Denis Hilton
Biographic Data
| ID | 111951 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Denis Hilton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Denis |
| FAMILY NAME | Hilton |
| SIGNATURE | HILTON D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Université Fédérale de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8991-3353 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 538 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Social representations of European history by the European youth
The present manuscript examines the way young Europeans represent Europe’s history. A study conducted in 11 European countries (N = 1406 students in social sciences) shows that the characters considered most important in the history of Europe are mostly men linked either to WW2, authoritarianism, or conquests and empires. Although these appear later in the rankings and despite some imbalance between countries, Europe’s history is also associated …
Mind Attribution to Gods and Christians in the Chinese Cultural Context
Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, this research examined whether and how culture-based religion affects mind attribution to gods and Christians in a religious priming paradigm. When attributing mind to gods in Study 1, participants in the religious priming condition attributed more agency to gods than those in the neutral condition. When attributing mind to human religious targets in Study 2, religious p…
Assigning moral roles within the Second World War in Europe
The moral roles assigned to nations that took part in the Second World War cast a shadow over contemporary international politics. To understand contemporary moral beliefs about the war, we took 11 mostly student samples from 9 nations that took part in the European theatre of war (total N = 1,427). We asked respondents, in free and scaled listings, to identify the war’s heroes, villains, victims, and recipients of help. Nations and individuals s…
A question of detail
Causal pre-emption scenarios are problematic for the counterfactual framework of causation (CFC) because people judge an action to be the actual cause of an outcome although the outcome would have occurred anyway due to the action of a pre-empted alternative cause. We propose that commonsense causal questions typically probe specific events that actually happened as and how they did, and show that counterfactuals that probe specific events match …
Making the carbon basket count
Greedy elites and poor lambs
The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history …
Designing effective nudges that satisfy ethical constraints
Years After
In this paper we use a social representational perspective to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I, on a large sample of European students. WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first five words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifi…
History as the narrative of a people
We summarize our perspective on social representations of history first presented by Liu and Hilton and extended in later publications. We situate our functional approach in the context of contemporary social psychological approaches to intergroup relations, particularly realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and the literature on social cognition/stereotypes. We note that this approach leads us to analyze social representations of ev…
A century of victimhood
In the article “A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe” (DOI: 100.1002/ejsp.2232) (Bouchat et al.,), published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, 47: 195:208, the affiliations for Silvia Mari, Nebojša Petrovic and Alice Krenn were provided incorrectly. The complete authors' affiliation list is shown below. Pierre Bouchat, Laurent Licata Research Center for Social and…
A century of victimhood
The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations ( N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective vi…
Minimization of Male Suffering
Studies show equal impact of sexual harassment (SH) on men and women, whereas lay perceptions are that women suffer more. We identify the phenomenon of minimization of male suffering (MMS), which occurs when people assume that SH has less effect on men's well-being and which results in the perpetrators of SH on men being evaluated less harshly. To verify whether these effects occur, we conducted two studies in which we presented stories describin…
Confronting the meat paradox in different cultural contexts
Socio-demographics, implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, and sustainable consumption in supermarket shopping
A tax can nudge
The minority decision — A risky choice
When the past haunts the present
Normalization in the courtroom
Legal archives concerning a new type of offence first introduced onto the French statute books in 2005 reveal a normalization effect over the following 2 years in judges' sentence decisions but not in prosecutors' sentence demands. We examine the hypothesis that the formation of a normally accepted range of sentences will influence how judges respond to the extremity of the prosecutor's initial sentence demand. In line with a normalization perspe…
Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Meaning in the Evaluation of Events in World History
The universality versus culture specificity of quantitative evaluations (negative-positive) of 40 events in world history was addressed using World History Survey data collected from 5,800 university students in 30 countries/societies. Multidimensional scaling using generalized procrustean analysis indicated poor fit of data from the 30 countries to an overall mean configuration, indicating lack of universal agreement as to the associational mean…
Do positive illusions predict overconfidence in judgment? A test using interval production and probability evaluation measures of miscalibration
We address the question as to whether judgmental overconfidence, as assessed by probability miscalibration, is related to positive illusions about the self. We first demonstrate that judgmental overconfidence measured with interval production procedures can be considered a trait, due to correlations observed in miscalibration scores in two sets of general‐knowledge questions of varying difficulty administered at different times. In addition, the …
Selecting explanations from causal chains
