Core intuitions about persons co-exist and interfere with acquired Christian beliefs about God

In three experiments, using a novel sentence verification paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that acquired Christian beliefs about God which are inconsistent with core intuitions about persons co-exist with, rather than replace, those intuitions in the minds of religious believers. Participants were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions and acquired religious beliefs were consistent (i.e. true according to both [e.g. “God has beliefs that are true”] or false according to both [e.g. “all beliefs God has are false”]) or inconsistent (i.e. true on intuition but false theologically [e.g. “God has beliefs that are false”] or false on intuition but true theologically [e.g. “all beliefs God has are true”]). Participants (1) were less accurate and took longer to respond to the inconsistent statements, suggesting that core intuitions both co-exist alongside and interfere with acquired religious beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2), (2) were disproportionately more likely to make errors on the inconsistent statements when responding under time pressure than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of conflicts between inconsistent co-existing beliefs requires cognitive resources (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 ruled-out a plausible alternative interpretation of these results

How the mind builds evolutionarily new concepts

The human mind is equipped with a variety of evolved mechanisms, each specialized for representing concepts from an adaptively important domain, such as persons and their mental states, animals and their biology, plants, and physical objects and their mechanical properties. But how does the mind build concepts that were not targets of natural selection, that is, concepts that go beyond or even conflict with the inferences engineered into these evolved mechanisms? Are evolutionarily new concepts built out of nothing (as domain-general learning theories predict), or are they built by initially co-opting evolved concepts? And if evolutionary new concepts initially co-opt evolved ones, do they later revise the evolved concepts, or do they co-exist alongside them? I evaluate these questions using the Christian God concept as a case study.I demonstrate using a novel sentence verification paradigm that, first, the God concept is built by co-opting the evolved person concept, and, second, that in the minds of Christian religious adherents, acquired theological representations of God which conflict with person representations (e.g. infallibility) co-exist alongside and do not revise them. In the experiments reported here, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate statements for which core knowledge intuitions about persons and acquired Christian theology about God were consistent (i.e., true according to both [e.g., “God has beliefs that are true”] or false according to both [e.g., “All beliefs God has are false”]) or inconsistent (i.e., true on intuition but false theologically [e.g., “God has beliefs that are false”] or false on intuition but true theologically [e.g., “All beliefs God has are true”]). Exp. 1 demonstrated that participants were less accurate and slower responding to inconsistent versus consistent statements, suggesting that the core knowledge intuitions both co-existed alongside and interfered with the acquired theological representations. Exp. 2 tested the effects of cognitive load on response interference. Exp. 3 ruled out a plausible alternative interpretation of these findings, by demonstrating that response interference is found for God but not for an ordinary entity (a priest). Exp. 4 demonstrated that response interference is invariant with age and with theological experience. Indeed, response interference was found even in Christian religious adherents with a lifetime of theological experience. Finally, Exp. 5-6 expanded on the findings of the previous experiments, which primarily focused on God’s psychology, to God’s physicality. I discuss the implications of these findings to domain-general versus domain-specific theories of learning

Family Matters:Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people’s highest social priorities

Beta-HPV 5 and 8 E6 Promote p300 Degradation by Blocking AKT/p300 Association

The E6 oncoprotein from high-risk genus alpha human papillomaviruses (α-HPVs), such as HPV 16, has been well characterized with respect to the host-cell proteins it interacts with and corresponding signaling pathways that are disrupted due to these interactions. Less is known regarding the interacting partners of E6 from the genus beta papillomaviruses (β-HPVs); however, it is generally thought that β-HPV E6 proteins do not interact with many of the proteins known to bind to α-HPV E6. Here we identify p300 as a protein that interacts directly with E6 from both α- and β-HPV types. Importantly, this association appears much stronger with β-HPV types 5 and 8-E6 than with α-HPV type 16-E6 or β-HPV type 38-E6. We demonstrate that the enhanced association between 5/8-E6 and p300 leads to p300 degradation in a proteasomal-dependent but E6AP-independent manner. Rather, 5/8-E6 inhibit the association of AKT with p300, an event necessary to ensure p300 stability within the cell. Finally, we demonstrate that the decreased p300 protein levels concomitantly affect downstream signaling events, such as the expression of differentiation markers K1, K10 and Involucrin. Together, these results demonstrate a unique way in which β-HPV E6 proteins are able to affect host-cell signaling in a manner distinct from that of the α-HPVs

