, some complications to this generalization suggest the need for more research on the proposed hierarchical model.

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Link to reply.

What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge

2009-09-01T05:00:00Z

The Romance of Learning from Disagreement. The Effect of Cohesiveness and Disagreement on Knowledge Sharing Behavior and Individual Performance Within Teams

2009-09-01T05:00:00Z

By Marianne van Woerkom and Karin Sanders | Journal of Business and Psychology

2009-08-01T05:00:00Z

By P. J. Henry and David O Sears

'The conventional wisdom is that racial prejudice remains largely stable through adulthood. However, very little is known about the development of contemporary racial attitudes like symbolic racism. The growing crystallization of symbolic racism through the lifespan is tested using two data sets that measure the stability, consistency, and predictive validity of symbolic racism in samples ranging in age from young adults to the elderly. The results provide evidence that the crystallization of symbolic racism generally takes on a curvilinear trajectory across the lifespan, showing that it is already largely crystallized by voting age, that it continues to crystallize still further through adulthood and that it begins to decline in coherence in late adulthood. The results generally provide evidence confirming early speculations of symbolic racism theorists concerning the crystallization of symbolic racism across the lifespan and are discussed in terms of different theoretical perspectives on the relationship between aging and attitudes more generally.

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Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment

2009-08-01T05:00:00Z

By Joshua D. Greene, et al. (Joshua Green is a wisdom grantee).

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas.

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Social Science & Human Flourishing: The Scottish Enlightenment & Today

2009-08-01T05:00:00Z

By Ryan P. Hanley, a wisdom grantee.

The Scottish Enlightenment is commonly identified as the birthplace of modern social science. But while Scottish and contemporary social science share a commitment to empiricism, contemporary insistence on the separation of empirical analysis from normative judgment invokes a distinction unintelligible to the Scots. In this respect the methods of modern social science seem an attenuation of those of Scottish social science. A similar attenuation can be found in the modern aspiration to judge the outcome of institutions or processes only with regard to efficiency. While the tenet that efficiency is preferable to inefficiency is central to Scottish social thought, the Scots regarded maximization of quantifiable returns as only one among three ends that well-functioning institutions and processes promote. Scottish social science speaks also of virtue and liberty where ours speaks only of utility. This essay develops these differences in three sections. Its first section compares Scottish and contemporary understandings of social science methods. Its second section examines how these differing methodologies inform their differing conceptions of human flourishing and particularly led Scottish social science to focus on virtue and freedom in addition to wealth. The essay concludes by calling attention to three movements in social science today which might help us recover the best features of Scottish social science.

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2009-08-01T05:00:00Z

In 3 studies, participants made choices between hypothetical financial, environmental, and health gains and losses that took effect either immediately or with a delay of 1 or 10 years. In all 3 domains, choices indicated that gains were discounted more than losses. There were no significant differences in the discounting of monetary and environmental outcomes, but health gains were discounted more and health losses were discounted less than gains or losses in the other 2 domains. Correlations between implicit discount rates for these different choices suggest that discount rates are influenced more by the valence of outcomes (gains vs. losses) than by domain (money, environment, or health). Overall, results indicate that when controlling as many factors as possible, at short to medium delays, environmental outcomes are discounted in a similar way to financial outcomes, which is good news for researchers and policy makers alike.

by Hardisty, David J.; Weber, Elke U.

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Thinking about Language

2009-08-01T05:00:00Z

2009-07-01T05:00:00Z

Nigel E. Raine

A recent study has found that butterflies maintain behavioural plasticity useful to them in rare environments by reducing associated costs in common environments. Butterflies use innate sensory biases to locate common green hosts, but learn to modify these preferences to find rare, red host-plants.

Learning allows animals to modify their behaviour in response to changes in their environment. If the environment remains relatively constant, however, it could be adaptive to rely on inflexible innate behavioural patterns to reduce (or eliminate) costs associated with learning [1]. Yet species living in relatively consistent environments can often adjust their phenotype successfully in alternative environments, suggesting that the costs of maintaining phenotypic plasticity could be low [2] and [3]. In a recent study Snell-Rood and Papaj [4] experimentally tested these theoretical predictions for the maintenance of phenotypic plasticity under consistent environmental conditions...

