Ryan Mckay
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3602302 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ryan Mckay |
| PRENOMES | Ryan |
| SOBRENOME | Mckay |
| ASSINATURA | MCKAY R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Royal Holloway University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7781-1539 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 50 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 121 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 50 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
A motley of attitudes
Magic is frequently employed in high-stakes contexts such as healing and divination, which suggests that its users take it to be efficacious. This poses a puzzle: why would broadly rational agents persist in practices that are, by their ostensible aims, ineffective? Existing accounts divide between intellectualist views, which hold that practitioners genuinely believe in the efficacy of magic, and non-intellectualist views, which argue that magic…
Uncoordinated, contradictory, yet cumulatively effective
Estimating the causal effects of cognitive effort and policy information on party cue influence
Party cues can influence public opinion, but the extent to which they do so varies dramatically from context to context. Why? The long‐standing theory that party cues function as “heuristics” provides an answer, predicting that variation in exposure to policy information, a propensity for effortful thinking, or both causally affects the influence of party cues. However, this prediction has escaped decisive empirical testing to date, leaving in it…
I once was blind”
Given ongoing debates about the nature and consequences of religious belief, effective procedures for experimentally controlling such beliefs are highly desirable. To date, however, there are few robust, replicable methods. Here, we show that the “choice blindness” paradigm can be leveraged to directly manipulate religious beliefs and attitudes in a way that avoids demand characteristics. Across three studies, a substantial portion of our partici…
Religion’s Hilbert problems, ten years later
From drowning to debunking
Social, Cognitive, and Affective Decision Making
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
God, Golf, and the Statistical Brain
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
A network approach to understanding social distancing behaviour during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic
OBJECTIVE: Given the highly infectious nature of COVID-19, social distancing practices are key in stemming the spread of the virus. We aimed to assess the complex interplay among psychological factors, socio-demographic characteristics and social distancing behaviours within the framework of the widely used Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behaviour (COM-B) model. DESIGN: The present research employed network psychometrics on data collected du…
Using creative methodology to explore LGBTQ+ love and relationship experiences across the lifespan
Important lessons can be learned from the intergenerational sharing of lifetime love and relationship stories between multigenerational LGBTQ + people, to inform education, healthcare, and policy. However, such exploratory studies have been limited. The aim of this co-creation study was to explore younger and older peoples’ LGBTQ + love and relationship experiences using creative methodology. Three 2-h virtual fictional writing and storytelling w…
Replacing the irreplaceable
International audience
Religion, Brain & Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards
International audience
The emotional consequences of novel political identities
Following the 2016 EU referendum on Britain's membership in the European Union, many people described themselves as “Leavers” or “Remainers.” Here, we examine the emotional responses associated with Brexit identities using survey data collected from two nationally representative samples of the British public in 2019 (N = 638) and 2021 (N = 2,058). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that many in both samples had coherent Leave or Remain identi…
The sound of swearing
Why do swear words sound the way they do? Swear words are often thought to have sounds that render them especially fit for purpose, facilitating the expression of emotion and attitude. To date, however, there has been no systematic cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic patterns in profanity. In an initial, pilot study we explored statistical regularities in the sounds of swear words across a range of typologically distant languages. The best…
Delusions as Epistemic Hypervigilance
Delusions are distressing and disabling symptoms of various clinical disorders. Delusions are associated with an aberrant and apparently contradictory treatment of evidence, characterized by both excessive credulity (adopting unusual beliefs on minimal evidence) and excessive rigidity (holding steadfast to these beliefs in the face of strong counterevidence). Here we attempt to make sense of this contradiction by considering the literature on epi…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
So Help Me God’? Does oath swearing in courtroom scenarios impact trial outcomes
In countries such as Britain and the US, court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence and are often compelled to publicly choose between religious (“oath”) and secular (“affirmation”) versions of this declaration. Might defendants who opt to swear an oath enjoy more favourable outcomes than those who choose to affirm? Two preliminary, pre‐registered survey studies using minimal vignettes (Study 1, N = 443; Study 2, N = 913) in…
What is the extent of a frequency-dependent social learning strategy space
Models of frequency-dependent social learning posit that individuals respond to the commonality of behaviours without additional variables modifying this. Such strategies bring important trade-offs e.g., conformity is beneficial when observing people facing the same task but harmful when observing those facing a different task. Instead of rigidly responding to frequencies, however, social learners might modulate their response given additional in…
