Pascal Boyer
Selected Articles
Threat-Detection
Boyer P, Firat R, van Leeuwen F (2015) Safety, Threat and Stress in Intergroup Relations. A Coalitional Index model Perspectives in Psychological Science xx: xxx-xxx.
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Contact between people from different groups triggers specific individual- and group-level responses, ranging from attitudes and emotions to welfare and health outcomes. Standard social psychological perspectives do not yet provide an integrated, causal model of these phenomena. As an alternative, we describe a coalitional perspective. Human psychology includes evolved cognitive systems designed to garner support from other individuals, organize and maintain alliances, and measure potential support from group members. Relations between alliances are strongly influenced by threat detection mechanisms, which are sensitive to cues that express one’s own group will provide less support or that other groups are dangerous. Repeated perceptions of such threat-cues can lead to chronic stress. The model provides a parsimonious explanation for many individual-level effects of intergroup relations and group-level disparities in health and well-being. This perspective suggests new research directions aimed at understanding the psychological processes involved in intergroup relations.
Firat R, Boyer P (2015) Coalitional affiliation as a missing link between ethnic polarization and well-being: an empirical test from the European Social Survey, Social Science Research xx: xxx-xxx.
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Many studies converge in suggesting (a) that ethnic and racial minorities fare worse than host populations in reported well-being and objective measures of health and (b) that ethnic/racial diversity has a negative impact on various measures of social trust and well-being, including in the host or majority population. However, there is much uncertainty about the processes that connect diversity variables with personal outcomes. In this paper, we are particularly interested in different levels of coalitional affiliation, which refers to people’s social allegiances that guide their expectations of social support, in-group strength and cohesion. We operationalize coalitional affiliation as the extent to which people rely on a homogeneous social network, and we measure it with indicators of friendships across ethnic boundaries and frequency of contact with friends. Using multi-level models and data from the European Social Survey (Round 1, 2002-2003) for 19 countries, we demonstrate that coalitional affiliation provides an empirically reliable, as well as theoretically coherent, explanation for various effects of ethnic/racial diversity.
Boyer P, Parren N (2015) Threat-related information suggests competence: A possible factor in the spread of rumors, PLoS ONE xx: xxx-xxx.
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Information about potential danger is a central component of many rumors, urban legends, ritual prescriptions, religious prohibitions and witchcraft crazes. We investigate a potential factor in the cultural success of such material, namely that a source of threat-related information may be intuitively judged as more competent than a source that does not convey such information. In five studies, we asked participants to judge which of two sources of information, only one of which conveyed threat-related information, was more knowledgeable. Results suggest that mention of potential danger makes a source appear more competent than others, that the effect is not due to a general negativity bias, and that it concerns competence rather than a more generally positive evaluation of the source.
Boyer P, Lienard P, Xu J (2011) Cultural Differences in Investing in Others and in the Future: Why Measuring Trust Is Not Enough, PLoS One, 7(7) e40750.
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Stan dard measures of generalized trust in others are often taken to provide reliable indicators of economic attitudes in different countries. Here we compared three highly distinct groups, in Kenya, China and the US, in terms of more specific attitudes, [a] people’s willingness to invest in the future, [b] their willingness to invest in others, and [c] their trust in institutions. Results suggest that these measures capture deep differences in economic attitudes that are not detected by standard measures of generalized trust .
Kwan, D, Craver, C, Green, L, Myerson, J, Boyer, P & Rosenbaum, SR (2011) Future Decision-Making Without Episodic Mental Time Travel [forthcoming] Hippocampus.
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Deficits in episodic memory are associated with deficits in the ability to imagine future experiences (i.e., mental time travel). We show that K.C., a person with episodic amnesia and an inability to imagine future experiences, nonetheless systematically discounts the value of future rewards, and his discounting is within the range of controls in terms of both rate and consistency. Because K.C. is neither able to imagine personal uses for the rewards nor provide a rationale for selecting larger future rewards over smaller current rewards, this study demonstrates a dissociation between imagining and making decisions involving the future. Thus, although those capable of mental time travel may use it in making decisions about future rewards, these results demonstrate that it is not required for such decisions.
Boyer, P & Bergstrom, B (2010) Threat-Detection in Child Development: An Evolutionary Perspective
[forthcoming] Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.