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Learning and Memory: While You Rest, Your Brain Keeps Working

2009-07-01T05:00:00Z

Justin L. Vincent

A recent study shows that brain activity recorded while the human subject is at ‘rest’ is significantly affected by a prior learning episode. These results suggest that understanding resting brain activity may be critical to understanding how humans learn from experience.

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Mothers and Others

2009-07-01T05:00:00Z

The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.

Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.

From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together (hint: it’s called the Showing-Off Hypothesis), Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

Link to the publisher's website.

Read a review from Science.

Clinical reasoning: new challenges

2009-07-01T05:00:00Z

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

"In this groundbreaking look at the evolution of our brains, eminent neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger uncover the mysteries of the outsize intelligence of our ancestors, who had bigger brains than humans living today. Weaving together history, science, and the latest theories of artificial intelligence, Lynch and Granger demystify the complexities of our brains, and show us how our memory, cognition, and intelligence actually function, as well as what mechanisms in the brain can potentially be enhanced, improving on the current design. Author ofThe Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux praised it as "provocative and fascinating," and, writing in the New Scientist, Willian Calvin called it "a popular account of how brains enlarge, in both evolutionary and developmental terms" and "a much needed book.""

by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger

Go to the publisher.

Read a review from The Quarterly Review of Biology by Jeremy Kirby.

Learning: An evolutionary analysis

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Joanna Swann

"This paper draws on the philosophy of Karl Popper to present a descriptive evolutionary epistemology that offers philosophical solutions to the following related problems: 'What happens when learning takes place?' and 'What happens in human learning?' It provides a detailed analysis of how learning takes place without any direct transfer of information from the environment to the learner, and it significantly extends the author's earlier published work on this topic. She proposes that learning should be construed as a special case of 'problem solving' and as a fundamentally critical and creative process in which learning organisms develop 'expectations' that are not purely an outcome of genetic inheritance or random mutation. Human learning is then characterised with reference to: objectified knowledge; descriptive and argumentative language; theoretical problems; the search for error and specific limitation. If the author's evolutionary analysis of learning is valid, it would suggest that we should, if we wish to promote learning, be wary of corralling children and older students in environments that inhibit autonomous activity, that discourage criticality and creativity and generally limit opportunities for trial and error-elimination. But education institutions, particularly those for older children and adolescents, are very often environments of this constraining kind. Traditionally, educationists have vastly underestimated the human potential for imaginative criticism—because in general they have not recognised the extent to which it lies at the heart of what humans, including the youngest children, do in order to succeed at even the most basic tasks."

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The Cultural Roots of Professional Wisdom: Towards a broader view of teacher expertise

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

David Carr & Don Skinner

"Perhaps the most pressing issue concerning teacher education and training since the end of the Second World War has been that of the role of theory—or principled reflection—in professional expertise. Here, although the main post-war architects of a new educational professionalism clearly envisaged a key role for theory—considering such disciplines as psychology, sociology and philosophy as indispensable for reflective practice—there are nevertheless well-rehearsed difficulties about crediting such disciplines with quite the (applied) role in educational practice of (say) physiology or anatomy in medical practice. This paper argues that while recent developments in professional teacher education and training may have moved on from erstwhile instrumentalist and/or applied science (competence and other) perspectives, there may yet be a case for further progress towards a rather more sophisticated philosophical psychology of teacher knowledge and expertise."

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Reason, emotion and decision-making: risk and reward computation with feeling

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Steven R. Quartz

Many models of judgment and decision-making posit distinct cognitive and emotional contributions to decision-making under uncertainty. Cognitive processes typically involve exact computations according to a cost-benefit calculus, whereas emotional processes typically involve approximate, heuristic processes that deliver rapid evaluations without mental effort. However, it remains largely unknown what specific parameters of uncertain decision the brain encodes, the extent to which these parameters correspond to various decision-making frameworks, and their correspondence to emotional and rational processes. Here, I review research suggesting that emotional processes encode in a precise quantitative manner the basic parameters of financial decision theory, indicating a reorientation of emotional and cognitive contributions to risky choice.

