Archive Electronique - Institut Jean Nicod
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1997 research outputs found
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Cooperation as a signal of time preferences
No full textInternational audienceMany evolutionary models explain why we cooperate with non-kin, but few explain why cooperative behaviour and trust vary. Here, we introduce a model of cooperation as a signal of time preferences, which addresses this variability. At equilibrium in our model (i) future-oriented individuals are more motivated to cooperate, (ii) future-oriented populations have access to a wider range of cooperative opportunities, and (iii) spontaneous and inconspicuous cooperation reveal stronger preference for the future, and therefore inspire more trust. Our theory sheds light on the variability of cooperative behaviour and trust. Since affluence tends to align with time preferences, results (i) and (ii) explain why cooperation is often associated with affluence, in surveys and field studies. Time preferences also explain why we trust others based on proxies for impulsivity, and, following result (iii), why uncalculating, subtle and one-shot cooperators are deemed particularly trustworthy. Time preferences provide a powerful and parsimonious explanatory lens, through which we can better understand the variability of trust and cooperation
Interpreting high negation in Negative Interrogatives: the role of the Other
No full textInternational audienceThis paper presents an account of the peculiar properties of Negative Interrogatives (NI). In uttering Don’t you speak Italian? , the speakers is biased towards the underlying positive proposition, expects a positive answer, and seeks a confirmation of that expectation from the hearer. What’s more, NI involves uncertainty with respect to p , a novel observation that we bring to the fore by comparison with epistemic modals. Using a framework by which speech-acts are derived by the two operators Speaker and Other representing sources of information, the high negative is assigned to the Other projection, the positive proposition being left under the responsibility of the Speaker. Thus, the NI is motivated by evidence contradicting the speaker’s belief, which is expressed by the negation that is attributed to another source and that therefore has full referential force. Because the questions is addressed by the Speaker in spite of evidence that ¬ p , NI displays uncertainty as to p and gives rise to a confirmation request. With direct mapping from syntax to semantics and pragmatics, the parsimonious account thus explains the morphosyntactic and interpretative properties of Negative Interrogatives
Experiencing a slow passage of time was an indicator of social and temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 pandemic
No full textInternational audienceTime dilation was experienced in most countries and across the several years of the Covid-19 crisis: the passage of time was deemed slower than before the pandemic, and the distance to the beginning of the pandemic seemed longer than it really was. An outstanding question is how these two aspects of time judgements relate to other temporal, social and affective disturbances. We developed and validated a 59-item questionnaire to explore these questions. 3306 participants completed the questionnaire in France in May and June 2021. Here, we analyse group differences and find that both slow passage of time and long distance judgements were associated with larger disturbances across all domains under study. These included temporal disruptions—the aptness to project oneself into the future, the sense of a rift between pre-pandemic and pandemic time, the ability to locate oneself in time, the capacity to recall the order of past events—, as well as an overall sense of social disorientation, and trauma-specific disturbances. In contrast, both fast passage of time and short distance judgements were associated with beneficial effects across all of the mentioned domains. Our results indicate that perceived passage of time and temporal distance judgements are key indicators of social and temporal disorientation
Social Cognition and Moral Evaluation in Early Human Childhood
No full textInternational audienceHuman social cognition is the human capacity to process social stimuli, to intentionally convey socially relevant information to others, and to make use of socially transmitted information. Several human social cognitive capacities are special and set humans apart from non-human animals. Thanks to these capacities, humans are unique in their ability to create, maintain, and alter large social groups within which they coordinate, cooperate, and also compete. Moreover, there are few (if any) other biological species in which groups or crowds of individuals spend as much collective effort in attacking other groups or in defending their own group from the attacks of others (Boyer, 2018; Tooby & Cosmides, 2010). Humans also appear to be unique in their capacity for stable cultural transmission over many generations and for the pervasiveness of their moral cognitive concerns
La négation explétive : des impératifs aux connecteurs : approche diachronique et formelle
No full textExpletive negation is a non-canonical negation marker whose distribution is limited, across languages, to a certain set of predicates: apprehensive attitude verbs (‘fear’) exceptive (‘unless’) and prospective connectives (‘before’), comparative clauses (‘more/ less than’). In synchrony, it proves difficult to determine (i) which formal property the heterogeneous set of predicates in the scope of which expletive negation occurs have in common and (ii) which kind of syntactic and semantic dependency to the matrix clause predicate it is involved in. This dissertation investigates those questions from a comparative and diachronic perspective.La négation explétive est un marqueur de négation non-canonique dont la distribution est limitée, à travers les langues, à un certain ensemble de prédicats : verbes d’attitude appréhensive ('craindre'), connecteurs exceptifs ('à moins que') et prospectifs ('avant que'), clauses comparatives ('moins/plus que’). En synchronie, il s'avère difficile de déterminer (i) quelle propriété formelle les prédicats dans la portée desquels la négation explétive apparaît ont en commun et (ii) à quel type de dépendance syntaxique et sémantique au prédicat de la clause matrice elle participe. Cette thèse examine ces questions dans une perspective comparative et diachronique
A paradox of information aggregation: We do it well but think about it poorly, and why this is a problem for institutions
No full textInternational audiencePeople are good at taking communicated information into account, using reliable cues to decide whom to trust and what to believe. However, people have no abstract understanding of how this process of information aggregation works, and tend to underestimate how well it works. Even though many institutions have evolved that take advantage of our ability to aggregate information, I argue that they appeared in spite of, rather than thanks to, our understanding of information aggregation
Ancient World Values Survey: Romantic love
No full textOne of the reports of 'The Ancient World Values Survey', in which the author quantifies the evolution of several psychological traits or preferences
Nothing better to do? Environment quality and the evolution of cooperation by partner choice
No full textInternational audienceThe effects of partner choice have been documented in a large number of biological systems such as sexual markets, interspecific mutualisms, or human cooperation. There are, however, a number of situations in which one would expect this mechanism to play a role, but where no such effect has ever been demonstrated. This is the case in particular in many intraspecific interactions, such as collective hunts, in non–human animals. Here we use individual-based simulations to solve this apparent paradox. We show that the conditions for partner choice to operate are in fact restrictive. They entail that individuals can compare social opportunities and choose the best. The challenge is that social opportunities are often rare because they necessitate the co-occurrence of (i) at least one available partner, and (ii) a resource to exploit together with this partner. This has three consequences. First, partner choice cannot lead to the evolution of cooperation when resources are scarce, which explains that this mechanism could never be observed in many cases of intraspecific cooperation in animals. Second, partner choice can operate when partners constitute in themselves a resource, which is the case in sexual interactions and interspecific mutualisms. Third, partner choice can lead to the evolution of cooperation when individuals live in a rich environment, and/or when they are highly efficient at extracting resources from their environment
Entertaining as Simulation
No full textInternational audienceIt is common to distinguish beween the content of a judgment, or the content of an assertion, and the (judicative/assertoric) force which is missing when the content is "merely entertained". This distinction, however, conflicts with the claim that propositional content is inherently judicative/assertoric (the judicative/assertoric component being what unifies the proposition). This chapter attempts to resolve the tension. All the cases in which a proposition is said to be merely entertained are shown to be cases in which, actually, a forceful act of assertion or judgment, or a forceful state of belief, is simulated. This applies not only to cases like fiction, irony, or supposition, but also to the cases in which a proposition is a part of a more complex proposition. The notion of simulation used here is the same one which "simulation theory" appeals to in connection with activities such as fiction (reading novels, watching movies, etc.), planning, mindreading, pretend play, and hypothetical reasoning