Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence (...) moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

Decades of research conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic (WEIRD) societies have led many scholars to conclude that the use of mental states in moral judgment is a human cognitive universal, perhaps an adaptive strategy for selecting optimal social partners from a large pool of candidates. However, recent work from a more diverse array of societies suggests there may be important variation in how much people rely on mental states, with people in some societies judging accidental harms just (...) as harshly as intentional ones. To explain this variation, we develop and test a novel cultural evolutionary theory proposing that the intensity of kin-based institutions will favor less attention to mental states when judging moral violations. First, to better illuminate the historical distribution of the use of intentions in moral judgment, we code and analyze anthropological observations from the Human Area Relations Files. This analysis shows that notions of strict liability—wherein the role for mental states is reduced—were common across diverse societies around the globe. Then, by expanding an existing vignette-based experimental dataset containing observations from 321 people in a diverse sample of 10 societies, we show that the intensity of a society's kin-based institutions can explain a substantial portion of the population-level variation in people's reliance on intentions in three different kinds of moral judgments. Together, these lines of evidence suggest that people's use of mental states has coevolved culturally to fit their local kin-based institutions. We suggest that although reliance on mental states has likely been a feature of moral judgment in human communities over historical and evolutionary time, the relational fluidity and weak kin ties of today's WEIRD societies position these populations' psychology at the extreme end of the global and historical spectrum. (shrink)

It is widely held that intuitive dualism—an implicit default mode of thought that takes minds to be separable from bodies and capable of independent existence—is a human universal. Among the findings taken to support universal intuitive dualism is a pattern of evidence in which “psychological” traits (knowledge, desires) are judged more likely to continue after death than bodily or “biological” traits (perceptual, physiological, and bodily states). Here, we present cross-cultural evidence from six study populations, including non-Western societies with diverse belief (...) systems, that shows that while this pattern exists, the overall pattern of responses nonetheless does not support intuitive dualism in afterlife beliefs. Most responses of most participants across all cultures tested were not dualist. While our sample is in no way intended to capture the full range of human societies and afterlife beliefs, it captures a far broader range of cultures than in any prior study, and thus puts the case for afterlife beliefs as evidence for universal intuitive dualism to a strong test. Based on these findings, we suggest that while dualist thinking is a possible mode of thought enabled by evolved human psychology, such thinking does not constitute a default mode of thought. Rather, our data support what we will call intuitive materialism—the view that the underlying intuitive systems for reasoning about minds and death produce as a default judgment that mental states cease to exist with bodily death. (shrink)

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable (...) if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. (shrink)

The COPE Inventory is the most frequently used measure of coping; yet previous studies examining its factor structure yielded mixed results. The purpose of the current study, therefore, was to validate the factor structure of the COPE Inventory in a representative sample of over 2,000 adults in Slovakia. Our second goal was to evaluate the external validity of the COPE inventory, which has not been done before. Firstly, we performed the exploratory factor analysis with half of the sample. Subsequently, we (...) performed the confirmatory factor analysis with the second half of the sample. Both factor analyses with 15 factor solutions showed excellent fit with the data. Additionally, we performed a hierarchical factor analysis with fifteen first-order factors and three second-order factors which showed good fit with the data. Moreover, the COPE Inventory’s external validity was evaluated using consensual qualitative research analysis on data collected by in-depth interviews. Categories of coping created using CQR corresponded with all COPE first-order factors. Moreover, we identified two additional first-order factors that were not present in the COPE Inventory: self-care and care for others. Our study shows that the Slovak translation of the COPE Inventory is a reliable, externally valid, and well-structured instrument for measuring coping in the Slovak population. (shrink)

