Cognitive Science

The latest breakthroughs, innovations, and cool happenings at the cutting edge of the world of cognitive science. Updated daily.

Beyond the Positivity Bias: The Processing and Integration of Self‐Relevant Feedback Is Driven by Its Alignment With Pre‐Existing Self‐Views

Abstract Our self-concept is constantly faced with self-relevant information. Prevailing research suggests that information’s valence plays a central role in shaping our self-views. However, the need for stability within the self-concept structure and the inherent alignment of positive feedback with the pre-existing self-views of healthy individuals might mask valence and congruence effects. In this study […]

Published on November 18, 2024

Lay Theories of Moral Progress

Abstract Many consider the world to be morally better today than it was in the past and expect moral improvement to continue. How do people explain what drives this change? In this paper, we identify two ways people might think about how moral progress occurs: that it is driven by human action (i.e., if people […]

Published on November 18, 2024

Understanding the qualitative nature of human consciousness

Understanding what conscious experiences feel like from a first-person perspective, known as the hard problem of consciousness, remains one of the most intriguing yet elusive topics in science and philosophy [1,2]. In their timely article in TiCS, Fleming and Shea propose the quality space approach as a promising path forward [3]. They suggest that the qualitative […]

Published on November 14, 2024