What Is Justified Group Belief?

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-110
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Group Level ◽  
Epistemic Agent ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Belief ◽  
Normative Constraints ◽  
Epistemic Obligations

This chapter, develops and defends a view of justified group belief—the Group Epistemic Agent Account: groups are understood as epistemic agents in their own right, ones that have evidential and normative constraints that arise only at the group level, such as a sensitivity to the relations among the evidence possessed by group members and the epistemic obligations that arise via membership in the group. These constraints bear significantly on whether groups have justified belief. At the same time, however, group justifiedness is still largely a matter of member justifiedness, where the latter is understood as involving both beliefs and their bases. The result is a view that neither inflates nor deflates group epistemology, but instead recognizes that a group’s justified beliefs are constrained by, but are not ultimately reducible to, members’ justified beliefs.

The Epistemology of Groups

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Group Level ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Normative Requirements ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Belief Justification ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Trump Administration

Groups are often said to bear responsibility for their actions, many of which have enormous moral, legal, and social significance. The Trump Administration, for instance, is said to be responsible for the U.S.’s inept and deceptive handling of COVID-19 and the harms that American citizens have suffered as a result. But are groups subject to normative assessment simply in virtue of their individual members being so, or are they somehow agents in their own right? Answering this question depends on understanding key concepts in the epistemology of groups, as we cannot hold the Trump Administration responsible without first determining what it believed, knew, and said. Deflationary theorists hold that group phenomena can be understood entirely in terms of individual members and their states. Inflationary theorists maintain that group phenomena are importantly over and above, or otherwise distinct from, individual members and their states. It is argued that neither approach is satisfactory. Groups are more than their members, but not because they have “minds of their own,” as the inflationists hold. Instead, this book shows how group phenomena—like belief, justification, and knowledge—depend on what the individual group members do or are capable of doing while being subject to group-level normative requirements. This framework, it is argued, allows for the correct distribution of responsibility across groups and their individual members.

Pluralistic Ignorance Research in Psychology: A Scoping Review of Topic and Method Variation and Directions for Future Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 108926802199516
Author(s):  
Rikki H. Sargent ◽  
Leonard S. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Scoping Review ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Pluralistic Ignorance ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Group Members

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when group members mistakenly believe others’ cognitions and/or behaviors are systematically different from their own. More than 20 years have passed since the last review of pluralistic ignorance from a psychological framework, with more than 60 empirical articles assessing pluralistic ignorance published since then. Previous reviews took an almost entirely conceptual approach with minimal review of methodology, making existing reviews outdated and limited in the extent to which they can provide guidelines for researchers. The goal of this review is to evaluate and integrate the literature on pluralistic ignorance, clarify important conceptual issues, identify inconsistencies in the literature, and provide guidance for future research. We provide a comprehensive definition for the phenomenon, with a focus on its status as a group-level phenomenon. We highlight three areas of variation in particular in the current scoping review: variation in topics assessed, variation in measurement, and (especially) variation in methods for assessing the implications of individual-level misperceptions that, in aggregate, lead to pluralistic ignorance. By filling these gaps in the literature, we ultimately hope to motivate further analysis of the phenomenon.

scholarly journals Relative deprivation and intergroup competition

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 685-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nir Halevy ◽  
Eileen Y. Chou ◽  
Taya R. Cohen ◽  
Gary Bornstein
Keyword(s):  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Destructive Behavior ◽  
Intergroup Competition ◽  
Group Outcomes ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Collective Efficiency ◽  
Individual Participation

Two experiments utilized a new experimental paradigm—the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma— Maximizing Difference (IPD-MD) game—to study how relative deprivation at the group level affects intergroup competition. The IPD-MD game enables group members to make a costly contribution to either a within-group pool that benefits fellow ingroup members, or a between-group pool, which, in addition, harms outgroup members. We found that when group members were put in a disadvantaged position, either by previous actions of the outgroup (Experiment 1) or by random misfortune (Experiment 2), they contributed substantially more to the competitive between-group pool. This destructive behavior both minimized inequality between the groups and reduced collective efficiency. Our results underscore the conditions that lead group members to care about relative (rather than absolute) group outcomes and highlight the need to differentiate between the motivation to get ahead and the motivation not to fall behind: the latter, it appears, is what motivates individual participation in destructive intergroup competition.

Assessing the Effects of Partisan Bias at the Group Level of Analysis: A Hidden Profile Experiment

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 1283-1302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Manata ◽  
Franklin J. Boster ◽  
Gwen M. Wittenbaum ◽  
Daniel E. Bergan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Decision Accuracy ◽  
Decision Making Problem ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Hidden Profile ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Although there is some evidence in the political arena that pooling information can overcome individual biases to improve decision-making accuracy, research from the group communication and psychology arenas suggests otherwise. Specifically, research on the hidden profile, a group-level decision-making problem, suggests that groups are decidedly biased when making decisions. This laboratory experiment tested whether or not partisan biases manifest at the group level of analysis. In the main, it was found that groups composed of either all Republican or all Democratic group members were likely to make a decision that was consonant with their party’s political ideology, which ultimately impacted hidden profile solution rates (i.e., decision accuracy). Moreover, supplemental analyses suggest that Republican and Democratic groups reached their biased decisions through different means. A discussion is provided in which the implications of these results are considered.