The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity
People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers’ worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, whi…
Psychological characteristics associated with Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the United Kingdom
Identifying and understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy within distinct populations may aid future public health messaging. Using nationally representative data from the general adult populations of Ireland ( N = 1041) and the United Kingdom (UK; N = 2025), we found that vaccine hesitancy/resistance was evident for 35% and 31% of these populations respectively. Vaccine hesitant/resistant respondents in Ireland and the UK differed on a number of …
The Authoritarian Dynamic During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and out-groups. Using data from two large nationally representative samples of adults in the Un…
Collectively jumping to conclusions
False beliefs can spread within societies even when they are costly and when individuals share access to the same objective reality. Research on the cultural evolution of misbeliefs has demonstrated that a social context can explain what people think, but not whether it also explains how people think. We shift the focus from the diffusion of false beliefs to the diffusion of suboptimal belief-formation strategies, and identify a novel mechanism w…
Continuity and credibility in the Cognitive Science of Religion
Different Conspiracy Theories Have Different Psychological and Social Determinants
COVID-19 conspiracy theories have proliferated during the global pandemic, and their rapid spread among certain groups may jeopardize the public health response (e.g., undermining motivation to engage in social distancing and willingness to vaccinate against the virus). Using survey data from two waves of a nationally representative, longitudinal study of life in lockdown in the United Kingdom ( N = 1,406), we analyze the factors associated with …
Religion and morality
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated.Does religion make us more moral?Is it necessary for morality?Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions?These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations.Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose "religion" and "mor…
Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists
Moral polarization and out-party hostility in the US political context
Affective polarization describes the phenomenon whereby people identifying as Republican or Democrat tend to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively. Though extensively studied, there remain important gaps in scholarly understanding of affective polarization. In particular, (a) how it relates to the distinct behavioural phenomena of in-party “love” vs. out-party hostility; and (b) to what extent it reflects a generalized ev…
Positive experiences of high arousal martial arts rituals are linked to identity fusion and costly pro‐group actions
A cross‐sectional study was conducted with 605 practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu ( BJJ ) to test the hypothesis that high arousal rituals promote social cohesion, primarily through identity fusion. BJJ promotion rituals are rare, highly emotional ritual events that often feature gruelling belt‐whipping gauntlets. We used the variation in such experiences to examine whether more gruelling rituals were associated with identity fusion and pro‐gro…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity
People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers’ worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, whi…
Beliefs in national continuity are related to essentialist thinking and to perceptions of the nation as a family
National narratives serve to foster a sense of collective continuity—the perception that the nation has preserved its traits, values and goals across many generations. The present study explores some of the correlates of such perceptions of collective continuity (PCC). We predicted that people who see their nation as more continuous would tend to think about social groups in more strongly essentialist terms and to feel personally attached to othe…
Scenario planning tools for mitigating industrial impacts on First Nations subsistence economies in British Columbia, Canada
The Montney Play Trend (MPT) is a 1090 km 2 region in northeast British Columbia that produces approximately one-third of western Canada’s natural gas output. In response to a proposed expansion of the MPT in 2016, the Government of British Columbia launched a Regional Strategic Environmental Assessment (RSEA) to identify the necessary conditions to achieve sustainable environmental outcomes. In this paper, we describe the methods and scenario pl…
God, Golf, and the Statistical Brain
What is the extent of a frequency-dependent social learning strategy space
Models of frequency-dependent social learning posit that individuals respond to the commonality of behaviours without additional variables modifying this. Such strategies bring important trade-offs e.g., conformity is beneficial when observing people facing the same task but harmful when observing those facing a different task. Instead of rigidly responding to frequencies, however, social learners might modulate their response given additional in…
Different Conspiracy Theories Have Different Psychological and Social Determinants
COVID-19 conspiracy theories have proliferated during the global pandemic, and their rapid spread among certain groups may jeopardize the public health response (e.g., undermining motivation to engage in social distancing and willingness to vaccinate against the virus). Using survey data from two waves of a nationally representative, longitudinal study of life in lockdown in the United Kingdom ( N = 1,406), we analyze the factors associated with …
Do facial averageness and symmetry signal health?
