Guillaume Dezecache, 20/12/2013, 11am

Date: Friday 20th December

Time: 11 am

Place: Conference room, Pavillon Jardin - 29, rue d'Ulm

Speaker: Guillaume Dezecache (IJN)

Title: “Studies on emotional propagation in humans: The cases of fear and joy”

Abstract: Crowd psychologists of the 19th and 20th centuries have left us with the idea that emotions are so contagious that they can cause large groups of individuals to rapidly and spontaneously converge on an emotional level. Good illustrations of this claim include situations of crowd panic where large movements of escape are thought to emerge through local interactions, and without any centralized coordination. Our studies sought to investigate the propagation of two allegedly contagious emotions, i.e., fear and joy. I will present two theoretical and two empirical studies that have investigated, at two different levels of analysis, the phenomenon of emotional propagation of fear and joy: firstly, at a proximal level of analysis (the how-question), I discuss the potential mechanisms underlying the transmission of these emotions in crowds, and the extent to which emotional transmission can be considered analogous to a contagion process. Secondly, at an evolutionary/ultimate level of analysis (the why-question), I ask why crowd members seem to be so inclined to share their emotional experience of fear and joy with others. I present a study showing that the transmission of fear might be facilitated by a tendency to modulate one’s involuntary fearful facial reactions according to the informational demands of conspecifics, suggesting that the biological function of spontaneous fearful reactions might be communication of survival-value information to others. Finally, I discuss the implications of these studies for the broader understanding of emotional crowd behavior.

Sam Wilkinson, 13/12/2013, 11 am

Date: Friday 13rd December

Time: 11 am

Place: Conference room, Pavillon Jardin - 29, rue d'Ulm

Speaker: Sam Wilkinson (Durham Univ.)

Title: “Auditory Verbal Hallucinations and the Anticipatory Nature of Experience”

Abstract: My aim is to formulate an account of auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVHs) occurring in the context of schizophrenia, which is both informed by empirical findings and does justice to the subjective experience of voice-hearing. I argue that AVHs cannot be fully understood in isolation from their broader experiential context. They are symptomatic of global experiential changes, and any complete account of them needs to understand these changes. I start by attempting to formulate a clearer statement of what is involved, phenomenologically speaking, by looking closely at first-person patient reports. I then explain these phenomenological changes in terms of recent work on “hierarchical predictive processing” (HPP) (see Clark 2013, for a review). I present data suggesting that schizophrenia involves predictive processing going wrong. I then show how this predictive processing view supports a recent distinction between “inner speech hallucinations”, which occur in quiet contexts where attention is inwardly directed, and “hypervigilance hallucinations”, which occur in loud contexts where attention is outwardly directed (Dogdson and Gordon 2009).

Baptiste Gille, 29/11/2013, 11 am (in the conference room of the DEC)

Date: Friday 29^th November

Time: 11 am

Place: Conference room of the Département d’Etudes Cognitives - 29, rue d'Ulm

Speaker: Baptiste Gille (Post-doc, Quai Branly)

Title: “Supernatural Beings: Proposal for a New Cognitive Theory of Counter-intuition”

Abstract: I submit for consideration the theory of ontological violation proposed by Boyer (1994; 2001) and show that it can be developed and extended to a prototypical level. This extension allows the cognitive apprehension of supernatural beings on a morphological level for iconographic or descriptive representations. Boyer considers that the understanding of supernatural beings is based on the violation of expectations held in a given ontological domain. I want to show that if there is indeed a violation, it remains that, in some cases, this violation mainly occurs at the level of specific or prototypical expectations. Thus, I try to restore the status of what Boyer calls “oddities”, which are forms of chimerical constructions, but which do not constitute, for him, a viable criterion for the understanding of supernatural entities (Boyer 2001, 118).

At a methodological level, I present an anthropological approach to the morphological analysis of concrete entities. At a theoretical level, I highlight the fact that a single psychological theory – the “Domain-Specificity theory” – underpins Boyer’s system (Boyer 2001, 101-106). It is my contention that one can understand the cognitive constitution of supernatural beings by resorting to intuitive psychological principles which are not based on the distinction between specific domains. I suggest focusing on the prototypical analysis of the basic-level category. I therefore thoroughly follow Boyer’s recommendations: cognitive anthropology is able to explain religious phenomena in terms of a special use of our basic cognitive intuitions which are mobilized in our daily interactions.

Jean Nicod Emerging Ideas - Fall Program

The entire fall program of Jean Nicod Emerging Ideas is now ready.

PDF version of the fall program (which includes dates, titles and abstracts) can be downloaded here.

Here is an overview of the fall program:

Friday 25th October, 11 am
Erin Zaroukian (IJN), “Variation in Vagueness”

 [To be held in the conference room of the DEC]

Friday 29^th November, 11 am

Baptiste Gille (Quai Branly), “Supernatural Beings:
Proposal for a New Cognitive Theory of Counter-intuition”

Friday 6^th December, 11 am

Alexis Wellwood (Univ. of Maryland),
“What ‘meaning’ can (and probably should) mean”

Friday 13^th December, 11 am

Sam Wilkinson (Durham Univ.), “Auditory Verbal Hallucinations
and the Anticipatory Nature of Experience”

Friday 20^th December, 11 am

Guillaume Dezecache (IJN), “Studies on emotional propagation in humans:
 The cases of fear and joy”