TY - JOUR
T1 - Grounding principles for inferring agency
T2 - Two cultural perspectives
AU - ojalehto, bethany l.
AU - Medin, Douglas L.
AU - García, Salino G.
N1 - Funding Information:
For comments and conversations about ideas presented in this article, we are thankful to Eugene Anderson, Scott Atran, Rumen Iliev, Joshua Knobe, Olivier Le Guen, Jonas Nagel, Jeremy Narby, Ara Norenzayan, Jeremy Ojalehto, Lance Rips, Sonya Sachdeva, Fernando Santos-Granero, Rebecca Seligman, Sandra Waxman, the late Philip Young, and fellow Mosaic Lab members. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. For statistical and programming contributions, we thank Royce Anders, Pascal Paschos, and Satoru Suzuki. For their contributions to data collection and analysis we thank Linda Flores, Yereida Gallardo, Melissa Vega, Osbeyda Navarette, Elaine Aedo, and Lan Nguyen. Versions of this article were presented at ZiF research group on the Cultural Constitution of Causal Cognition, CogSci Meetings, and the Society for Anthropological Science. This work was supported by a DRMS Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant 1427035 and National Science Foundation grants SES0962185 and DRL1114530 and AFOSR FA9550-14-1-0030, and several grants from Northwestern University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - The present research investigates cultural variation in grounding principles for inferring agency in order to address an important theoretical debate: does cultural diversity in agency concepts reflect an animistic overextension of (universal) folkpsychology, as many have argued, or an alternative theory of folkcommunication based on relational principles? In two experiments, mind perception measures were adapted to assess beliefs concerning the agency of non-animal kinds (plants, abiotic kinds, complex artifacts) among Indigenous Ngöbe adults in Panama and US college students. Agency attributions varied systematically, with Ngöbe ascribing greater agency to non-animal natural kinds and US college participants ascribing greater agency to complex artifacts. Analysis of explanations revealed divergent interpretations of agency as a prototypically human capacity requiring consciousness (US), versus a relational capacity expressed in directed interactions (Ngöbe). Converging measures further illuminated the inferential principles underlying these agency attributions. (1) An experimental relational framing of agency probes facilitated Ngöbe but not US agency attributions. (2) Further analysis showed that three key dimensions of agency attribution (experience, cognition, animacy) are organized differently across cultures. (3) A Bayesian approach to cultural consensus modeling confirmed the presence of two distinct consensus models rather than variations on a single (universal) model. Together, these results indicate that conceptual frameworks for agency differ across US college and Ngöbe communities. We conclude that Ngöbe concepts of agency derive from a distinct theory of folkcommunication based on an ecocentric prototype rather than overextensions of an anthropocentric folkpsychology. These observations suggest that folkpsychology and mind perception represent culture specific frameworks for agency, with significant implications for domain-specificity theory and our understanding of cognitive diversity.
AB - The present research investigates cultural variation in grounding principles for inferring agency in order to address an important theoretical debate: does cultural diversity in agency concepts reflect an animistic overextension of (universal) folkpsychology, as many have argued, or an alternative theory of folkcommunication based on relational principles? In two experiments, mind perception measures were adapted to assess beliefs concerning the agency of non-animal kinds (plants, abiotic kinds, complex artifacts) among Indigenous Ngöbe adults in Panama and US college students. Agency attributions varied systematically, with Ngöbe ascribing greater agency to non-animal natural kinds and US college participants ascribing greater agency to complex artifacts. Analysis of explanations revealed divergent interpretations of agency as a prototypically human capacity requiring consciousness (US), versus a relational capacity expressed in directed interactions (Ngöbe). Converging measures further illuminated the inferential principles underlying these agency attributions. (1) An experimental relational framing of agency probes facilitated Ngöbe but not US agency attributions. (2) Further analysis showed that three key dimensions of agency attribution (experience, cognition, animacy) are organized differently across cultures. (3) A Bayesian approach to cultural consensus modeling confirmed the presence of two distinct consensus models rather than variations on a single (universal) model. Together, these results indicate that conceptual frameworks for agency differ across US college and Ngöbe communities. We conclude that Ngöbe concepts of agency derive from a distinct theory of folkcommunication based on an ecocentric prototype rather than overextensions of an anthropocentric folkpsychology. These observations suggest that folkpsychology and mind perception represent culture specific frameworks for agency, with significant implications for domain-specificity theory and our understanding of cognitive diversity.
KW - Agency
KW - Animism
KW - Culture
KW - Domain specificity
KW - Folkpsychology
KW - Mind perception
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.04.001
DO - 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.04.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 28441519
AN - SCOPUS:85018523721
SN - 0010-0285
VL - 95
SP - 50
EP - 78
JO - Cognitive Psychology
JF - Cognitive Psychology
ER -