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human act…
Hot as hell! The self-conscious nature of action regrets
Économie et cognition
Depuis ses origines, l'économie est définie au sens large comme la discipline qui étudie les processus de coordination entre les actions d'un certain nombre d'acteurs supposés rationnels. Apparue dans la dernière décennie, l'économie cognitive a pour objet plus spécifique d'étudier les croyances et les raisonnements des acteurs placés dans un contexte d'interaction dynamique. Au niveau individuel, elle entre dans la boîte noire du cerveau humain …
The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking
Die Psychologie kontrafaktischen Denkens«.Counterfactual thinking refers to mental constructions of alternatives to past events.In this overview of the psychological basis of counterfactual thinking, we examine how such thoughts influence emotions and carry benefits for everyday behavior.Two psychological mechanisms, contrast effects and causal inferences, can explain many of the effects of counterfactual thinking reported by psychologists.We the…
Judgments of voluntary and physical causes in causal chains
Four experiments investigated judgments about voluntary human actions and physical causes that were embedded in causal chains ending in negative outcomes (e.g., a forest fire). Causes were judged for their explanatory quality, their effect on the probability of the outcome, and the extent to which they could be socially controlled. Results supported legal theorists' claim that voluntary actions are judged better explanations than physical causes.…
How the past weighs on the present
Socially shared representations of history have been important in creating, maintaining and changing a people's identity. Their management and negotiation are central to interethnic and international relations. We present a narrative framework to represent how collectively significant events become (selectively) incorporated in social representations that enable positioning of ethnic, national and supranational identities. This perspective create…
Conversational processes and causal explanation
Causal explanation takes place in and takes the form of conversation. Explanations are selected by questions and are thus governed by general rules of discourse. A conversational model of causal explanation is introduced that explicates social aspects of the explanation process by postulating that good explanations must be relevant to the focus of a why question, as well as being true. The notion of explanatory relevance enables an integration of…
Social Representations of Events and People in World History Across 12 Cultures
Social representations of world history were assessed using the open-ended questions, "What are the most important events in world history?" and "Who are the most influential persons in world history in the last 1,000 years?"Data from six Asian and six Western samples showed cross-cultural consensus. Historical representations were (a) focused on the recent past, (b) centered around politics and war, and (c) dominated by the events of the World W…
The social context of reasoning
Most psychologists conceive of judgment and reasoning as cognitive processes, which go on “in the head” and involve intrapsychic information processing (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky, 1982; Nisbett and Ross, 1980). Although it is incontestable that processes of attention, memory, and inference underpin judgment and reasoning, psychologists have perhaps overlooked the extent to which these mental processes are governed by higher-level assump…
History as the narrative of a people
We summarize our perspective on social representations of history first presented by Liu and Hilton and extended in later publications. We situate our functional approach in the context of contemporary social psychological approaches to intergroup relations, particularly realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and the literature on social cognition/stereotypes. We note that this approach leads us to analyze social representations of ev…
Confronting the meat paradox in different cultural contexts
When the past haunts the present
Processes of causal explanation and dispositional attribution
Causal explanation and dispositional attribution are distinguished. Causal explanation involves giving an explanation for why a particular event occurred, whereas dispositional attribution involves learning about the characteristics of some entity. Moreover, it is proposed that production of causal explanations requires J. S. Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference, whereas production of dispositional attributions requires Mill's method of agreem…
Socio-demographics, implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, and sustainable consumption in supermarket shopping
Making the carbon basket count
Do positive illusions predict overconfidence in judgment? A test using interval production and probability evaluation measures of miscalibration
We address the question as to whether judgmental overconfidence, as assessed by probability miscalibration, is related to positive illusions about the self. We first demonstrate that judgmental overconfidence measured with interval production procedures can be considered a trait, due to correlations observed in miscalibration scores in two sets of general‐knowledge questions of varying difficulty administered at different times. In addition, the …
A century of victimhood
The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations ( N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective vi…
Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Meaning in the Evaluation of Events in World History
The universality versus culture specificity of quantitative evaluations (negative-positive) of 40 events in world history was addressed using World History Survey data collected from 5,800 university students in 30 countries/societies. Multidimensional scaling using generalized procrustean analysis indicated poor fit of data from the 30 countries to an overall mean configuration, indicating lack of universal agreement as to the associational mean…
Judgments of voluntary and physical causes in causal chains
