Research on wishful thinking suggests that desires bias adult’s probability judgments. Previous research has yet to explore if this extends to young children. In Experiment 1, 260 4and 6-year-olds in the U.S. and Peru played a card game, where selecting a desirable card was unlikely. In Experiment 2, 200 4to 6-year-old children were shown a bag of plastic eggs; a few contained desirable prizes....

Humans are deeply social animals. Our beliefs, desires, and behaviors are affected by social preferences, our relationships, and the social contexts in which we live and make decisions. We are “group-minded individuals” who see the world from a social as well as an individual perspective; we understand what is in the minds of others and often act as if our brains are networked with the brains o...

Thagard, P. (forthcoming). Desires are not propositional attitudes. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review. Tim Schroeder's Three Faces of Desire is an excellent contribution to naturalistic philosophy of mind, in the grand tradition of Aristotle, Hume, Quine, and Patricia and Paul Churchland. He develops a rich and plausible theory of desire with strong connections both to neuroscience and to...

One line of research on children's attributions of guilt suggests that 3-year-olds attribute negative emotion to self-serving victimizers, slightly older children attribute happiness, and with increasing age, attributions become negative again (i.e., a three-step model; Yuill et al., 1996, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 14, 457). Another line of research provides reason to expect that 3-year-olds may be...

purity involves commitment and awareness of the principles of a religion so that these principles can affect a person’s individual and social life. since religion deals with fulfilling social needs and those public profits within which the group’s desires lie, today it is expected that a religion can attract and guarantee commitment in its followers. meanwhile, new cities, especially baharestan...