Scott Atran

Categorization and Reasoning among Tree Experts: Do All Roads Lead to Rome?☆

To what degree do conceptual systems reflect universal patterns of featural covariation in the world (similarity) or universal organizing principles of mind, and to what degree do they reflect specific goals, theories, and beliefs of the categorizer? This question was addressed in experiments concerned with categorization and reasoning among different types of tree experts (e.g., taxonomists, landscape workers, parks maintenance personnel). The results show an intriguing pattern of similarities and differences. Differences in sorting between taxonomists and maintenance workers reflect differences in weighting of morphological features. Landscape workers, in contrast, sort trees into goal-derived categories based on utilitarian concerns. These sorting patterns carry over into category-based reasoning for the taxonomists and maintenance personnel but not the landscape workers. These generalizations interact with taxonomic rank and suggest that the genus (or folk generic) level is relatively and in some cases absolutely privileged. Implications of these findings for theories of categorization are discussed.

The Native Mind: Biological Categorization and Reasoning in Development and Across Cultures.

This article describes cross-cultural and developmental research on folk biology: that is, the study of how people conceptualize living kinds. The combination of a conceptual module for biology and cross-cultural comparison brings a new perspective to theories of categorization and reasoning. From the standpoint of cognitive psychology, the authors find that results gathered from standard populations in industrialized societies often fail to generalize to humanity at large. For example, similarity-driven typicality and diversity effects either are not found or pattern differently when one moves beyond undergraduates. From the perspective of folk biology, standard populations may yield misleading results because they represent examples of especially impoverished experience with nature. Certain phenomena are robust across populations, consistent with notions of a core module.

The tree of life: Universal and cultural features of folkbiological taxonomies and inductions

Abstract Two parallel studies were performed with members of very different cultures—industrialized American and traditional Itzaj-Mayan—to investigate potential universal and cultural features of folkbiological taxonomies and inductions. Specifically, we examined how individuals organize natural categories into taxonomies, and whether they readily use these taxonomies to make inductions about those categories. The results of the first study indicate that there is a cultural consensus both among Americans and the Itzaj in their taxonomies of local mammal species, and that these taxonomies resemble and depart from a corresponding scientific taxonomy in similar ways. However, cultural differences are also shown, such as a greater differentiation and more ecological considerations in Itzaj taxonomies. In a second study, Americans and the Itzaj used their taxonomies to guide similarity- and typicality-based inductions. These inductions converge and diverge crossculturally and regarding scientific inductions where their respective taxonomies do. These findings reveal some universal features of folkbiological inductions, but they also reveal some cultural features such as diversity-based inductions among Americans, and ecologically based inductions among the Itzaj. Overall, these studies suggest that while building folkbiological taxonomies and using them for folkbiological inductions is a universal competence of human cognition there are also important cultural constraints on that competence.

Are Ethnic Groups Biological “Species” to the Human Brain?: Essentialism in Our Cognition of Some Social Categories

If ethnic actors represent ethnic groups as essentialized natural groups despite the fact that ethnic essences do not exist, one must understand why. The A. presents a hypothesis and evidence that humans process ethnic groups (and a few other related social categories) as if they were species because their surface similarities to species make them inputs to the living-kinds mental module that initially evolved to process species-level categories. The main similarities responsible are (i) category-based endogamy and (2) descent-based membership. Evolution encouraged this because processing ethnic groups as species - at least in the ancestral environment - solved adaptive problems having to do with interactional discriminations and behavioral prediction. Coethnics (like conspecifics) share many strongly intercorrelated properties that are not obvious on first inspection. Since interaction with out-group members is costly because of coordination failure due to different norms between ethnic groups, thinking of ethnic groups as species adaptively promotes interactional discriminations towards the in-group (including endogamy). It also promotes inductive generalizations, which allow acquisition of reliable knowledge for behavioral prediction without too much costly interaction with out-group members. The relevant cognitive-science literature is reviewed, and cognitive field-experiment and ethnographic evidence from Mongolia is advanced to support the hypothesis.

