Imperfect Cognitions

Katherine Puddifoot has recently edited a special issue of  Philosophical Psychology  on bias . In last week's post  Katherine considered new ways of conceptualising bias. In this post, Katherine introduces some of the methods for understanding and mitigating bias discussed by the contributors. James Chamberlain, Jules Holroyd, Ben Jenkins and Robin Scaife  examine empirical work that they argue fails to distinguish intersectional bias from non-binary categories, does not reflect the heterogeneity of bias, and assumes that when people harbor intersectional biases (e.g., the intersectional implicit bias associating traits with Black Women), these will be a complex compound of simple concepts associated with both of the intersecting identities (e.g., White women and Black men).  For Chamberlain and colleagues, it is crucial to do justice to the varying different experiences that members of a social group may have, and how these may change qualitatively based on their membership of mu

Katherine Puddifoot has recently edited a special issue of Philosophical Psychology on bias . In this post, she introduces some of the conceptions of bias and discrimination discussed by the contributors. In next week's post Katherine will summarise the authors' ideas about how to mitigate bias. Katherine Puddifoot Ema Sullivan-Bissett provides a defence of her view that implicit biases are unconscious imaginings, by drawing on studies of the impact of the use of virtual reality on people’s biases. Sullivan-Bissett argues that implicit biases are not necessarily propositional, but may instead be characterized by being imagistic, explaining how sometimes, but not always, immersion in an imagistic virtual reality is effective in shifting bias. Felipe de Carvalho and Joel Krueger adopt a conception of implicit bias as embodied perceptual habits. They argue that conceived in this way implicit bias can explain certain injustices experienced by children with Down syndrome and auti

Today's post is by Daniel Jolley, Lee Shepherd and Anna Maughan. Here they talk about their interesting research on vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, based on their recent paper in Psychology and Health . Daniel Jolley There are different conspiracy theories about vaccines. For example, some conspiracy theories suggest vaccines may be unsafe or ineffective. However, this is being hidden by pharmaceutical companies for profit. Other vaccine conspiracy theories suggest vaccines may be being used to control the population. In our latest research , we looked at what influences these conspiracy beliefs.  In three experimental studies, we explored how fear may influence people’s willingness to receive a vaccine. We also looked at how fear influences anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs. We initially thought that fear would increase conspiracy beliefs, leading to people being less willing to receive a vaccine. However, the results from the first two studies (Studies 1a an

This post is by Maja Kittel, formerly known as Maja Białek, a philosopher of psychiatry working at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cognitive Science of the University of Białystok. Maja focuses on the epistemic properties of delusions and is currently conducting empirical qualitative research on the content of delusions (for details, click here ). Maja recently published a paper entitled: “The epistemic innocence of elaborated delusions re-examined” in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Maja Kittel Epistemic innocence is the idea, put forth by Lisa Bortolotti and collaborators, that although certain beliefs seem epistemically costly, they sometimes bring more epistemic benefit than harm and thus deserve absolution. For example, a monothematic delusion that helps an individual understand their difficult and frightening experiences may be judged as epistemically innocent because, although it is false and fixed, it serves as an imperfect, temporary crutch, helping the person remain a