Mental Computations of Ideological Choice and Conviction: The Utility of Integrating Psycho-Economics and Bayesian Models of Belief

A quick scan of the political landscape reveals that people differ in the ideologies they embrace and advocate. Why do individuals prefer certain ideologies over others? A formal analysis of psychological needs and consumption desires suggests that it is possible to compute the subjective utility of selecting one ideology over another, as though it were a purchasing decision. Given resources, constraints, and available options, individuals can rationally choose the ideology that best matches or resonates with their interests. It is a compelling framework that can take into account how diverse ideologies satisfy people’s diverse and multidimensional psychological and material needs. This psycho-economic model is ambitious and informative, and I will argue that it can be even more encompassing and enlightening if it is expanded to incorporate two critical components of ideological cognition: (1) the nature of ideological conviction and extremism and (2) the dynamic, probabilistic mental computations that underlie belief formation, preservation, and change. Firstly, I will argue that a formal model of ideological choice cannot escape the question of the strength of ideological commitment. In other words, we need to ask not only about which ideologies individuals choose but also about how strongly they adhere to these ideologies once those are chosen. An analysis of ideological choice needs to be accompanied by an analysis of ideological conviction. Secondly, in order to build a robust sense of the rationality behind ideological thinking, it is useful to incorporate principles of uncertainty and probability-based belief updating into the formal model of ideological worldviews. Bayesian models highlight how human brains seek to build predictive models of the world by updating their beliefs and preferences in ways that are proportional to their prior expectations and sensory experiences. Consequently, incorporating Bayesian principles into the formal model of ideological choice will provide a more wholistic understanding of what happens when a mind enters the market for belief systems – and why a mind can, at times, purchase toxic doses of the ideologies that sellers and entrepreneurs offer on display.

Understanding fire learning experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand

Purpose This paper aims to present exploratory research on how people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience and learn about fire, and how they think and feel about fire as adults. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative survey with a sample of 40 young adults aged 18–23 years in Aotearoa New Zealand were recruited through Prolific Academic. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct themes across participants experiences. Findings Four themes were constructed that described participants’ learning about fire and were named influence of context and internal responses to fire, development of normative beliefs about fire, learning how and when fire can be used and learning about fire safety. Two themes were developed that described participants thoughts and feelings about fire as an adult. These were named knowledge is power and emotional congruence with fire. Results highlight the significant role of parental modelling, reinforcement and sensory experiences in the way individuals experience and learn about fire. Practical implications Understanding fire learning is important for establishing which experiences may lead to appropriate and inappropriate fire use which in turn can inform fire prevention initiatives. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents one of the first studies to directly examine fire learning in the general population.

Adolescents Suspended in the Space-Time: Problematic Use of Smartphone between Dissociative Symptoms and Flow Experiences

Based on current digital culture, this chapter aims to provide an updated view of dissociative experiences as no-psychopathological symptoms of flow experiences. It has been hypothesized that prolonged exposures to smartphone screens could be a predictor of altered states of consciousness (flow) and that sometimes these prolonged exposures could degenerate into dissociative phenomena. Participants were 643 high school students aged between 13 and 23 years (M = 16.08; SD = 1.79). They were asked to answer four self-report questionnaires about the habits of smartphone usage, the perception of problematic smartphone use, and the assessment of dissociative symptoms and experiences (e.g., bizarre sensory experiences, absorption and imaginative involvement [AII], depersonalization and derealization). Gender differences emerged both in smartphone usage habits and some dissociative scales. Two gender-specific stepwise linear regressions showed that problematic smartphone use is one of the stronger predictors of dissociative symptoms. Results support the idea that in an adolescents’ community sample prolonged exposition to smartphone screens plays a role in the manifestation of dissociative symptoms. This is closely connected with experiences of AII, which could reinforce the use of devices contributing significantly to establishing a causal circularity between smartphone prolonged usage and AII phenomena.

