Beliefs about the causation of life and death, fortune and misfortune, and good and evil change over time. Often, these beliefs are based on different concepts of human agency—concepts that have important implications for views on responsibility, culpability, and liability. As normative orientations change, societies undergo periods of profound transformation, and social and interpersonal tensi...

each organization forms its own culture in which the shared values,beliefs, and behaviours of the members of that organization come together and coalesce over period of time. in due course, the leadership style of the top management, and the norms, values and beliefs of the members combine to form the corporate culture. organizational effectiveness may be increased by creating a culture that ac...

OBJECTIVES Many health promotion educational interventions assume that increasing knowledge directly influences beliefs, intentions and behaviour, whereas research suggests that knowledge alone is insufficient for behavioural change. Social cognition frameworks such as the Theory of Reasoned Action propose a central role for beliefs and social normative influences. This Scottish study evaluates...

Societies are rife with negative, damaging practices, from open defecation to female genital cutting, endemic in many developing countries, to corruption and violence against women and children that we also witness in many Western societies. The theoretical and practical challenge we face is twofold. On the one hand, we want to explain what generates and supports such practices. On the other, w...

An individual’s contribution to a public good may be seen by others as a signal of attributes such as generosity or wealth. An individual may, therefore, choose their contribution so as to send an appropriate signal to others. In this paper we question how the inferences made by others will influence the amount contributed to the public good. Evidence suggests that individuals are naive and bia...

When explaining someone’s behavior, reference is often made to Theory of Mind concepts like beliefs (”she believed it was the right thing to do”) or desires (”she wanted to”). Less appreciated is the explanatory potential for descriptive and prescriptive norms (e.g., ”she returned the wallet because it was the right thing to do”). One possibility is that norms serve as explanations only when me...