Drawing from the dual process model of morality and life history theory, the present research examined the role of cognitive and emotional processes as bridges between basic environmental challenges and other-centered moral orientation. In two survey studies, cognitive and emotional processes represented by future-oriented planning and emotional attachment, respectively, or by perspective taking and empathic concern, respectively, positively predicted other-centeredness in prosocial moral reasoning and moral judgment dilemmas based on rationality or intuition. Cognitive processes were more closely related to rational (...) aspects of other-centeredness, whereas the emotional processes were more closely related to the intuitive aspects of other-centeredness. Finally, the cognitive and emotional processes also mediated negative effects of unpredictability, as well as positive effects of individual-level, contest competition on other-centeredness. Overall, these findings support the view that cognitive and emotional processes do not necessarily contradict each other. Rather, they might work in concert to promote other-centeredness in various circumstances and might be attributed to humans’ developmental flexibility in the face of environmental challenges. (shrink)

The target article provides an intermediate account of culture and freedom that is conceived to be curvilinear by treating economic development not as an adaptive outcome in response to climate but as a cause of culture parallel to climate. We argue that the extent of environmental variability, including climatic variability, affects cultural adaptation.

Les sentiments d'ordre temporel s'étalent dans chaque branche du fait musical et dans chacun de ses moments. Les pratiques musicales se présentent donc comme des actes de temporalisation qui mettent en jeu l'ensemble du monde vital du sujet et activent ses mécanismes fonciers : la foi en l'avenir, la peur de la mort, l'angoisse du futur, le regret du passé, l'ancrage dans le présent, la fuite devant le présent, tout un univers existentiel qui ne touche pas seulement la musique mais (...) la vie humaine dans toute sa magnitude. Qu'il s'agisse des dispositions psychologiques profondes ou de la fuite virtuelle devant des contraintes inévitables, telles que la mort elle-même, l'art musical secoue l'affectivité. Ce serait dans ce type d'émotion, où se réunissent expérience esthétique et vécu existentiel, qu'il faudrait plonger à la recherche d'une spécificité de la musique parmi les faits sociaux. (shrink)

Within the same pathogen-stress framework as proposed by Fincher & Thornhill (F&T), we argue further that pathogen stress promotes matrilocal rather than patrilocal family ties which, in turn, slow down the process of modernity; and that pathogen stress promotes social learning or copying, including the adoption of foreign religions.

Having evolved to escape detection of deception completely, self-deception must respond to social conditions registering different probabilities of detection. To be adaptive, it must have a mechanism to keep truthful information temporarily from the self during deception and retrieve it after deception. The memory system may serve this mechanism and provides a paradigm in which to conduct research on self-deception.