Under the Second Demographic Transition, alternative forms of living arrangement are on the rise. The aim of this article is to compare quality of life in children living in married and cohabiting families. We present the results of representative research conducted in Slovakia in 2018 (N = 1,010 respondents). We tested whether children brought up in traditional married families had better material resources and healthcare, fewer behavioural problems, better peer relations and spent more leisure time with their parents than children (...) brought up by cohabiting parents. We also investigated whether number of children in the family and net monthly household income affected the children’s quality of life. The results show that there were almost no differences in quality of life between children brought up by married and by cohabiting parents and that number of children in the family and level of net monthly household income affected only the child’s material resources. (shrink)

Emotion-Focused Training for Emotion Coaching is based on Emotion-focused Therapy findings and was developed to help participants deepen their emotional skills. The goal was to examine the efficacy of a 12-week EFT-EC group program the level of emotion intelligence, self-compassion and self-criticism in a student population. A quasi-experiment with no control group was conducted with pre- and post-measurements using The Self-compassion scale, the Forms of Self-Criticising/attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale, and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire – short form. The EFT-EC participants (...) were128 students. The EFT-EC intervention had a significant effect on self-criticism and self-control latent scores as reported at post-measurement. The structural equation model with latent variables was not an adequate fit for the rest of the subscales. These results are promising and suggest that interventions intended to enhance emotion skills can also reduce self-criticism even when not directly addressing it. (shrink)

This article concerns the proposal and testing of a Slovak version of the Ideological Consistency Scale, which is a 10-item scale originally developed by the Pew Research Centre (2017). Its psychometric properties are investigated on a Slovak sample (N = 101). Its fit to the Rasch model with conditional maximum likelihood is tested. The Slovak version of the scale is shown to be a reliable and useful instrument for measuring ideological attitudes. The ideological attitudes of the Slovak respondents are compared (...) with those of the American sample. The results show that the political polarization in Slovakia is not strong: few Slovak respondents could be identified as being either consistently conservative or consistently liberal, and the majority exhibited mixed attitudes, tending slightly to display liberal opinions. (shrink)

This paper, based on ideas of a cognitive anthropologist Dan Sperber, provides a concise introduction to how to construct a naturalistic causal explanation in social sciences. Its author starts with critical remarks concerning the philosophy of social sciences as presented in the previously published article by Tatiana Sedova. The author provides argumets in favor of a view that all the plausible explanations in social sciences should be based on the naturalistic, material processes. Furthermore the author presents a set of examples (...) showing how to build a naturalistic explanation in cognitive anthropology. The conclusion is that the reconceptualization of all too abstract concepts of social sciences is urgently needed so that the ontology of social sciences could become consequently materialistic.properties of social phenomena are likely to be explained as either effects of or epistemological constructions derived from the material processes. (shrink)

In this exploratory research study, we developed an instrument to investigate people’s confidence in safeguarding measures [Confidence in Safeguards Scale ] and we adapted an instrument measuring perceived risk of coronavirus [perceived risk of coronavirus scale ] that was originally based on a perceived risk of HIV measure. We then explored the effect of public confidence in safeguarding measures designed to halt the spread of the coronavirus on perceived risk, controlling for related covariates. The sample consisted of N = 565 (...) respondents; 119 were males and 446 were females. Mean age was 35.42, range was 18–77 years. We used convenience sampling to gather the data at the end of March 2020 via social media in Slovakia. The CSS showed good reliability levels and a three-factor structure: Confidence in Institutions, Confidence in Personal and Family Behaviors, and Confidence in Others’ Behaviors. The PRCS showed good reliability levels and a two-factor structure: Fear of Contraction and Perceived Likelihood of Contraction. Participants with higher levels of Confidence in Others’ Behaviors perceived the spread of the coronavirus to be less threatening, both cognitively and affectively. This finding could be used when designing public health policy and emergency communication. Enhancing confidence in others’ behaviors could encourage individual responsibility, social responsibility, and solidarity through social bonds extending beyond the family. In future research we plan to replicate the data collection using the same instruments in different countries so the results are comparable across cultures and can be used to improve emergency communication. (shrink)