Departement Seminar

Social network structure and stereotype learning in a simulated population   Human beings are constantly in relation with each other, be it in direct contact or via telephone, internet or old-school postal services. These relations can be formally represented as networks on one level, and as the source for social learning on another. Considering that […]

Let’s improve our theorizing – Our major developmental task   Under this title, I want to make it clear that the quality of science will hardly improve if we only elaborate our test statistics. The major weakness in contemporary behavioral science is theorizing and logic of science. To illustrate, I will consider what  I have […]

Parles moi de tes souvenirs, je te dirai qui tu es : Etudes expérimentales de la fonction identitaire de la mémoire collective   Après avoir réalisé un bref rappel des liens entre mémoire et pensée sociale, nous nous attacherons à discuter des rapports existants entre ces concepts et l’identité sociale. Nous évoquerons ainsi des éléments […]

Drawing and reading the U.S. cognitive map: Interstate similarity in stereotypic ideology and prosperity predicts interstate liking   What are the spontaneous stereotypes that U.S. citizens hold about the U.S.? We complement insights from previous theory-driven approaches to this question with insights from a novel data driven approach. Based on pile sorting (Study 1) / […]

Compensating for human nature: Controlling cognitive biases for the sake of better outcomes   Certain cognitive biases are extraordinarily powerful and widespread. It should thus come as no surprise that scientists and experts, like everyone else, are subject to their influence. In this talk I advance the hypothesis that two such cognitive biases are likely […]

The best way of becoming Swiss: The role of descriptive and prescriptive norms of acculturation on acceptance of naturalized citizens by Politi, E. & Staerklé, C. (University of Lausanne)   Naturalization is an increasingly common practice in Switzerland and throughout Europe, with substantial consequences in terms of intergroup power relations. Research has found that naturalized citizens […]

Attribution of humanness in an advertisement context   Ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman entities and disavowing them from humans are two instantiations of the same process. The former is called anthropomorphism, and the latter is known as dehumanization. Although leading authors recognized that these phenomena are two ends of the same continuum, there has been […]

Historical and present-day intergroup relations between Mapuche and non-indigenous in Chile   At present, the Mapuche people are the largest indigenous group living in Chile (INE, 2013) and, up until the present day, they are considered a disadvantaged group in Chilean society in terms of poverty, education and discrimination indicators (Agostini, Brown, & Roman, 2010; […]