Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Neil Van Leeuwen who talks about his recent research with Larisa Heiphetz on the differences in meanings between "think" and "believe". For related research by Heiphetz and Van Leeuwen, see  here ,  here , and  here .  Neil Van Leeuwen Do “think” and “believe” mean the same thing? Consider two sentences: Jill believes that God exists. Jill thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists. Both sentences attribute mental states to Jill. And each breaks down into an  attitude  (thinks/ believes) and a  content  (that God… / that a lake…). So we can sharpen our question: if we set the contents aside, do the words “thinks” and “believes” convey the same attitude type (or manner of processing)? Many philosophers and cognitive scientists talk and write as if the answer were  yes —as if the words “think” and “believe” were interchangeable, at least in propositional attitude reports (i.e., as if “thinks that...

Today's post is by Ben Tappin , graduate student in psychology at Royal Holloway at the University of London. In the post he introduces the paper "Do the folk actually hold folk-economic beliefs?" that he has co-authored with Robert Ross and Ryan McKay .   Ben Tappin (above) Robert Ross (above)  Ryan McKay (above) How do individuals arrive at their beliefs about the economic impact of immigration? More specifically, what are the psychological processes that underpin seemingly widespread beliefs like “immigrants steal jobs” or “immigrants abuse the welfare system?” Just how typical are these (and related) beliefs, and does their prevalence have implications for theorizing about the psychological processes that give rise to them? In the current political climate of Western Europe and the US, these questions seem as relevant now as any time before. Recently, psychologists Pascal Boyer and Michael Bang Peterse n suggested that negative beliefs abo...