Behavioural consistency and group conformity in humbug damselfish

Behaviour ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 154 (13-15) ◽  
pp. 1343-1359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia L.J. Burns ◽  
Timothy M. Schaerf ◽  
Ashley J.W. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Null Model ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Absolute Size ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Behavioural Type ◽  
Level Of Activity ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Dascyllus Aruanus

Abstract Humbug damselfish, Dascyllus aruanus, are a common coral reef fish that form stable social groups with size-based social hierarchies. Here we caught whole wild groups of damselfish and tested whether social groups tended to be comprised of animals that are more similar to one another in terms of their behavioural type, than expected by chance. First we found that individuals were repeatable in their level of activity and exploration, and that this was independent of both absolute size and within-group dominance rank, indicating that animals were behaviourally consistent. Secondly, despite the fact that individuals were tested independently, the behaviour of members of the same groups was significantly more similar than expected under a null model, suggesting that individual behaviour develops and is shaped by conformity to the behaviour of other group members. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate this group-level behavioural conformity in wild-caught groups.

Extensive individual differences of category information in ventral temporal cortex in the congenitally blind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rosenke ◽  
J. Van den Hurk ◽  
E. Margalit ◽  
H. P. Op de Beeck ◽  
K. Grill-Spector ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Homogeneous Population ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Functional Representations ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Ventral Temporal Cortex

AbstractHuman ventral temporal cortex (VTC) is a cortical expanse that performs different functions and computations, but is especially critical for visual categorization. Nevertheless, accumulating evidence shows that category-selective regions persist in VTC in the absence of visual experience – for example, in congenitally blind (CB) participants. Despite this evidence, a large body of previous work comparing functional representations in VTC between sighted and CB participants performed univariate analyses at the group level, which assume a homogeneous population – an assumption that has not been formally tested until the present study. Specifically, using fMRI in CB and sighted participants (male and female), we empirically show that at the group level, distributed category representations in VTC are more reliable in the sighted (when viewing visual stimuli) compared to the CB (when hearing auditorily-substituted visual stimuli). Despite these group differences, there is extensive heterogeneity in VTC category representations in the CB to the point that VTC category representations in a subset of CB participants (some who were born without eyes, but not all) are more similar to sighted individuals compared to other CB participants. Together, our findings support a novel idea that driving factors contributing to the formation of VTC category representations in the blind are subject-specific, which complements factors that may generalize across group members. More broadly, the present findings caution conclusions of homogeneity across subjects within a group when performing group neuroimaging analyses without explicitly quantifying individual differences.

Many important group-level traits are institutions

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Zefferman ◽  
Peter J. Richerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Individual Selection ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Important Group ◽  
Group Members

AbstractSmaldino makes a solid contribution to the literature on the evolution of human social organization by pointing out that group-level-traits (GLTs) often emerge from the interactions of group members in such a way that their effects are not easily partitioned into individual selection. However, we argue that he too readily dismisses institutional analysis as a tool for understanding these traits.

Group Belief

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Domingos Faria ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Belief ◽  
Level I ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Acceptance

Beliefs are commonly attributed to groups or collective entities. But what is the nature of group belief? Summativism and nonsummativism are two main rival views regarding the nature of group belief. On the one hand, summativism holds that, necessarily, a group g has a belief B only if at least one individual i is both a member of g and has B. On the other hand, non-summativism holds that it is possible for a group g to have a belief B even if no member of g has B. My aim in this paper is to consider whether divergence arguments for non-summativism and against summativism about group belief are sound. Such divergence arguments aim to show that there can be a divergence between belief at the group level and the corresponding belief at the individual level. I will argue that these divergence arguments do not decisively defeat a minimal version of summativism. In order to accomplish this goal, I have the following plan: In section 2, I will analyze the structure of two important counterexamples against the summativist view, which are based on divergence arguments. Such counterexamples are based on the idea that a group decides to adopt a particular group belief, even if none of its members holds the belief in question. However, in section 3, I will show that these counterexamples fail, because they can be explained without the need to posit group beliefs. More specifically, I argue that in these apparent counterexamples, we have only a ‘group acceptance’ phenomenon and not a ‘group belief’ phenomenon. For this conclusion, I advance two arguments: in subsection 3.1, I formulate an argument from doxastic involuntarism, and in subsection 3.2, I develop an argument from truth connection. Thus, summativism is not defeated by divergence arguments. Lastly, in section 4, I will conclude with some advantages of summativism.

A Cooperative Species

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Bowles ◽  
Herbert Gintis
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Group Members

This book examines the cultural, biological and other processes that explain how humans evolved into an exceptionally cooperative species. It advances two propositions, the first of which deals with proximate motivations for prosocial behavior and the second is concerned with the distant evolutionary origins and ongoing perpetuation of these cooperative dispositions. It argues that cooperation arose because it was highly beneficial to the members of groups that practiced it, and humans were able to construct social institutions that minimized the disadvantages of those with social preferences in competition with fellow group members, while heightening the group-level advantages associated with the high levels of cooperation that these social preferences allowed. The book explains why altruistic social preferences supporting human cooperation outcompeted unmitigated and amoral self-interest.

scholarly journals JUSTIFIED GROUP BELIEF IS EVIDENTIALLY RESPONSIBLE GROUP BELIEF

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silva
Keyword(s):  
Total Evidence ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Concrete Case ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Group Belief ◽  
Responsible Group

ABSTRACTWhat conditions must be satisfied if a group is to count as having a justified belief? Jennifer Lackey (2016) has recently argued that any adequate account of group justification must be sensitive (in certain ways) to both the evidence actually possessed by enough of a group's operative members as well as the evidence those members should have possessed. I first draw attention to a range of objections to Lackey's specific view of group justification and a range of concrete case intuitions any plausible view of group justification must explain. I then offer an alternative view of group justification where the basic idea is that group justification is a matter of groups responsibly responding to their total evidence. This view both avoids the problems facing Lackey's account and also explains the relevant concrete case intuitions.

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