Four experiments investigated judgments about voluntary human actions and physical causes that were embedded in causal chains ending in negative outcomes (e.g., a forest fire). Causes were judged for their explanatory quality, their effect on the probability of the outcome, and the extent to which they could be socially controlled. Results supported legal theorists' claim that voluntary actions are judged better explanations than physical causes.…
The minority decision — A risky choice
Hot as hell! The self-conscious nature of action regrets
Knowledge-based information acquisition
Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference prescribes that the lay scientist should use consensus information as a control condition for the person and distinctiveness information as a control condition for the stimulus when analyzing their causal effects on the occurrence of the target event. However, in studies of information acquisition, subjects have shown a consistent preference for distinctiveness information when answering causal questions ab…
Greedy elites and poor lambs
The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history …
Selecting explanations from causal chains
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human act…
A tax can nudge
The knowledge‐structure and inductivist strategies in causal attribution
Two different strategies for making causal attributions are distinguished. The first is the classic inductivist approach, which uses covariation information to arrive at causal attributions. The second is the knowledge‐structure approach, which uses information relevant to knowledge about plans and goals to explain behaviour. Two experiments are reported in which information activating both types of strategy is given. The results indicate that go…
Designing effective nudges that satisfy ethical constraints
Years After
In this paper we use a social representational perspective to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I, on a large sample of European students. WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first five words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifi…
Minimization of Male Suffering
Studies show equal impact of sexual harassment (SH) on men and women, whereas lay perceptions are that women suffer more. We identify the phenomenon of minimization of male suffering (MMS), which occurs when people assume that SH has less effect on men's well-being and which results in the perpetrators of SH on men being evaluated less harshly. To verify whether these effects occur, we conducted two studies in which we presented stories describin…
When People Explain Difficult Actions, is the Causal Question How or Why
Recent research shows that the framing of causal questions influences the choice of goals and preconditions as explanations of actions. However, research has not examined participants’ judgments as to which causal questions are most relevant to explain actions. Study 1 examined which question (“why” or “how”) participants would use to gain information to help them explain actions that required substantial preconditions. As a measure of difficulty…
Knowledge-based causal attribution
Dominant models of the processes of causal attribution have hitherto appealed to the covariational criterion of causal ascription. However systematic deviations from the normative predictions made by these models indicate that subjects may be employing different criteria in causal attribution. An alternative model grounded in recent ordinary language philosophy is proposed which postulates that subjects employ counterfactual and contrastive crite…
The knowledge‐structure and inductivist strategies in causal attribution
Two different strategies for making causal attributions are distinguished. The first is the classic inductivist approach, which uses covariation information to arrive at causal attributions. The second is the knowledge‐structure approach, which uses information relevant to knowledge about plans and goals to explain behaviour. Two experiments are reported in which information activating both types of strategy is given. The results indicate that go…
Knowledge-based information acquisition
Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference prescribes that the lay scientist should use consensus information as a control condition for the person and distinctiveness information as a control condition for the stimulus when analyzing their causal effects on the occurrence of the target event. However, in studies of information acquisition, subjects have shown a consistent preference for distinctiveness information when answering causal questions ab…
Pragmatic conditional reasoning
Conversational processes and causal explanation
Causal explanation takes place in and takes the form of conversation. Explanations are selected by questions and are thus governed by general rules of discourse. A conversational model of causal explanation is introduced that explicates social aspects of the explanation process by postulating that good explanations must be relevant to the focus of a why question, as well as being true. The notion of explanatory relevance enables an integration of…
A Conversational Model of Causal Explanation
A conversational model of causal explanation is outlined which emphasizes the role of counterfactual reasoning, contrast cases and conversational constraints in causal explanation. It is used to organize existing models of causal attribution, to integrate attribution research with other models of causal reasoning, and to study explanations in ordinary language
Processes of causal explanation and dispositional attribution
Causal explanation and dispositional attribution are distinguished. Causal explanation involves giving an explanation for why a particular event occurred, whereas dispositional attribution involves learning about the characteristics of some entity. Moreover, it is proposed that production of causal explanations requires J. S. Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference, whereas production of dispositional attributions requires Mill's method of agreem…
The social context of reasoning
Most psychologists conceive of judgment and reasoning as cognitive processes, which go on “in the head” and involve intrapsychic information processing (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky, 1982; Nisbett and Ross, 1980). Although it is incontestable that processes of attention, memory, and inference underpin judgment and reasoning, psychologists have perhaps overlooked the extent to which these mental processes are governed by higher-level assump…
