4 Mar
2022
4 Mar
'22
9:14 a.m.
*Time*: 4pm (to 5:30pm) Budapest/Vienna time
*Date*: Wednesday, March 9, 2022
*Venue*: Online, Zoom meeting 942 7892 8352
<https://us06web.zoom.us/j/94278928352?pwd=ckljaElMYnJtYW41b25sVGZNU09kQT09>,
pw: xfhq44
*Speaker*: Nicolas Baumard <https://nicolasbaumards.org/> and Edgar Dubourg
<https://edgardubourg.fr/> (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS | Département
d’Études Cognitives, ENS-PSL)
*Title*: *What fictions do people like at different ages? Predictions from
evolutionary developmental psychology*
*Abstract*: Narrative fictions (be it in the form of novels, movies, TV
series or video games) have surely become the most widespread source of
entertainment in the world. Why do humans spend so much time and resources
consuming stories that they know to be false? We contend that fiction
makers succeed in attracting people's attention by tapping into a myriad of
specialized cognitive mechanisms that evolved to solve different adaptive
challenges. For instance, humans, being omnivore foragers, evolved to be
interested in exploring new environments and discovering new resources.
These exploratory preferences can in turn be triggered by fiction makers
through for instance the invention of imaginary worlds (i.e. Middle Earth,
Hogwart, Hyrule). Importantly, evolutionary developmental psychologists
have argued that adaptive challenges are not the same at different life
stages. We can therefore derive from evolutionary psychology, and from the
idea of evolutionary developmental psychology, a theory of the development
of cognitive preferences across ontogeny, and make fine-grained and
testable predictions about what fictions toddlers, children, adolescents,
young adults and adults should like.
*Please let me know if you would like to schedule an online meeting with
the speaker. *
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