Sensory Experience as a Regulator of Structural Plasticity in the Developing Whisker-to-Barrel System

Cellular structures provide the physical foundation for the functionality of the nervous system, and their developmental trajectory can be influenced by the characteristics of the external environment that an organism interacts with. Historical and recent works have determined that sensory experiences, particularly during developmental critical periods, are crucial for information processing in the brain, which in turn profoundly influence neuronal and non-neuronal cortical structures that subsequently impact the animals’ behavioral and cognitive outputs. In this review, we focus on how altering sensory experience influences normal/healthy development of the central nervous system, particularly focusing on the cerebral cortex using the rodent whisker-to-barrel system as an illustrative model. A better understanding of structural plasticity, encompassing multiple aspects such as neuronal, glial, and extra-cellular domains, provides a more integrative view allowing for a deeper appreciation of how all aspects of the brain work together as a whole.

Language and the Sensing Body: How Sensoriality Permeates Syntax in Interaction

This article explores the grammar-body interface by examining the intertwinement of embodied practices and turns at talk, where the sensing body permeates the ongoing syntax, in particular in activities in which the participants are engaged in talking about sensorial features while at the same time experiencing them, for instance in tasting sessions. So, the question tackled concerns how situated feelings, sensory experiences, and perceptive actions are embedded in the ongoing talk, and how they shape its emergent syntax, possibly affecting its smooth progressivity. The study shows how the choice of specific syntactic formats can be systematically related to the complex ecology of embodied actions, namely to publicly accountable ways of sensing material objects, to ways of showing and addressing an audience, and to visible ways of referring to standard documents normatively defining tasting descriptors. The syntactic formats described and their specific temporal realizations are thus deeply rooted in the local material ecology, in which they not only reproduce a normative model but reflexively express the senses with words and sensuously feel the words.

Place cells may simply be memory cells: Memory compression leads to spatial tuning and history dependence

The observation of place cells has suggested that the hippocampus plays a special role in encoding spatial information. However, place cell responses are modulated by several nonspatial variables and reported to be rather unstable. Here, we propose a memory model of the hippocampus that provides an interpretation of place cells consistent with these observations. We hypothesize that the hippocampus is a memory device that takes advantage of the correlations between sensory experiences to generate compressed representations of the episodes that are stored in memory. A simple neural network model that can efficiently compress information naturally produces place cells that are similar to those observed in experiments. It predicts that the activity of these cells is variable and that the fluctuations of the place fields encode information about the recent history of sensory experiences. Place cells may simply be a consequence of a memory compression process implemented in the hippocampus.

Phenomenal Holism and Cognitive Phenomenology

The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze the phenomenology of our sensory experiences and argue for a weak phenomenal holism (WPH) about sensory phenomenology. Next, I explore how WPH can be integrated into the competing accounts of cognitive phenomenology. I argue that, given WPH, conservatism turns out to reduce phenomenal character to a merely concomitant phenomenon that has no explanatory power when it comes to the constitution of conscious thoughts. In contrast, liberalism is explanatorily more powerful in this respect. Finally, I propose a new version of liberalism that explains how phenomenology constitutes conscious thoughts and fits best with WPH.

Nightlife Ethnography: A Phenomenological Approach

This chapter offers advice on how to conduct phenomenological ethnographic research in nightlife settings such as bars, nightclubs, and music festivals. It argues that phenomenological ethnography focuses on studying experiences as they occur to the people living them. Phenomenological ethnographers use their bodies as research instruments to develop an experiential connection and understanding of the people they are studying. Priority is given to clarifying essential properties of embodied, emotional, and sensory experiences, and to describing these as precisely as possible. The chapter proposes that the Durkheimian concept of collective effervescence may be used as a sensitizing tool to understand and describe some of the essence of what people search for, and sometimes experience, in nightlife settings. In particular, the concept is helpful in the study of intensive forms of celebration and intoxication. The chapter concludes with policy recommendations and suggestions to direct future research.