p53 Regulates Cell Cycle and MicroRNAs to Promote Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Multiple studies show that tumor suppressor p53 is a barrier to dedifferentiation; whether this is strictly due to repression of proliferation remains a subject of debate. Here, we show that p53 plays an active role in promoting differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and opposing self-renewal by regulation of specific target genes and microRNAs. In contrast to mouse embryonic stem cells, p53 in hESCs is maintained at low levels in the nucleus, albeit in a deacetylated, inactive state. In response to retinoic acid, CBP/p300 acetylates p53 at lysine 373, which leads to dissociation from E3-ubiquitin ligases HDM2 and TRIM24. Stabilized p53 binds CDKN1A to establish a G1 phase of cell cycle without activation of cell death pathways. In parallel, p53 activates expression of miR-34a and miR-145, which in turn repress stem cell factors OCT4, KLF4, LIN28A, and SOX2 and prevent backsliding to pluripotency. Induction of p53 levels is a key step: RNA-interference-mediated knockdown of p53 delays differentiation, whereas depletion of negative regulators of p53 or ectopic expression of p53 yields spontaneous differentiation of hESCs, independently of retinoic acid. Ectopic expression of p53R175H, a mutated form of p53 that does not bind DNA or regulate transcription, failed to induce differentiation. These studies underscore the importance of a p53-regulated network in determining the human stem cell state

Molecular mechanisms of cell death: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death 2018.

Over the past decade, the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD) has formulated guidelines for the definition and interpretation of cell death from morphological, biochemical, and functional perspectives. Since the field continues to expand and novel mechanisms that orchestrate multiple cell death pathways are unveiled, we propose an updated classification of cell death subroutines focusing on mechanistic and essential (as opposed to correlative and dispensable) aspects of the process. As we provide molecularly oriented definitions of terms including intrinsic apoptosis, extrinsic apoptosis, mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT)-driven necrosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, parthanatos, entotic cell death, NETotic cell death, lysosome-dependent cell death, autophagy-dependent cell death, immunogenic cell death, cellular senescence, and mitotic catastrophe, we discuss the utility of neologisms that refer to highly specialized instances of these processes. The mission of the NCCD is to provide a widely accepted nomenclature on cell death in support of the continued development of the field

Core intuitions about persons co-exist and interfere with acquired Christian beliefs about God

In three experiments, using a novel sentence verification paradigm, we tested the hypothesis that acquired Christian beliefs about God which are inconsistent with core intuitions about persons co-exist with, rather than replace, those intuitions in the minds of religious believers. Participants were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions and acquired religious beliefs were consistent (i.e. true according to both [e.g. “God has beliefs that are true”] or false according to both [e.g. “all beliefs God has are false”]) or inconsistent (i.e. true on intuition but false theologically [e.g. “God has beliefs that are false”] or false on intuition but true theologically [e.g. “all beliefs God has are true”]). Participants (1) were less accurate and took longer to respond to the inconsistent statements, suggesting that core intuitions both co-exist alongside and interfere with acquired religious beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2), (2) were disproportionately more likely to make errors on the inconsistent statements when responding under time pressure than when responding with no time pressure, suggesting that the resolution of conflicts between inconsistent co-existing beliefs requires cognitive resources (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 ruled-out a plausible alternative interpretation of these results

Causal judgment in the wild

We use forecasting models for the 2020 US presidential election to test a model of human causal judgment. Across tens of thousands of simulations of possible outcomes of the election, we computed, for each US state, an adjusted measure of the correlation between a democratic victory in that state and a democratic victory at the national level. These scores accurately predicted the extent to which US participants (N=207, pre-registered) viewed victory in a given state as having caused Joe Biden to win the presidency. This supports the theory that people intuitively select as causes of an outcome the factors with the largest average causal effect on that outcome across possible worlds. This is the first evidence that the theory scales to real-world complex settings, and suggests a deep connection between cognitive processes for prediction and causal judgment

The Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE): Evidence of validity in the United States and India

Researchers increasingly recognize that the mind and culture interact at many levels to constitute our lived experience, yet we know relatively little about the extent to which culture shapes the way people appraise their experiences and the likelihood that a given experience will be reported. Experiences that involve claims regarding deities, extraordinary abilities, and/or psychopathology offer an important site for investigating the interplay of mind and culture at the population level. However, the difficulties inherent in comparing culture-laden experiences, exacerbated by the siloing of research on experiences based on discipline-specific theoretical constructs, have limited our ability to do so. We introduce the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE), which allows researchers to compare experiences by separating the phenomenological features from how they are appraised and asking about both. It thereby offers a new means of investigating the potentially universal (etic) and culture-specific (emic) aspects of lived experiences. To ensure that the INOE survey items are understood as intended by English speakers in the US and Hindi speakers in India, and thus can serve as a basis for cross-cultural comparison, we used the Response Process Evaluation (RPE) method to collect evidence of item-level validity. Our inability to validate some items drawn from other surveys suggests that they are capturing a wider range of experiences than researchers intend. Wider use of the RPE method would increase the likelihood that survey results are due to the differences that researchers intend to measure