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Evidence for developmental aspects of fear-targets and anxiety suggests a complex but stable pattern whereby specific kinds of fears emerge at different periods of development. This developmental schedule seems appropriate to dangers encountered repeteadly during human evolution. Also consistent with evolutionary perspective, the threat-detection systems are domain-specific, comprising different kinds of cues to do with predation, intraspecific violence, contamination-contagion and status loss. Proper evolutionary models may also be relevant to outstanding issues in the domain, notably the connections between typical development and pathology.
Keren H, Boyer P, Mort J & Eilam D (2010) Pragmatic and idiosyncratic acts in human everyday routines: The counterpart of compulsive rituals Behavioural Brain Research 212:90-95.
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Our daily activities are comprised of motor routines, which are behavioral templates with specific goals, typically performed in an automatic fixed manner and without much conscious attention. Such routines can seem to resemble pathologic rituals that dominate the motor behavior of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and autistic patients. This resemblance raises the question of what differentiates and what is common in normal and pathologic motor behavior. [...] In this study we applied ethological tools to analyze six motor routines performed by 60 adult human volunteers. We found that longer normal everyday routines included more repetitions, but not more types of acts, and that in each routine, most acts were performed either by all individuals (pragmatic acts) or by only one individual (idiosyncratic components). Thus, normal routines consist in a relatively rigid part that is shared by all individuals that perform the routine, and a flexible part that varies among individuals. [...] Altogether, the present study supports the view that everyday normal routines and pathologic rituals are opposite processes, although they both comprise rigid motor behavioral sequences.
Boyer, P & Lienard, P (2008) Ritual Behavior in Obsessive and Normal Individuals. Moderating Anxiety and Reorganizing the Flow of Behavior Current Dirctions in Psychological Science 17(4): 291-4.
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Ritualized behavior is characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but it is also observed in other, nonclinical contexts such as children’s routines and cultural ceremonies. Such behaviors are best understood with reference to a set of human vigilance–precaution systems in charge of monitoring potential danger and motivating the organism towards appropriate precautions. Ritualized behavior focuses attention on low-level representations of actions, probably leading to some measure of intrusion suppression. Cultural rituals too may be understood in this framework.
Boyer, P (2008) Evolutionary Economics of Mental Time-Travel?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6):219-223.
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What is the function of our capacity for ‘mental time-travel’? Evolutionary considerations suggest that vivid memory and imaginative foresight may be crucial cognitive devices for human decision-making. Our emotional engagement with past or future events gives them great motivational force, which may counter a natural tendency towards time-discounting and impulsive, opportunistic behaviour. In this view, while simple episodic memory provides us with a store of relevant, case-based information to guide decisions, mental-time-travel nudges us towards more restrained choices, which in the long term are advantageous, especially so given the human dependence on cooperation and coordination.
Boyer, P, & Lienard, P (2006) Why Ritualized Behavior? Precaution Systems and Action-Parsing in Developmental, Pathological and Cultural Rituals Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29: 1-56.
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Stereotypic, rigidly scripted behavior is found in cultural rituals, in children's routines, in obsessive-compulsive disorder, in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle. We propose an explanation in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness, distinct from systems for manifest danger. The Precaution system includes a repertoire of potential hazards as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. Impairment in the system's feedback accounts for OCD rituals. Gradual calibration of this system occurs through childhood routines. Mimicry of this system's natural input makes cultural rituals salient and compelling.
Lienard, P & Boyer, P (2006)
Click here for pdf of draft version.
Ritualized behavior is a specific way of organizing the flow of action, characterized by stereotypy, rigidity in performance, a feeling of compulsion, and specific themes, in particular the potential danger from contamination, predation, and social hazard. We proposed elsewhere a neurocognitive model of ritualized behavior in human development and pathology, as based on the activation of a specific hazard-precaution system specialized in the detection of and response to potential threats. We show how certain features of collective rituals—by conveying information about potential danger and presenting appropriate reaction as a sequence of rigidly described precautionary measures—probably activate this neurocognitive system. This makes some collective ritual sequences highly attention-demanding and intuitively compelling and contributes to their transmission from place to place or generation to generation. The recurrence of ritualized behavior as a central feature of collective ceremonies may be explained as a consequence of this bias in selective transmission.