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Do judgments about freedom and responsibility depend on who you are? Personality differences in intuitions about compatibilism and incompatibilism

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Adam Feltz and Edward T. Cokely

"Recently, there has been an increased interest in folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility from both philosophers and psychologists. We aim to extend our understanding of folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility using an individual differences approach. Building off previous research suggesting that there are systematic differences in folks’ philosophically relevant intuitions, we present new data indicating that the personality trait extraversion predicts, to a significant extent, those who have compatibilist versus incompatibilist intuitions. We argue that identifying groups of people who have specific and diverse intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility offers the possibility for theoretical advancement in philosophy and psychology, and may in part explain why some perennial philosophical debates have proven intractable."

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Read a critique of this paper by Defining Wisdom grantee Eddy Nahmias.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons.

Dirty work, clean hands: The moral psychology of indirect agency

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Neeru Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene and Max H. Bazerman

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C reveal effects of indirect agency under conditions favoring intuitive judgment, but not reflective judgment, using a joint/separate evaluation paradigm. Experiment 2A demonstrates that effects of indirect agency cannot be fully explained by perceived lack of foreknowledge or control on the part of the primary agent. Experiment 2B indicates that reflective moral judgment is sensitive to indirect agency, but only to the extent that indirectness signals reduced foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 3 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of agents who cause harm indirectly. Experiment 4 demonstrates an effect of indirect agency on purchase intentions.

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The Wisdom Development Scale: Further Validity Investigations

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

by Jeffrey A. Greene and Scott C. Brown

Researchers are gaining an interest in the concept of wisdom, a more holistic yet often ineffable educational outcome. Models of wisdom abound, but few have rigorously tested measures. This study looks at Brown’s (2004a, 2004b) Model of Wisdom Development and its associated measure, the Wisdom Development Scale (WDS; Brown & Greene, 2006). The construct validity, measurement invariance, criterion validity, and reliability of scores from the WDS were assessed with over 3000 participants from two separate groups: one a sample of professionals and the other a sample of college students. Support for construct validity and reliability with these samples was found, along with measurement invariance. Latent means analyses showed predicted discrimination between the groups, and criterion validity evidence, with another measure of collegiate educational outcomes, was found.

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Natural compatibilism versus natural incompatibilism: Back to the drawing board

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Feltz, A., Cokely, E.T., Nadelhoffer, T.

In the free will literature, some compatibilists and some incompatibilists claim that their views best capture ordinary intuitions concerning free will and moral responsibility. One goal of researchers working in the field of experimental philosophy has been to probe ordinary intuitions in a controlled and systematic way to help resolve these kinds of intuitional stalemates. We contribute to this debate by presenting new data about folk intuitions concerning freedom and responsibility that correct for some of the shortcomings of previous studies. These studies also illustrate some problems that pertain to all of the studies that have been run thus far.

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An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians, and Muslims

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

David F. Ford

The origins of scriptural reasoning, in which Jews, Christians and Muslims study their scriptures in conversation with each other, are described. Some maxims implicit in its form of Abrahamic collegiality are distilled (including the emphasis on friendship rather than consensus) and its institutional setting is analysed under the headings of House (synagogue, church, mosque), campus (university) and tent (settings where scriptural reasoning is practised). The attempt to cope with the superabundance of meaning in the scriptures is explored in terms of doing justice to the plain sense and other senses, using various theoretical conceptualities, and seeking wisdom together, concluding with remarks on scriptural reasoning in the public sphere.

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

A recent publication by one of our grantees and colleagues, Heidi Levitt.

This article presents a grounded theory analysis of the experience of sustaining an abiding curiosity. Results emphasize how curiosity became inherently motivating and pleasurable, and led to deeper understandings of interpersonal differences and an enriched sense of identity. Despite the experience of curiosity strengthening, waning, and shifting across time, it was experienced as a longstanding driving force. At the same time, if consuming, curiosity holds risks for participants and could lead to alienation from others and despair. The discussion puts forward a more integrated understanding of a somewhat fragmented literature and highlights the complexities that depth curiosity entails.

