Works by Deborah Kelemen
19 found
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| Deborah Kelemen [19] | Deborah Ann Kelemen [1] |
- The Human Function Compunction: Teleological explanation in adults.Deborah Kelemen &Evelyn Rosset -2009 -Cognition 111 (1):138-143.Research has found that children possess a broad bias in favor of teleological - or purpose-based - explanations of natural phenomena. The current two experiments explored whether adults implicitly possess a similar bias. In Study 1, undergraduates judged a series of statements as "good" or "bad" explanations for why different phenomena occur. Judgments occurred in one of three conditions: fast speeded, moderately speeded, or unspeeded. Participants in speeded conditions judged significantly more scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations as correct, but were not (...) more error-prone on control items. Study 2 extended these findings by examining the relationship between different aspects of adults’ "promiscuous teleology" and other variables such as scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, and inhibitory control. Implications of these findings for scientific literacy are discussed. (shrink)
- The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children.Deborah Kelemen -1999 -Cognition 70 (3):241-272.
- The essence of artifacts: Developing the design stance.Deborah Kelemen &Susan Carey -2007 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence,Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representaion. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 212--230.No categories
- British and American children's preferences for teleo-functional explanations of the natural world.Deborah Kelemen -2003 -Cognition 88 (2):201-221.
- The divided mind of a disbeliever: Intuitive beliefs about nature as purposefully created among different groups of non-religious adults.Elisa Järnefelt,Caitlin F. Canfield &Deborah Kelemen -2015 -Cognition 140 (C):72-88.No categories
- Tainting the soul: Purity concerns predict moral judgments of suicide.Joshua Rottman,Deborah Kelemen &Liane Young -2014 -Cognition 130 (2):217-226.
- Aliens behaving badly: Children’s acquisition of novel purity-based morals.Joshua Rottman &Deborah Kelemen -2012 -Cognition 124 (3):356-360.
- Syntactic cues in the acquisition of collective nouns.Paul Bloom &Deborah Kelemen -1995 -Cognition 56 (1):1-30.
- Reasoning about artifacts at 24 months: The developing teleo-functional stance.Krista Casler &Deborah Kelemen -2007 -Cognition 103 (1):120-130.No categories
- Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity: How Can Moral Psychology Save the Planet?Joshua Rottman,Deborah Kelemen &Liane Young -2015 -Philosophy Compass 10 (2):134-144.The issues of climate change and environmental degradation elicit diverse responses. This paper explores how an understanding of human moral psychology might be used to motivate conservation efforts. Moral concerns for the environment can relate to issues of harm or impurity . Aversions to harm are linked to concern for current or future generations, non-human animals, and anthropomorphized aspects of the environment. Concerns for purity are linked to viewing the environment as imbued with sacred value and therefore worthy of being (...) protected at all costs. While both harm-based and purity-based framings of environmental issues can sometimes backfire, we argue that making these moral concerns salient can nevertheless bring about moral responses to environmental issues. In sum, scientists' emerging knowledge about the moral mind can be used to facilitate the sustainable conservation of the planet. (shrink)
- Time to get a new mountain? The role of function in children's conceptions of natural kinds.Cara DiYanni &Deborah Kelemen -2005 -Cognition 97 (3):327-335.
- 1. the theory-theory of concepts.Deborah Kelemen &Susan Carey -2007 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence,Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representaion. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 212.
- The moral, or the story? Changing children's distributive justice preferences through social communication.Joshua Rottman,Valerie Zizik,Kelly Minard,Liane Young,Peter R. Blake &Deborah Kelemen -2020 -Cognition 205 (C):104441.No categories
- Purity matters more than harm in moral judgments of suicide: Response to Gray.Joshua Rottman,Deborah Kelemen &Liane Young -2014 -Cognition 133 (1):332-334.
- Inhibiting intuition: Scaffolding children's theory construction about species evolution in the face of competing explanations.Samuel Ronfard,Sarah Brown,Erin Doncaster &Deborah Kelemen -2021 -Cognition 211 (C):104635.
- Just Rewards: Children and Adults Equate Accidental Inequity with Intentional Unfairness.Elizabeth Donovan &Deborah Kelemen -2011 -Journal of Cognition and Culture 11 (1-2):137-150.Humans expect resources to be distributed fairly. They also show biases to construe all acts as intentional. This study investigates whether every unequal distribution is initially assumed to be intentional unfairness. Study 1 presents a control group of adults with a movie showing one individual accidentally receiving less reward than expected for a task. The experimental group was shown the same scenario, except that the individual was now in the presence of an additional person who received the full reward. Despite (...) the similarity of the scenarios, as predicted, participants in the control condition responded as if the disappointing reward was accidental, while those in the experimental condition responded as if the act was intentional: Their tendency to avoid the “perpetrator” did not differ from that of participants in another control condition who saw an intentionally unfair reward distribution. In Study 2, 7- and 8-year-old children’s results replicated those of adults. Implications for social and moral cognition are discussed. (shrink)No categories
- Counterintuition, existential anxiety, and religion as a by-product of the designing mind.Deborah Kelemen -2004 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6):739-740.In arguing for religion as a side effect of everyday cognition, Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) provide useful analyses of the strengths of the “naturalness-of-religion” position over others; however, experimental shortcomings limit the contributions of their empirical work. A relevant addendum involves considering research on children's orientation to teleological explanations of natural phenomena, which suggests that relatively rich cognitive proclivities might underlie religious thought.
- “The Earth is Alive”: Attributing Agency to the Earth Causes Moral Concern for the Environment and Biocentric Attitudes.Lizette Pizza &Deborah Kelemen -2025 -Cognitive Science 49 (3):e70052.Do people need to attribute agency to nature to morally care for it? The answer to this question has significant implications for our understanding of social cognitive effects on moral judgment. Despite its relevance during an environmental crisis, surprisingly little is known about the answer. Across two studies, we explored whether attributing agency to nonhuman natural entities like the Earth has a causal influence on environmental moral concern and intrinsic valuing of nature (biocentrism). In Study 1, we used an experimental (...) design, assigning U.S. urban adults to one of three videos about the history of Earth's ecosystems. Two of them described the Earth as an agent: either as a thoughtful person (psychological) or as a living animal (vitalist). The third described the Earth as a nonagentic object (control). Participants in either agentic condition showed greater environmental moral concern and biocentrism than participants in the nonagentic condition. In Study 2, we examined whether—absent any agency cues—a scientifically informative video about Earth's history would prompt environmental moral concern and have a greater effect than watching awe‐inspiring depictions of the Earth or learning irrelevant information in a control condition. No significant differences were found. However, patterning with Study 1, individuals’ tendencies to attribute mind to the Earth predicted environmental moral reasoning. Carefully invoked, vitalist agency attributions—which deviate less from scientific understandings of the Earth than psychological ones—can mobilize conservationist attitudes among U.S. adults. Overall, our results suggest that agentic attributions of life are required to engage significant moral concern. (shrink)
- The morality of martyrdom and the stigma of suicide.Joshua Rottman &Deborah Kelemen -2014 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (4):375-376.
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
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Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
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