Work

Societal inferences from the physical world

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Moffett points to humans' use of physical markers to signal group identity as crucial to human society. We characterize the developmental and cognitive bases of this capacity, arguing that it is part of an early-emerging, intuitive socio-physical interface which allows the inanimate world to encode rich social meaning about individuals' identities, and the values of the society as a whole.

Source: Behavioral and Brain Sciences

DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x24001158

Authors: Rodney Tompkins, Julian Jara-Ettinger, Adena Schachner

Institutions: University of California San Diego, Yale University

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Funders: National Science Foundation, Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences

Awards: CAREER: The social representation of the physical world, G2286566974, Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), Detecting social transmission in the design of artifacts