Levitt, Heidi M.
Williams, Daniel C.
Uruk, Ayse Ciftci
Kannan, Divya
Obana, Maki
Smith, Brandy L.
Wang, Mei-Chuan
Plexico, Laura W.
Camp, Jonathan
Hardison, Heather
Watts, Anasa
Biss, Wendy J.

Link to the article

Temperament and intuition: A commentary on Feltz and Cokely

2009-06-01T05:00:00Z

Co-authored by one of our grantees, Eddy Nahmias.

Social Learning: What Do Drosophila Have to Offer?

2009-05-01T05:00:00Z

Ellouise Leadbeater

The recent finding that female Drosophila copy the mate-choice criteria of other females introduces a mainstream model species to the study of how animals use social information.

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Can evolution explain how minds work?

2009-05-01T05:00:00Z

Johan J. Bolhuis & Clive D. L. Wynne

"Biologists have tended to assume that closely related species will have similar cognitive abilities. Johan J. Bolhuis and Clive D. L. Wynne put this evolutionarily inspired idea through its paces.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is broadly accepted among biologists, but its implications for the study of cognition are far from clear. Few within the scientific pale would argue against the proposition that life on Earth has evolved and that this general principle can be extended to the process of thought. But in taking an evolutionary approach, biologists have tended to assume that species with shared ancestry will have similar cognitive abilities, and that the evolutionary history of traits can be used to reveal how we and other animals perform certain mental tasks. A closer analysis suggests things aren't so simple..."

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Is free will an illusion?

2009-05-01T05:00:00Z

Martin Heisenberg

Scientists and philosophers are using new discoveries in neuroscience to question the idea of free will. They are misguided, says Martin Heisenberg. Examining animal behaviour shows how our actions can be free...

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Is Our Brain Too Big to Think Effectively?

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Konrad R. Fialkowski

"In their paper, “Archaic Human Admixture,” Garrigan and Kingan (2007) wrote,

In contrast to Xp21 and RRM2P4 examples, in which the putatively introgressed archaic lineages were found at relatively low frequencies, the MCPH1 D lineage occurs in nearly 70% of the sampled chromosomes. Lastly, the D lineage is estimated to have introgressed into the anatomically modern human genome approximately 37,000 years ago. … Could this be the first example of adaptive hybridization in hominids?

However, the question arises of what was adaptive about this hybridization that shifted our genome back to the allele of our evolutionary forefathers. The rapidity of proliferation (70% in 37,000 years) implies that this particular allele had led to an extremely high fitness in individuals.

At the time of introgression, images had already been painted on the walls of caves and burial ceremonies performed. Speech had been in use for more than 100,000 years (Liberman 1991), to the accompaniment of abstract thinking. Generally, similar to today, reasoning and thinking were the primary faculties of individuals..."

Read the full paper.

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

By Sharon Rich, John McLaughlin

Educators must adapt the institutions in which they work to ensure students' wisdom is developed. They should recognize and articulate the current educational context, broaden their perspective of education, be prepared to provide financial support to both individuals and organizations, and recognize that the social imperative for change must become the driving force behind public education. They should also acknowledge significant educational settings other than school, and seek to nurture the spirit as well as the mind.

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Hagia Sophia (Divine Wisdom)

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Perspective on wisdom, holism, and epistemics, a term used to describe thesystematic study of subjective knowledge. This article is a commentary on the Neurobiology of Wisdom article in the same issue and journal.

by James C. Harris, M.D.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmedlight, a meek namelessness, and a hidden wholeness. This mysteriousUnity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans.—ThomasMerton, "Hagia Sophia," 1963^(p65)

The world's religions emphasize the importance of adhering toa prescribed spiritual path that facilitates emotional maturityand offers the hope of transcendent wisdom. Such wisdom is accompaniedby a heightened consciousness, a sense of inner silence, joy,gratitude, and a spontaneous morality. To develop wisdom, bothWestern and Eastern religions teach constraint, a disciplinedmorality, charitable concern, and compassionate action...