Are goals or preconditions better explanations? It depends on the question
Are goals or preconditions better explanations? It depends on the question
Recent research on causal inference suggests that common actions tend to be attributed to goals, whereas difficult actions, if obstructed, are attributed primarily to preconditions. The present studies examine the way that the framing of causal questions influences ratings of goals and preconditions for common actions. The studies test the view that ‘why’ questions favour goal explanations, by presenting causal questions framed as ‘why’ questions…
When People Explain Difficult Actions, is the Causal Question How or Why
Recent research shows that the framing of causal questions influences the choice of goals and preconditions as explanations of actions. However, research has not examined participants’ judgments as to which causal questions are most relevant to explain actions. Study 1 examined which question (“why” or “how”) participants would use to gain information to help them explain actions that required substantial preconditions. As a measure of difficulty…
How the past weighs on the present
Socially shared representations of history have been important in creating, maintaining and changing a people's identity. Their management and negotiation are central to interethnic and international relations. We present a narrative framework to represent how collectively significant events become (selectively) incorporated in social representations that enable positioning of ethnic, national and supranational identities. This perspective create…
Social Representations of Events and People in World History Across 12 Cultures
Social representations of world history were assessed using the open-ended questions, "What are the most important events in world history?" and "Who are the most influential persons in world history in the last 1,000 years?"Data from six Asian and six Western samples showed cross-cultural consensus. Historical representations were (a) focused on the recent past, (b) centered around politics and war, and (c) dominated by the events of the World W…
De l'aversion à l'ambiguïté aux attitudes face à l'ambiguïté
L’objectif de cet article est d’illustrer les apports d’une perspective psychologique en économie de la décision. Cet article développe en particulier l’idée selon laquelle il est intéressant de coupler une analyse psychologique des processus de décision et de jugement à une analyse économique des choix, ce double éclairage permettant de mieux comprendre, et donc de mieux prédire, les comportements observés dans des tâches expérimentales. La litt…
The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking
Die Psychologie kontrafaktischen Denkens«.Counterfactual thinking refers to mental constructions of alternatives to past events.In this overview of the psychological basis of counterfactual thinking, we examine how such thoughts influence emotions and carry benefits for everyday behavior.Two psychological mechanisms, contrast effects and causal inferences, can explain many of the effects of counterfactual thinking reported by psychologists.We the…
Judgments of voluntary and physical causes in causal chains
Four experiments investigated judgments about voluntary human actions and physical causes that were embedded in causal chains ending in negative outcomes (e.g., a forest fire). Causes were judged for their explanatory quality, their effect on the probability of the outcome, and the extent to which they could be socially controlled. Results supported legal theorists' claim that voluntary actions are judged better explanations than physical causes.…
Économie et cognition
Depuis ses origines, l'économie est définie au sens large comme la discipline qui étudie les processus de coordination entre les actions d'un certain nombre d'acteurs supposés rationnels. Apparue dans la dernière décennie, l'économie cognitive a pour objet plus spécifique d'étudier les croyances et les raisonnements des acteurs placés dans un contexte d'interaction dynamique. Au niveau individuel, elle entre dans la boîte noire du cerveau humain …
Do positive illusions predict overconfidence in judgment? A test using interval production and probability evaluation measures of miscalibration
We address the question as to whether judgmental overconfidence, as assessed by probability miscalibration, is related to positive illusions about the self. We first demonstrate that judgmental overconfidence measured with interval production procedures can be considered a trait, due to correlations observed in miscalibration scores in two sets of general‐knowledge questions of varying difficulty administered at different times. In addition, the …
Selecting explanations from causal chains
We investigate whether people prefer voluntary causes to physical causes in unfolding causal chains and whether statistical (covariation, sufficiency) principles can predict how people select explanations. Experiment 1 shows that while people tend to prefer a proximal (more recent) cause in chains of unfolding physical events, causality is traced through the proximal cause to an underlying distal (less recent) cause when that cause is a human act…
Hot as hell! The self-conscious nature of action regrets
Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Meaning in the Evaluation of Events in World History
The universality versus culture specificity of quantitative evaluations (negative-positive) of 40 events in world history was addressed using World History Survey data collected from 5,800 university students in 30 countries/societies. Multidimensional scaling using generalized procrustean analysis indicated poor fit of data from the 30 countries to an overall mean configuration, indicating lack of universal agreement as to the associational mean…
When the past haunts the present
Normalization in the courtroom
Legal archives concerning a new type of offence first introduced onto the French statute books in 2005 reveal a normalization effect over the following 2 years in judges' sentence decisions but not in prosecutors' sentence demands. We examine the hypothesis that the formation of a normally accepted range of sentences will influence how judges respond to the extremity of the prosecutor's initial sentence demand. In line with a normalization perspe…
A tax can nudge
The minority decision — A risky choice
Psychology (32 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Political science (9 works)