As adults, we might understand that beliefs often spread because people are strongly influenced by their friends, family, and other social connections. However, do we think those influences are strong enough to overrule direct evidence of a friend's unreliability? And do preschoolers expect people to show such biases toward friends and to…

Striking weight biases emerge early in development, yet cognitive-developmental research has largely ignored weight as a social characteristic of interest. How do children conceive of weight? In particular, do children hold essentialist views of weight (i.e. do they view weight as natural, stable, inductively meaningful, and reflective of people's…

This paper examines the notion of tolerance in education. In general, tolerance is perceived as a means to resist hostility, raise awareness of cultural differences, mitigate violence, and maintain liberal and democratic values. In education, there are various initiatives, such as the International Day for Tolerance (UNESCO in Declaration of…

This book presents a detailed discussion of Indonesian future teachers' experience of religious diversity, tolerance and intolerance, their level of intellectual humility, and intentions to foster religious tolerance. Drawing from large-scale mixed methods research conducted in Indonesian universities involving over one thousand three hundred…

Background: Anxiety related to uncertainty is common in autism. Coping with Uncertainty in Everyday Situations (CUES©) is a parent-mediated group intervention aiming to increase autistic children's tolerance to uncertain situations. A pilot study was conducted to test its feasibility and acceptability. Methods: Parents of 50 autistic children were…

Religion dictates the groups against whom it is seen as justifiable (even righteous) to express prejudice: often groups perceived of as violating core religious values. We review research demonstrating that for Christians, particularly conservative ones, religion seems to sanction prejudice against LGBT individuals. We describe the causes and the…

Low-educated adults do not often engage in lifelong learning. The current study examines whether and how psychosocial beliefs about lifelong learning differ between adults with different levels of educational attainment. The Theory of Planned Behaviour, which focuses on three specific psychosocial beliefs (related to Perceived Behavioural Control,…

Humane Acts Bystander Intervention Training curriculum (HABIT) aims to reach students less inclined to learn from liberal and more-feminist education offered in current curricula. Using moral foundations theory to encourage bystander intervention in potential sexual assault situations, the authors taught and assessed 137 diverse students within an…

This paper argues that vice-charging, the practice of charging other persons with epistemic vice, can itself be epistemically vicious. It identifies some potential vices of vice-charging and identifies knowledge of other people as a type of knowledge that is obstructed by epistemically vicious attributions of epistemic vice. The hazards of…

The present study examined the general hypothesis that social axioms (social cynicism, social complexity, religiosity, reward for application, and fate control) have main and interacting effects on domain-specific perceived academic control. Social axioms that assume personal control over life outcomes were hypothesised to be positively associated…

This dissertation explores the newly theorized concept of "sexualized aggression" in U.S. college women's social drinking spaces (e.g., parties, bars, clubs). I developed the concept of sexualized aggression to refer to understudied and overlooked forms of sexual assault and aggression--more specifically, sexual assault that happens in…

Deconversion is a biographical change in which one goes from claiming adherence to a religion to departing from it. A meaning system model can help us understand the processes through which deconversion occurs. Drawing on that framework, we explored how perceiving hypocrisy in one's religious setting influences adolescent deconversion. Irrational…

Although the relationship between religion and science has long been the subject of discussion, investigations into the how and why of people's science-religion perspectives are rare. This study examined how epistemic and ontological cognition predict agreement with four science-religion perspectives: conflict, independence, dialogue, and…

We demonstrate how organizational contexts influence status beliefs. Specifically, we draw from in- depth interviews conducted with current and former U.S. Foreign Service officers to explain how recipients of the U.S. Department of State Pickering Fellowship learn to accept a devaluing status belief about this accolade once they enter the Foreign…

We argue that the past-political discourses reshaped the way people conceptualized nature and sources of knowledge ("Epistemic Beliefs"), and thereby developed intolerant social "attitudes" in Pakistan. Efforts were made to change this situation through pre-service teacher education reforms by focussing on developing epistemic…