Anna Welpinghus

Wie kommt es, dass auch Menschen mit egalitären Einstellungen mitunter andere Menschen benachteiligen? Eine Erklärung dafür liefert die These, dass unsere Vorurteile nicht vollständig verschwinden, wenn ihre soziale Akzeptanz abnimmt. Sie verstecken sich nur – und zwar laut der Sozialpsychologie in unserem Geist, also in der Art wie wir denken oder wahrnehmen. Diese These hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten viel Aufmerksamkeit erregt, auch in der Philosophie. Es gibt mehrere sozialpsychologische Erklärungsansätze dafür, wie es sein kann, dass Menschen mit egalitären Einstellungen andere Personen benachteiligen. Sie alle richten den Fokus auf mentale Vorgänge. Ein weiterer Erklärungsansatz lenkt den Blick auf die Kultur: Voreingenommenheit kann sich auch in geteilten Bedeutungen oder Normen verstecken. Die Erklärungsansätze, die in der Psychologie und Philosophie in den letzten Jahrzehnten dominant waren, sollten um andere Perspektiven erweitert werden.

This paper contributes to the question to what extent the socio-cultural context is relevant for the appropriateness of emotions, while appropriateness of an emotion means that the emotion entails a correct, or adequate, evaluation of its object. In a first step, two adequacy conditions for theories of emotions are developed: the first condition ensures that the socio-cultural context is not neglected: theories must allow for the fact that appropriateness often depends on the social meaning of the emotion’s particular object. The second condition rules out implausible forms of cultural determinism. In a second step, an account that meets both conditions is presented: the Acceptance within Social Context account.

We develop a version of a direct perception account of emotion recognition on the basis of a metaphysical claim that emotions are individuated as patterns of characteristic features. On our account, emotion recognition relies on the same type of pattern recognition as is described for object recognition. The analogy allows us to distinguish two forms of directly perceiving emotions, namely perceiving an emotion in the absence of any top-down processes, and perceiving an emotion in a way that significantly involves some top-down processes ; and, in addition, an inference-based evaluation of an emotion. Our model clarifies the epistemology of emotion recognition

We can understand implicit bias as a person’s disposition to evaluate members of a social group in a less favorable light than members of another social group, without intending to do so. If we understand it this way, we should not presuppose a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how implicit cognitive states lead to skewed evaluations of other people. The focus of this paper is on implicit bias in considered decisions. It is argued that we have good reasons to assume that imagination plays a vital role in decision making. If this assumption is correct, it offers an explanation for implicit bias in many considered decisions: Human beings who have been frequently exposed to stereotypes have stereotype-congruent expectations as part of their background knowledge. They feed into their imagination, sometimes without their awareness. This model would allow us to explain the key characteristics of implicit bias without recurring to any unconscious attitudes over and above such background knowledge.

Studies in economic decision-making have demonstrated that individuals appreciate social values supporting equity and disapprove unfairness when distributing goods between two or more parties. However, this seems to critically depend on psychological mechanisms partly pertaining to the ingroup–outgroup distinction. Little is known as to what extent economic bargaining can be manipulated by means of psychological interventions such has hypnosis. Here we show that a hypnotic ingroup versus outgroup suggestion impacts the tolerance of unfairness in an Ultimatum Game. Specifically, the ingroup suggestion was associated with significantly greater acceptance rates of unfair offers than the outgroup suggestion, whereas hypnosis alone exerted only small effects on unfairness tolerance. These findings indicate that psychological interventions such as hypnotic suggestion can contribute to ingroup favoritism and outgroup rejection.

This paper critically assesses the widespread claim that jealousy is a response to infidelity. According to this claim, herewith called the entitlement theory, jealousy is only an appropriate response to a relationship between a loved one and a rival if, by entertaining this relationship, the loved one does not treat the jealous person the way she is entitled to be treated. I reconstruct different versions of ET, each of them providing a different answer to the question why we should assume that jealousy is a response to infidelity. I show that even the most plausible versions enjoy less argumentative support than it seems at first sight. The positive aim of this paper is to present a more inclusive account of jealousy as an alternative to ET. According to this account, jealousy serves to disturb the rival relationship and to gain the attention and affection of the loved person. Jealousy so understood is not only an appropriate response to infidelity but has wider appropriateness conditions. However, it plays a role in the negotiation of norms concerning exclusivity in personal relationships. The inclusive account does justice to the continuity and commonalities between adult and infant protest against rival relationships.