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The Neurobiology of Wisdom: A Literature Overview

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Thomas W. Meeks, MD; Dilip V. Jeste, MD

Context Wisdom is a unique psychological trait noted sinceantiquity, long discussed in humanities disciplines, recentlyoperationalized by psychology and sociology researchers, butlargely unexamined in psychiatry or biology.

Objective To discuss recent neurobiological studies relatedto subcomponents of wisdom identified from several publisheddefinitions/descriptions of wisdom by clinical investigatorsin the field, ie, prosocial attitudes/behaviors, social decisionmaking/pragmatic knowledge of life, emotional homeostasis, reflection/self-understanding,value relativism/tolerance, and acknowledgment of and dealingeffectively with uncertainty.

Data Sources Literature focusing primarily on neuroimaging/brainlocalization and secondarily on neurotransmitters, includingtheir genetic determinants.

Study Selection Studies involving functional neuroimagingor neurotransmitter functioning, examining human (rather thananimal) subjects, and identified via a PubMed search using keywordsfrom any of the 6 proposed subcomponents of wisdom were included.

Data Extraction Studies were reviewed by both of us, anddata considered to be potentially relevant to the neurobiologyof wisdom were extracted.

Data Synthesis Functional neuroimaging permits explorationof neural correlates of complex psychological attributes suchas those proposed to comprise wisdom. The prefrontal cortexfigures prominently in several wisdom subcomponents (eg, emotionalregulation, decision making, value relativism), primarily viatop-down regulation of limbic and striatal regions. The lateralprefrontal cortex facilitates calculated, reason-based decisionmaking, whereas the medial prefrontal cortex is implicated inemotional valence and prosocial attitudes/behaviors. Rewardneurocircuitry (ventral striatum, nucleus accumbens) also appearsimportant for promoting prosocial attitudes/behaviors. Monoaminergicactivity (especially dopaminergic and serotonergic), influencedby several genetic polymorphisms, is critical to certain subcomponentsof wisdom such as emotional regulation (including impulse control),decision making, and prosocial behaviors.

Conclusions We have proposed a speculative model of theneurobiology of wisdom involving frontostriatal and frontolimbiccircuits and monoaminergic pathways. Wisdom may involve optimalbalance between functions of phylogenetically more primitivebrain regions (limbic system) and newer ones (prefrontal cortex).Limitations of the putative model are stressed. It is hopedthat this review will stimulate further research in characterization,assessment, neurobiology, and interventions related to wisdom.

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Inferior Parietal Lobule Supports Decision Making under Uncertainty in Humans

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Abstract: The optimal responses for many decisions faced by humans are ill defined, yet we are able to choose well by associating choices with outcomes, and employing this information in decision making.Previous studies suggest that the parietal cortex is involved in
‘‘uncertain’’ decision making, yet uncertainty is confounded with increased difficulty and attention. Here we aim to dissociate the role of parietal cortex in decision making and attention. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we measured brain activity while participants played a ‘‘matching-pennies’’ game. We found that the inferior parietal lobule is involved in decision making under uncertainty, showing higher activity when the decision was
uncertain rather than certain and when humans were given trial-by-trial feedback on choice outcomes than when they were not. Crucially, increasing attentional load with secondary tasks reduced inferior parietal activity when decisions were made under uncertainty,
suggesting that general attention does not drive its activation. This pattern was consistent for visual or auditory feedback, and for direct (symbols representing wins and losses) or indirect (only the opponent’s choices were shown) feedback. It contrasted with results from medial superior frontal gyrus, which was driven primarily by increased attentional load. We suggest that decision making under uncertainty is dissociable from general attention in the brain.

