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Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people's belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by a set of converging empirical findings and theoretical suggestions pertaining to the construct of ownership, we survey literature from multiple disciplines and present an extensive theoretical account linking the inception of a foundational naïve theory of ownership to principles governing the sense of (body) ownership. The first part of the account examines the emergence of the non-conceptual sense of ownership in terms of the minimal self and the body schema—a dynamic mental model of the body that functions as an instrument of directed action. A remarkable feature of the body schema is that it expands to incorporate objects that are objectively controlled by the person. Moreover, this embodiment of extracorporeal objects is accompanied by the phenomenological feeling of ownership towards the embodied objects. In fact, we argue that the sense of agency and ownership are inextricably linked, and that predictable control over an object can engender the sense of ownership. This relation between objective agency and the sense of ownership is moderated by gestalt-like principles. In the second part, we posit that these early emerging principles and experiences lead to the formation of a naïve theory of ownership rooted in notions of agential involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charity communication campaigns, essential for humanitarian and charitable organizations to raise funds, use persuasive messages to get the general public to support them financially. However, in spite of the fundamental stakes of these campaigns, in the literature no research has been carried out on the social representations that the producers mobilize when they conceive the messages. Conducted from eighteen campaign producers for charitable and humanitarian organizations, this qualitative survey aims to better understand how persuasive messages are designed. The results show that producers create naive causal theories about the psychological effects caused by different persuasive processes. The fundamentally different social representations between experienced and less experienced producers lead them to conceive openly different messages. They concern reception and influence, the perceived receivers, their motivation, the degree of complexity of the message and the types of affects that the latter must generate. After discussing the scientific validity of social representations in the light of experimental research on persuasive communication, we give some recommendations to producers, indicate the limitations and new research perspectives.

This paper presents a conceptual model of the impact of social media influencer power on consumer attitudes toward a brand. The research uses naïve theories of social influence, consumer socialization theory and market signaling theory to support the contention that social media influencer power will impact consumer brand attitudes. However, the impact of the social media influencer power on consumer brand attitudes is posited to be mediated and/or moderated by the social media influencer source credibility. In turn, the social media influencer source credibility is modeled as being positively related to the social media influencer's expertise/competence with respect to the product, the social media influencer's goodwill toward the consumer, and the social media influencer's trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on the naive theory of exclusivity (vs.popularity) triggered by the sales level of self-expressive (vs. functional) products and introduces perceived self-image exclusivity and perceived face threat to explain the effect of self-expressive products' sales levels on consumers' purchase intention. Specially, about 900 young people participated in four experiments, which used T-shirts, pillows, cups, fashion coats and heating blankets as experimental materials. Through four studies, it is found that consumers are more likely to choose self-expressive (vs. functional) products with low sales (vs. high sales) level. In addition, the paper presents a serial mediation effect of perceived self-image exclusivity → perceived face threat, which can explain the “I will follow the minority” effect of self-expressive products. Finally, the study presents the theoretical and practical significance and future research direction.

