J M Stubbersfield
Biographic Data
| ID | 54667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J M Stubbersfield |
| GIVEN NAMES | J M |
| FAMILY NAME | Stubbersfield |
| SIGNATURE | STUBBERSFIELD J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8966-4679 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories
Why is there so much diversity in fictional plots? Why are some fictional stories more popular in certain countries or during specific historical periods? In this paper, we propose an evolutionary psychological framework to address these questions. Fictional stories trigger a range of evolved psychological mechanisms—such as finding mates (romance fiction), exploring the world (adventure fiction), or avoiding threats (horror fiction). While these…
Curious about threats
Conspiracy theories allege secret plots between two or more powerful actors to achieve an outcome, sometimes explaining important events or proposing alternative understandings of reality in opposition to mainstream accounts, and commonly highlight the threat presented by the plot and its conspirators. Research in psychology proposes that belief in conspiracy theories is motivated by a desire to understand threats and is predicted by increased an…
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US elect…
Content biases in three phases of cultural transmission
Cultural evolution theory proposes that information transmitted through social learning is not transmitted indiscriminately but is instead biased by heuristics and mechanisms which increase the likelihood that individuals will copy particular cultural traits based on their inherent properties (content biases) and copy the cultural traits of particular models, or under particular circumstances (context biases). Recent research suggests that conten…
Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy
We conducted a nationally representative survey of parents' beliefs and self-reported behaviors regarding childhood vaccinations. Using Bayesian selection among multivariate models, we found that beliefs, even those without any vaccine or health content, predicted vaccine-hesitant behaviors better than demographics, social network effects, or scientific reasoning. The multivariate structure of beliefs combined many types of ideation that included…
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US election are consis…
Steve Stewart-Williams. The Ape That Understood the Universe
Article Steve Stewart-Williams. The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve was published on December 1, 2019 in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture (volume 3, issue 1)
An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy
Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives
Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive selective pressures that alter the content and structure so as to make it maximally transmittable. This paper presents a review of emerging research on content biases in cultural evolution with releva…
Chicken Tumours and a Fishy Revenge
This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred and twenty participants, aged 16–52, were asked to read and then recall urban legends that provoked both high levels and low levels of emotion and were both positively and negatively valenced. The prod…
Serial killers, spiders and cybersex
This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of thesocial information biasandsurvival information biason cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose-to-transmit phase. In line with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design with 60 participants aged 18-52 was used to examine the encode-and-retrieve phase, while particip…
Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends
In this study, we use computational methods for analyzing cultural transmission to examine the role of cognitive selection pressures on the evolution of narratives, the first use of computational phylogenetic analysis in the study of contemporary legends. It has been suggested that a number of biases in transmission may alter the content and structure of narrative so as to maximize how transmittable it is. One bias that has attracted much attenti…
Chicken Tumours and a Fishy Revenge
This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred and twenty participants, aged 16–52, were asked to read and then recall urban legends that provoked both high levels and low levels of emotion and were both positively and negatively valenced. The prod…
Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy
We conducted a nationally representative survey of parents' beliefs and self-reported behaviors regarding childhood vaccinations. Using Bayesian selection among multivariate models, we found that beliefs, even those without any vaccine or health content, predicted vaccine-hesitant behaviors better than demographics, social network effects, or scientific reasoning. The multivariate structure of beliefs combined many types of ideation that included…
Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends
In this study, we use computational methods for analyzing cultural transmission to examine the role of cognitive selection pressures on the evolution of narratives, the first use of computational phylogenetic analysis in the study of contemporary legends. It has been suggested that a number of biases in transmission may alter the content and structure of narrative so as to maximize how transmittable it is. One bias that has attracted much attenti…
An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy
Serial killers, spiders and cybersex
This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of thesocial information biasandsurvival information biason cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose-to-transmit phase. In line with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design with 60 participants aged 18-52 was used to examine the encode-and-retrieve phase, while particip…
Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends
In this study, we use computational methods for analyzing cultural transmission to examine the role of cognitive selection pressures on the evolution of narratives, the first use of computational phylogenetic analysis in the study of contemporary legends. It has been suggested that a number of biases in transmission may alter the content and structure of narrative so as to maximize how transmittable it is. One bias that has attracted much attenti…
Serial killers, spiders and cybersex
This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of thesocial information biasandsurvival information biason cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose-to-transmit phase. In line with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design with 60 participants aged 18-52 was used to examine the encode-and-retrieve phase, while particip…
Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives
Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive selective pressures that alter the content and structure so as to make it maximally transmittable. This paper presents a review of emerging research on content biases in cultural evolution with releva…
Chicken Tumours and a Fishy Revenge
This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred and twenty participants, aged 16–52, were asked to read and then recall urban legends that provoked both high levels and low levels of emotion and were both positively and negatively valenced. The prod…
An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy
Steve Stewart-Williams. The Ape That Understood the Universe
Article Steve Stewart-Williams. The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve was published on December 1, 2019 in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture (volume 3, issue 1)
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US election are consis…
Content biases in three phases of cultural transmission
Cultural evolution theory proposes that information transmitted through social learning is not transmitted indiscriminately but is instead biased by heuristics and mechanisms which increase the likelihood that individuals will copy particular cultural traits based on their inherent properties (content biases) and copy the cultural traits of particular models, or under particular circumstances (context biases). Recent research suggests that conten…
Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy
We conducted a nationally representative survey of parents' beliefs and self-reported behaviors regarding childhood vaccinations. Using Bayesian selection among multivariate models, we found that beliefs, even those without any vaccine or health content, predicted vaccine-hesitant behaviors better than demographics, social network effects, or scientific reasoning. The multivariate structure of beliefs combined many types of ideation that included…
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US elect…
The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories
Why is there so much diversity in fictional plots? Why are some fictional stories more popular in certain countries or during specific historical periods? In this paper, we propose an evolutionary psychological framework to address these questions. Fictional stories trigger a range of evolved psychological mechanisms—such as finding mates (romance fiction), exploring the world (adventure fiction), or avoiding threats (horror fiction). While these…
Curious about threats
Conspiracy theories allege secret plots between two or more powerful actors to achieve an outcome, sometimes explaining important events or proposing alternative understandings of reality in opposition to mainstream accounts, and commonly highlight the threat presented by the plot and its conspirators. Research in psychology proposes that belief in conspiracy theories is motivated by a desire to understand threats and is predicted by increased an…
Psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Cultural transmission in animals (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Language and cultural evolution (4 works) · Literature (4 works)