Source: Cerebral Cortex

Empirical Ethics as Dialogical Practice

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Widdershoven, G (Widdershoven, Guy), Abma, T (Abma, Tineke), Molewijk, B (Molewijk, Bert)

Abstract: In this article, we present a dialogical approach to empirical ethics, based upon hermeneutic ethics and responsive evaluation. Hermeneutic ethics regards experience as the concrete source of moral wisdom. In order to gain a good understanding of moral issues, concrete detailed experiences and perspectives need to be exchanged. Within hermeneutic ethics dialogue is seen as a vehicle for moral learning and developing normative conclusions. Dialogue stands for a specific view on moral epistemology and methodological criteria for moral inquiry. Responsive evaluation involves a structured way of setting up dialogical learning processes, by eliciting stories of participants, exchanging experiences in (homogeneous and heterogeneous) groups and drawing normative conclusions for practice. By combining these traditions we develop both a theoretical and a practical approach to empirical ethics, in which ethical issues are addressed and shaped together with stakeholders in practice. Stakeholders' experiences are not only used as a source for reflection by the ethicist; stakeholders are involved in the process of reflection and analysis, which takes place in a dialogue between participants in practice, facilitated by the ethicist. This dialogical approach to empirical ethics may give rise to questions such as: What contribution does the ethicist make? What role does ethical theory play? What is the relationship between empirical research and ethical theory in the dialogical process? In this article, these questions will be addressed by reflecting upon a project in empirical ethics that was set up in a dialogical way. The aim of this project was to develop and implement normative guidelines with and within practice, in order to improve the practice concerning coercion and compulsion in psychiatry.

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The justificatory power of moral experience

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

2009-04-01T05:00:00Z

Read the review

Conceptions of Wisdom

2009-03-01T06:00:00Z

Abstract: This article reports exploratory research on the meanings associated with the concept of wisdom by two groups of intending information professionals. Concern for the limited success of knowledge management initiatives and the complexity and hyperturbulence of organizational environments has provoked discussion of the role of wisdom in organizations, management, leadership, and decision making. A literature review provides a distillation of the literature on the notion of wisdom as a foundation for investigating the alignment between these perspectives and those of the respondents. Data was collected through a survey using one open question. The findings of the content analysis of the responses are reported and discussed. It is evident that wisdom is a polysemantic concept, but that there is some level of agreement that knowledge, experience and action are key aspects of wisdom; but there is very little allusion to possible ethical and spiritual dimensions of wisdom.

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The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research

2009-03-01T06:00:00Z

"Organizational justice research traditionally focuses on the unique predictability of different types of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) and the relative importance of these types of justice on outcome variables. Recently, researchers have suggested shifting from this focus on specific types of justice to a consideration of overall justice. The authors hypothesize that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice facets and outcomes. They present 2 studies to test this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrates that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice judgments and employee attitudes. Study 2 demonstrates the mediating relationship holds for supervisor ratings of employee behavior. Implications for research on organizational justice are discussed."

Ambrose, Maureen L.; Schminke, Marshall

Adaptive variation in judgment and philosophical intuition

2009-03-01T06:00:00Z

Our theoretical understanding of individual differences can be used as a tool to test and refine theory. Individual differences are useful because judgments, including philosophically relevant intuitions, are the predictable products of the fit between adaptive psychological mechanisms (e.g., heuristics, traits, skills, capacities) and task constraints. As an illustration of this method and its potential implications, our target article used a canonical, representative, and affectively charged judgment task to reveal a relationship between the heritable personality trait extraversion and some compatabilist judgments. In the current Reply, we further clarify major theoretical implications of these data and outline potential opportunities and obstacles for this methodology. Discussion focuses on (1) the need for theoretically grounded a priori predictions; (2) the use of precise process level data and theory; (3) the possibility of convergent validity as personality is known to predict life experiences and outcomes; and (4) the fundamentally adaptive nature of cognition.