The present study focuses on the naive theory of exclusivity (vs.popularity) triggered by the sales level of self-expressive (vs. functional) products and introduces perceived self-image exclusivity and perceived face threat to explain the effect of self-expressive products' sales levels on consumers' purchase intention. Specially, about 900 young people participated in four experiments, which used T-shirts, pillows, cups, fashion coats and heating blankets as experimental materials. Through four studies, it is found that consumers are more likely to choose self-expressive (vs. functional) products with low sales (vs. high sales) level. In addition, the paper presents a serial mediation effect of perceived self-image exclusivity → perceived face threat, which can explain the “I will follow the minority” effect of self-expressive products. Finally, the study presents the theoretical and practical significance and future research direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Most developmental psychologists believe that children have three naïve theories: naive physics, naive psychology and naive biology. They can use these theories to look at the world around them logically. The theory has the characteristics of scientific theory, such as abstractness and cohesiveness. It has a set of causal interpretation mechanism and has the function of interpretation and prediction at the same time, and it is a dynamic developing process. Although it has the characteristics of the theory, it is simple, daily, and has a considerable distance from the scientific theory. Therefore, we cannot ignore the construction of the children' scientific concept in scientific education, and through inquiry teaching to arouse children's naive theory. It also challenges children's naive theory through explanation, prediction and counterexample, so as to achieve the task of scientific education that to promote the transformation of children's naive theory to scientific theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at the question of which domain-specific concepts regarding politics children already understand and to what extent a naïve theory of politics can be postulated. It shows that even children in first grade have political knowledge that becomes increasingly differentiated throughout their time in elementary school. Fourth graders’ knowledge is more elaborate than that of first graders. The migrant background of children has a negative influence on political knowledge. No gender-specific differences in knowledge are found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of conceptual knowledge in scientific domains is among the central aims of school instruction because this semantic declarative knowledge helps individuals make interferences and explain complex phenomena. Recent research shows that naïve concepts acquired during childhood persist in long-term memory long after learning the scientifically correct concepts in school. In this study, we investigated the effects of stress on the retrieval of these conceptual representations. To this end, 40 healthy men were randomly assigned to either psychosocial stress or a control condition and evaluated, as quickly and accurately as possible, statements that were compatible with scientific concepts or incompatible with those concepts. Some of these statements were true and some were false. Incompatible statements in this case are statements which are in line with adults’ scientific concepts, but not with children’s naïve theories. In contrast, compatible statements are in line with both. Stress induction was successful as evidenced by increases in blood pressure and cortisol concentrations in the stress group compared to the control group. Responses were delayed and less accurate for incompatible compared to compatible statements. Psychosocial stress had no main effect on retrieval, but abolished reaction time differences on false- vs. true-incompatible statements. This effect was mirrored in correlations between individuals’ cortisol increases and reaction times. These results suggest that stress, as embodied by increases in cortisol concentrations, interferes with the retrieval of conceptual knowledge. They help to better understand conceptual knowledge retrieval in real-life situations such as examinations or problem solving in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weiner’s (1986) attribution theory of motivation and emotion assumes emotions are determined by beliefs about causality. Individuals share a naïve understanding of this linkage between causal attribution and emotions and use it in order to draw inferences from and influence others’ emotions. Evidence for such uses is provided and recent research and theory that goes beyond the attribution–emotion linkage is discussed. Specifically, recent research considers the naïve use of a larger set of emotions and appraisals and their connections, and the role of context in this process. However, still missing is a fuller understanding when this naïve knowledge is employed and how and when it is based on an explicit understanding of the emotion–appraisal linkage rather than more automatic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the record 2009 flood, the city of Fargo, North Dakota, United States held daily televised public meetings. Unknown to many citizens, the city also held private premeetings to prepare for the public meetings. The present study examined city leaders’ naïve theories of meeting facilitation in light of a minimalist view of public meetings (McComas, 2001). Interviews of city leaders during and after the flood, as well as meeting transcripts, were analyzed. Findings indicated that city leaders believed debate about controversial issues should be contained within private premeetings, where leaders planned how to be open with citizens during public meetings. City leaders also believed public meetings had to portray a calm yet urgent image for the public. City leaders used micro-level (e.g., humor, explicit vigilant messages, and metaphor) and macro-level (transparency) processes to communicatively accomplish their desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russellianism is characterized as the view that ‘that’-clauses refer to Russellian propositions, familiar set-theoretic pairings of objects and properties. Two belief-reporting sentences, S and S*, possessing the same Russellian content, but differing in their intuitive truthvalue, are provided. It is argued that no Russellian explanation of the difference in apparent truthvalue is available, with the upshot that the Russellian fails to explain how a speaker who asserts S but rejects S* can be innocent of inconsistency, either in what she says or, at least, in what she implicates. Yet, while there is no semantic or pragmatic explanation of the substitution failure consistent with Russellianism, there remains the possibility of a purely psychological explanation that is, nonetheless, Russellian. This is an attractive option. It comes at a cost, however, since, in abandoning the project of providing a semantic or pragmatic explanation of anti-substitutivity intuitions, the Russellian is no longer in the business of explaining how a rational, well-informed speaker, with no incentive to mislead, can avoid inconsistency in reporting the facts as they appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using children's naïve theory of biology as a framework, this study investigated children's developing understanding of illness by examining their generalisation of illness to biological and non-biological categories. In addition to differences associated with age, the children's health status was investigated for any possible linkwith their understanding. Healthy and chronically-ill children, aged 4–11 years, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, according to which exemplar (child, dog or duck) was described as suffering from an imaginary illness. Using a card-sorting technique, the children assessed whether each entity out of 30 entities (five representatives in each of six categories: humans, mammals, non-mammals, birds, plants and artifacts) could be afflicted by that illness. The children's generalisations indicated a grasp of the distinctiveness of the various categories, although they seemed less certain about the biological status of plants. Furthermore, the type of exemplar on which the children had been taught influenced their responses. However, the children's reasoning appeared unaffected by their health status and largely unaffected by age or gender. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capacity to attribute meaning to personal experiences may rest on a specialized cognitive system enabling this form of causal reasoning. Close examination of these attributional tendencies suggests that this system may be distinct from those underlying other forms of causal reasoning such as a “theory of mind” system in the behavioral domain, a folk physics system in the physical domain, and a folk biology system in the biological domain. A fourth, existential domain, an abstract ontological frame within which the subjective, narrative self is envisioned to be contained, may have driven the construction of an intuitive capacity in humans that encourages them to search for the underlying purpose or reason for having had certain life experiences. This system likely has specific, definable operational rules that are responsible for activating such explanatory searches. In addition, it appears anchored to a general intentionality system that promotes the attribution of teleological purpose and higher-order mental states to an abstract agency that is envisioned to cause events and personal experiences. Identifying the component parts of this specialized cognitive system through empirical investigations can help researchers to reconstruct both its evolutionary phylogeny and to track its developmental emergence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

When students learn a scientific theory that conflicts with their earlier naïve theories, the newer and more correct knowledge does not always replace the older and more incorrect knowledge. Both may coexist in a learner's long-term memory. Using a new speeded reasoning task, Shtulman and Valcarcel (2012) showed that naïve theories interfere with retrieving scientific theories. Although mathematics learning is a central aim of schooling and a vital prerequisite for success in life, no study has tested whether Shtulman and Valcarcel's (2012) findings generalize to mathematical subdomains such as algebra, geometry, and probability. Additionally, it is unclear how the interference strength relates to domain-specific and domain-general competencies. We investigated these questions using the speeded reasoning task with new mathematical items in a sample of 62 university students. Solution rates and reaction times indicated interference between naïve and scientific mathematical theories. Additionally, interference strength was inversely related to mathematical achievement and unrelated to general inhibitory control. After controlling for general inhibitory control, mathematical achievement was still substantially related to interference strength. These findings indicate that interference strength reflects domain-specific achievement rather than domain-general inhibitory control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]