Competing Explanations of Competing Explanations: Accounting for Conflict Between Scientific and Folk ExplanationsThis paper focuses on the level of people’s explanatory reasoning. It examines why laypeople prefer folk explanations of various physical or biological phenomena to alternative, well‐understood scientific explanations. Shtulman and Legare call this psychological phenomenon “explanatory co‐existence.” On the basis of new experimental data, they evaluate two possible accounts of explanatory co‐existence, a theory‐based and an associative account, and argue that a theory‐based account is the better supported.

The author introduces and critically analyzes two recent, curious findings and their accompanying explanations regarding how the folk intuits the capabilities of the dead and those in a persistent vegetative state. The dead are intuited to survive death, whereas PVS patients are intuited as more dead than the dead. Current explanations of these curious findings rely on how the folk is said to conceive of death and the dead: either as the annihilation of the person, or that person’s continuation as (...) a disembodied being. The author argues that these two conceptions are incompatible and inconsistent with each other and the evidence. Contrariwise, the author argues that the folk intuition about dead-survivors and the living dead are more easily explained by appealing to cross-culturally established concepts: the folk biological concept of death the existential concept of death, and the concept of social death. (shrink)

A ‘scientific worldview’ is commonly seen as contradictory to belief in supernatural forces, and there is little research on the supernatural beliefs of individuals who identify with science. In this article, we investigate the supernatural explanations of science-oriented individuals in domains of fundamental concern (suffering, death, and origins), and how supernatural causality is reconciled with belief in science. The open-ended responses of 387 Finns were analysed. The results show that science-oriented Finns endorsed both religion-related and more secular supernatural beliefs (such (...) as belief in evolution as a purposeful process). Following the coexistence model, science-oriented Finns applied synthetic and target-dependent reasoning. In addition, many who invoked supernatural explanations integrated supernatural causality with science. Two forms of integrated reasoning were found: 1) supernatural agency as the ultimate cause and scientific theory as the proximate cause, and 2) a similarity-based heuristic, as seen in afterlife beliefs appealing to the law of conservation of energy. (shrink)

Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu, and the United States. Children, adolescents, and (...) adults were primed with a story that contained either natural or supernatural cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events. (shrink)

Examining variation in reasoning about sustainability between diverse populations provides unique insight into how group norms surrounding resource conservation develop. Cultural institutions, such as religious organizations and formal schools, can mobilize communities to solve collective challenges associated with resource depletion. This study examined conservation beliefs in a Western industrialized (Austin, Texas, USA) and a non‐Western, subsistence agricultural community (Tanna, Vanuatu) among children, adolescents, and adults (N = 171; n = 58 7–12‐year‐olds, n = 53 13–17‐year‐olds, and n = 60 18–68‐year‐olds). (...) Participants endorsed or rejected four types of justifications for engaging in land and animal conservation: sustainability, moral, religious, or permissible. In both populations, participants endorsed sustainability justifications most frequently. Religious justifications increased with age in Tanna and decreased with age in Austin. Tannese participants were also more likely to endorse multiple justifications for conservation than Austin participants. Data across all justification types show a main effect of age in both communities; endorsement of conservation decreased with age in Austin, but increased with age in Tanna. Across age groups, participants were more likely to endorse the conservation of animals than land in Austin, yet equally as likely to endorse the conservation of land and animals in Tanna. Overall, these results reveal similarities and differences in the beliefs that support the conservation of natural resources across populations. (shrink)

We begin our commentary by summarizing the commonalities and differences in cognitive phenomena across cultures, as found by the seven papers of this topic. We then assess the commonalities and differences in how our various authors have approached the study of cognitive diversity, and speculate on the need for, and potential of, cross-disciplinary collaboration.