Edward T. Cokely and Adam Feltz

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Neuroethics as a Brain-Based Philosophy of Life: The Case of Michael S. Gazzaniga

2009-03-01T06:00:00Z

"Michael S. Gazzaniga, a pioneer and world leader in cognitive neuroscience, has made an initial attempt to develop neuroethics into a brain-based philosophy of life that he hopes will replace the irrational religious and political belief-systems that still partly govern modern societies. This article critically examines Gazzaniga’s proposal and shows that his actual moral arguments have little to do with neuroscience. Instead, they are based on unexamined political, cultural and moral conceptions, narratives and values. A more promising way of interpreting the belief-forming system of the brain is to say that we cannot avoid thinking in terms of wider frameworks and narratives that are socially embedded and historically developed; consequently, any moral discussion has to be in terms of these frameworks and narratives..."

by Arne Rasmusson

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Photo by Thomas Lieser

Political grandstanding and the use of proverbs in African political discourse

2009-02-01T06:00:00Z

Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo

In Africa, the transmission of the overwhelming complexity ofthe people's day-to-day experiences are deeply rooted in thecontinent's rich cultural artistry. Proverbs are the most widelyand commonly used in the continent's long standing history oforal arts. Proverbs are regarded as repositories of the people'scollective social, political and cultural wisdom and as analytictools of thought. This paper analyses how different Kenyan politiciansand political parties used proverbs to strengthen and furthertheir respective political positions with regard to the thenproposed new constitution of Kenya, during the various countrywidecampaigns in public political rallies and through the media.More specifically, the paper looks at how politicians and politicalparties used proverbs to further their different ideologies, to woo potential voters and to discredit opposing views.

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The uncertain reasoner: Bayes, logic, and rationality

2009-02-01T06:00:00Z

Abstract: Human cognition requires coping with a complex and uncertain world. This suggests that dealing with uncertainty may be the central challenge for human reasoning. In Bayesian Rationality we argue that probability theory, the calculus of uncertainty, is the right framework in which to understand everyday reasoning. We also argue that probability theory explains behavior, even on experimental tasks that have been designed to probe people's logical reasoning abilities. Most commentators agree on the centrality of uncertainty; some suggest that there is a residual role for logic in understanding reasoning; and others put forward alternative formalisms for uncertain reasoning, or raise specific technical, methodological, or empirical challenges. In responding to these points, we aim to clarify the scope and limits of probability and logic in cognitive science; explore the meaning of the "rational" explanation of cognition; and re-evaluate the empirical case for Bayesian rationality.

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Professional supervision: trusting the wisdom that 'comes'

2009-02-01T06:00:00Z

Elizabeth Ann Smythe, Tony MacCulloch, Richard Charmley

The lived experience of professional supervision is complex and dynamic. Techne, the knowledge that informs the 'know-how' of practice, offers guidance. Phronesis, the dynamic wisdom that trusts the 'play' of relationship in the supervision encounter, recognises the spirit of the encounter. While it is hard to capture that which is uniquely in the moment, this paper argues for an opening of the space that allows the phronesis of practice to be revealed. The notion of 'play' is explored, recognising supervision arises from the interaction between both parties. To yield effective supervision, play must be rooted in integrity, played out in a safe supportive environment, and underpinned by humility and courage. How the supervisor listens determines what the speaker will say. Unless a listening space is opened there is only empty talk. To embrace the phronesis of practice is to gift the supervision encounter with a rich wisdom that is beyond the scope of mere techne. One must also acknowledge however that this safest-of-all mode of practice paradoxically exposes the supervisor to vulnerability from a public scrutiny that seeks pre-defined ways. Techne has the certainty of the nod of approval while phronesis trusts in its own instinctual wisdom that can seldom be adequately explained. Yet, it is phronesis that makes the difference.

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The Wisdom of Many in One Mind: Improving Individual Judgments With Dialectical Bootstrapping

2009-02-01T06:00:00Z

Herzog, Stefan M., Hertwig, Ralph

The “wisdom of crowds” in making judgments about the future or other unknown events is well established. The average quantitative estimate of a group of individuals is consistently more accurate than the typical estimate, and is sometimes even the best estimate. Although individuals' estimates may be riddled with errors, averaging them boosts accuracy because both systematic and random errors tend to cancel out across individuals. We propose exploiting the power of averaging to improve estimates generated by a single person by using an approach we call dialectical bootstrapping. Specifically, it should be possible to reduce a person's error by averaging his or her first estimate with a second one that harks back to somewhat different knowledge. We derive conditions under which dialectical bootstrapping fosters accuracy and provide an empirical demonstration that its benefits go beyond reliability gains. A single mind can thus simulate the wisdom of many.

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