Cultural mosaics and mental models of nature

For much of their history, the relationship between anthropology and psychology has been well captured by Robert Frosts poem, “Mending Wall,” which ends with the ironic line, “good fences make good neighbors.” The congenial fence was that anthropology studied what people think and psychology studied how people think. Recent research, however, shows that content and process cannot be neatly segregated, because cultural differences in what people think affect how people think. To achieve a deeper understanding of the relation between process and content, research must integrate the methodological insights from both anthropology and psychology. We review previous research and describe new studies in the domain of folk biology which examine the cognitive consequences of different conceptualizations of nature and the place of humans within it. The focus is on cultural differences in framework theories (epistemological orientations) among Native Americans (Menominee) and European American children and adults living in close proximity in rural Wisconsin. Our results show that epistemological orientations affect memory organization, ecological reasoning, and the perceived role of humans in nature. This research also demonstrates that cultural differences in framework theories have implications for understanding intergroup conflict over natural resources and are relevant to efforts to improve science learning, especially among Native American children.

Memory and Mystery: The Cultural Selection of Minimally Counterintuitive Narratives

We hypothesize that cultural narratives such as myths and folktales are more likely to achieve cultural stability if they correspond to a minimally counterintuitive (MCI) cognitive template that includes mostly intuitive concepts combined with a minority of counterintuitive ones. Two studies tested this hypothesis, examining whether this template produces a memory advantage, and whether this memory advantage explains the cultural success of folktales. In a controlled laboratory setting, Study 1 found that an MCI template produces a memory advantage after a 1-week delay, relative to entirely intuitive or maximally counterintuitive cognitive templates. Using archival methods, Study 2 examined the cognitive structure of Grimm Brothers folktales. Compared to culturally unsuccessful folktales, those that were demonstrably successful were especially likely to fit an MCI template. These findings highlight the role of human memory processes in cultural evolution.

Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict

We report a series of experiments carried out with Palestinian and Israeli participants showing that violent opposition to compromise over issues considered sacred is (i) increased by offering material incentives to compromise but (ii) decreased when the adversary makes symbolic compromises over their own sacred values. These results demonstrate some of the unique properties of reasoning and decision-making over sacred values. We show that the use of material incentives to promote the peaceful resolution of political and cultural conflicts may backfire when adversaries treat contested issues as sacred values.

Cultural and experiential differences in the development of folkbiological induction

Careys (1985) book on conceptual change and the accompanying argument that childrens biology initially is organized in terms of naive psychology has sparked a great detail of research and debate. This body of research on childrens biology has, however, been almost exclusively been based on urban, majority culture children in the US or in other industrialized nations. The development of folkbiological knowledge may depend on cultural and experiential background. If this is the case, then urban majority culture children may prove to be the exception rather than the rule, because plants and animals do not play a significant role in their everyday life. Urban majority culture children, rural majority culture children, and rural Native American (Menominee) children were given a property projection task based on Careys original paradigm. Each group produced a unique profile of development. Only urban children showed evidence for early anthropocentrism, suggesting that the co-mingling of psychology and biology may be a product of an impoverished experience with nature. In comparison to urban majority culture children even the youngest rural children generalized in terms of biological affinity. In addition, all ages of Native American children and the older rural majority culture children (unlike urban children) gave clear evidence of ecological reasoning. These results show that both culture and expertise (exposure to nature) play a role in the development of folkbiological thought.

The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism

Despite common misconceptions, suicide terrorists today are not motivated primarily by foreign occupation, are not directed by a central organization, and are not nihilistic. Better understanding the phenomenon can help devise better solutions on at least three different levels.

Why essences are essential in the psychology of concepts

Woo-kyoung Ahn*, Charles Kalish, Susan A. Gelman, Douglas L. Medin, Christian Luhmann, Scott Atran, John D. Coley, Patrick Shafto Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109, USA Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2710, USA Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseilles, France Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA