Fast lemons and intuitive beliefs
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Monday, 06 June 2011
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Is a lemon fast or slow?
Which one is brighter: the sound of a violin or the sound of a trombone?
Got the answer?
Without any apparent reason, you believe that lemons are fast and violins sound brighter than trombones. These beliefs happen to be shared by most humans, from an early age and cross-culturally. Now, where on earth did we get them from? Most of the earlier studies conducted since Edward Sapir focused on “sound symbolism”, i.e. the associations between sounds and meanings, but not directly on the associations between sensory dimensions – like brightness, pitch, size, etc. Even if you don't know anything about french names for birds, I could ask you whether you think that a pipit is a small or a big bird – and you would, without any apparent reason, judge that it must be a small one. It's certainly because, as a large majority of humans across cultures and linguistic groups, you think that the sound /i/ is smaller and brighter than the sound /a/, diminutive words, or names of small birds and fishes are much more likely to contain /i/ than /a/.
Rules have exceptions: Which is faster — a mallard or a kiwi?
Believing in things that don't really make sense and without any apparent reason seems, in that respect, not specific to the religious and spiritual domain. But are beliefs in the fastness of lemons, and in bright violins, of the same kind as beliefs in the Holy Trinity or in the spirits of the trees?
Why pink? Color matters
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Sunday, 05 September 2010
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Just ask yourself : Which colour do you prefer ? Have you always preferred it, or did your preference change ? Can you tell why you prefer pink to, let's say, yellow ? If you have no answer to these questions, you may wonder what's so interesting about colour preferences. And if you have no answer, or no interest in the questions, it's perhaps because they are not very well shaped.
Let's first agree that color preference is an important aspect of human behavior. It influences a large number of decisions people make on a daily basis, including the clothes and make up they wear (I will never wear a kaki jacket !), the way they decorate their homes (I like dark furniture), the artifacts they buy or create, to name but a few examples. What is more interesting is that color is, in some sense, a superficial quality that seldom influences the practical function of artifacts. What's more interesting for psychologists, is that we still know very little on which factors actually determine these preferences. We still don't have a good grasp on what they are, and how to capture them descriptively: some studies have reported universal preferences (for blue rather than red); others. for highly saturated colors ; some, finally, stress cultural and individual differences.
Mad in America
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Wednesday, 20 January 2010
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Relativity of mental illness has enjoyed the favours of philosophers for decades (Michel Foucault, Ian Hacking and, more recently Geoffrey Llyod in his Cognitive Variations). It has lead to the development of the « new cross-cultural psychiatry », heralded by Kleinman in 1977. It may become the best pop version of culture and cognition – as shown by the recent piece in the New York Times « The Americanization of mental illness », published on the 10th of january. The essay is adapted from Ethan Watters’ forthcoming book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche.
As with many fashionable ideas, it is a bit difficult to isolate the arguments from the seductive examples. The thesis itself, as it appears in the paper, leaves room to different interpretations: « Mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories….and have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. » What is sparked and shaped by culture? The boundary between mental illness and mental health, the distinction between mental and physical illness, or the division between kinds of mental illnesses? Some examples in the article even suggest that cultural classifications of mental illnesses converge, but give different explanations of their origins, significance or treatments. Others stress the fact that what is spreading is basically a « symptom repertoire », i.e. knowledge of how to diagnose illnesses, rather than definitions of what is diagnosed.
Moreover, as nobody challenges the idea that different cultures have different views on health and medicine, which in their turn influence the treatments people are – or are not – offered, the revolutionary potential of the thesis can be a bit hard to see.
But the paper highlights two more interesting, or disturbing points: first, that western categories of mental illnesses spread and contaminates the other cultures, and second, that this contagion is not for the best.
Some like it hot
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Wednesday, 25 November 2009
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Relativity in culinary matters and in taste is a big issue - our tastes (or distastes) for things are indeed shaped by what we are used to eat and see eaten, as well as other factors, genetics being one. Now they combine with less strictly sensorial aspects - and disgust for instance integrates, as Rozin pointed out, what he calls "cognitive aspects" such as the idea that substance X is contaminating.
In his reply to Nicolas Baumard' post "Is a universal Michelin guide possible?", Jonathan Mair raises some interesting questions about "culinary relativism". The first idea is that there is no room for relativism once foods, ingredients and recipes circulate : " Relativism really requires sealed units (culture) within which everything is familiar and between which many things are completely unfamiliar. Most people are faced with a whole range of degrees of exposure to different unfamiliar foods" The other has to do with possible differences in perceptions, revealed by linguistic differences : "As an English speaker I think of spicy things as being hot, obviously not the same hot as boiling water, but not altogether different either, and if something is too hot it burns no matter which kind of hot it is. I was surprised to find out this doesn't work in many languages - spicy things are itching or stinging in Spanish for example (possibly a bad translation, in any case, they're not hot and I don't think they burn). In Chinese there's also a completely different word for 'hot hot' (re, tang) and 'spicy hot' (la). But, in Mongolian (which was my fieldwork language) there is one word for both (haluun) just as there is in English."
Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see why relativism, either concerning sensation and perception, or concerning the more cultural aspects of food preparations and culinary principles, couldn't apply in groups that are "open" and when foods available more widely.
Why you should rank your friends (but not tell them)
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Thursday, 09 July 2009
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Like me, you must sometimes receive these « rank your friends » messages through your social network. It starts by saying how high you have been ranked in someone’s best friends list, and thereby invites you to return the compliment. It seems like crude ranking and mere reciprocity. But notice, it is limited to the positive side. Be itby conflict-avoidance or some electronic politeness, you are not informed that you are Paola’s 74th best friend, nor that Peter really thinks that George is a much better friend than you.
Raffaello: Self-Portrait with friend (Musée du Louvre)
Recent research by Peter DeScioli and Robert Kurzban (download the paper here), from University of Pennsylvania, tests and confirms these tendencies, while trying to make sense of them. Participants in the experiments are asked to rank their closest friends in a number of ways. These « friendship rankings » turn out to be most strongly correlated with individuals' own perceived rank among their partners' other friends, more than for example, the benefits they receive from the friendship, the number of secrets shared or how long the friendship has been ongoing. I have a strong interest in ranking practices, but what this mostly illuminates is what friendship means.
Read more: Why you should rank your friends (but not tell them)
Face value
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Thursday, 12 February 2009
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As Dan was noticing last time, the ability to recognize individuals on the basis of faces (and voices) is quite fascinating. The ability to « read » unfamiliar faces is no less interesting, albeit quite independant : prosopagnosics with impairments in perception of facial identity, as well as the rest of us, make judgments about faces being aggressive or friendly (see Todorov 2008 here).
Alphonse "Neotenic" Capone (1899-1947)
These are intriguing inferences – if only because they are often not very accurate ! Still, they are strong, very quick (as little as 100 ms exposure is enough, as shown for instance here) but they can also be very discriminative, and lead to quite subtle judgements...Fame!
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- Ophelia Deroy
- Sunday, 23 November 2008
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Another possible alternative explanation for IFT
What's wrong with "intentional stance"?
Possible alternative explanation for IFT
Crushing a dispute with a smile (ahem, a bared-teeth display)
Impartial intervention, or pragmatic intervention?
Not fairness, not mutual interest ... cognitive dissonance maybe
A couple of references
Emotions as regulators of social behavior
Women are not allowed by social group to own their bodies
"Rigtheous" women and "promiscuous" men