Attributional style in a case of Cotard delusion
Models of misbelief
The evolution of misbelief
From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction …
The subtleties of error management
The sleep of reason
Catholic guilt? Recall of confession promotes prosocial behavior
Recent studies indicate that prosocial behavior is more likely when one feels guilty or when one's moral ledger has a negative balance. In light of such studies, we wondered whether religious rituals of atonement and absolution are, from the perspective of religious groups, counterproductive mechanisms for addressing the moral transgressions of group members. If sin is a form of capital, might absolution rituals squander that capital? We found th…
Can evolution get us off the hook? Evaluating the ecological defence of human rationality
This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of 'ecological rationality' have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallac…
Religion and morality
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated.Does religion make us more moral?Is it necessary for morality?Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions?These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations.Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose "religion" and "mor…
The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences
Willingness to lay down one’s life for a group of non-kin, well documented historically and ethnographically, represents an evolutionary puzzle. Building on research in social psychology, we develop a mathematical model showing how conditioning cooperation on previous shared experience can allow individually costly pro-group behavior to evolve. The model generates a series of predictions that we then test empirically in a range of special sample …
The Illusion of Moral Superiority
Most people strongly believe they are just, virtuous, and moral; yet regard the average person as distinctly less so. This invites accusations of irrationality in moral judgment and perception—but direct evidence of irrationality is absent. Here, we quantify this irrationality and compare it against the irrationality in other domains of positive self-evaluation. Participants ( N = 270) judged themselves and the average person on traits reflecting…
The optimist within? Selective sampling and self-deception
Why is belief in God not a delusion
Religious beliefs and delusions tend to be puzzling to those who do not share them, often violating established biological and physical principles. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that there is no meaningful difference between religious belief and delusion. This suggestion, however, has serious pragmatic limitations, as it effectively pathologizes billions of people. We propose that a core research goal should be to develop a comprehensive a…
Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists
The error of God, revisited
The role of experience in religion
Sterelny’s “re-explanation” of religion is rich and wide-ranging. In this brief commentary, I offer a gloss on two interrelated aspects: anomalous experience and agency detection.Sterelny suggests
Investigating the Relationship Between Self-Perceived Moral Superiority and Moral Behavior Using Economic Games
Most people report that they are superior to the average person on various moral traits. The psychological causes and social consequences of this phenomenon have received considerable empirical attention. The behavioral correlates of self-perceived moral superiority (SPMS), however, remain unknown. We present the results of two preregistered studies (Study 1, N = 827; Study 2, N = 825), in which we indirectly assessed participants’ SPMS and used …
Idolizing the indexical
Van Leeuwen and van Elk (hereafter VL & vE) present an interesting new framework for explaining how evolved cognitive predispositions (in particular, agency-detection capacities) figure in the acqu
Moral polarization and out-party hostility in the US political context
Affective polarization describes the phenomenon whereby people identifying as Republican or Democrat tend to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively. Though extensively studied, there remain important gaps in scholarly understanding of affective polarization. In particular, (a) how it relates to the distinct behavioural phenomena of in-party “love” vs. out-party hostility; and (b) to what extent it reflects a generalized ev…
Positive experiences of high arousal martial arts rituals are linked to identity fusion and costly pro‐group actions
A cross‐sectional study was conducted with 605 practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu ( BJJ ) to test the hypothesis that high arousal rituals promote social cohesion, primarily through identity fusion. BJJ promotion rituals are rare, highly emotional ritual events that often feature gruelling belt‐whipping gauntlets. We used the variation in such experiences to examine whether more gruelling rituals were associated with identity fusion and pro‐gro…
Anxiety, depression, traumatic stress and Covid-19-related anxiety in the UK general population during the Covid-19 pandemic
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented global crisis, necessitating drastic changes to living conditions, social life, personal freedom and economic activity. No study has yet examined the presence of psychiatric symptoms in the UK population under similar conditions. Aims We investigated the prevalence of COVID-19-related anxiety, generalised anxiety, depression and trauma symptoms in the UK population during an early phas…
Measuring supernatural belief implicitly using the Affect Misattribution Procedure
Asking about religious beliefs, or lack thereof, is a sensitive and complex issue. Due to cultural norms, people may be motivated to respond in a socially desirable way. In addition, deliberating about beliefs may yield different responses than intuition-based responses. To develop a better understanding of the relationship between intuition and self-reported belief, we developed a new implicit measure of supernatural belief. Specifically, we ada…
The evolution of distorted beliefs vs. mistaken choices under asymmetric error costs
Why do people sometimes hold unjustified beliefs and make harmful choices? Three hypotheses include (a) contemporary incentives in which some errors cost more than others, (b) cognitive biases evolved to manage ancestral incentives with variation in error costs and (c) social learning based on choice frequencies. With both modelling and a behavioural experiment, we examined all three mechanisms. The model and experiment support the conclusion tha…
Beliefs in national continuity are related to essentialist thinking and to perceptions of the nation as a family
National narratives serve to foster a sense of collective continuity—the perception that the nation has preserved its traits, values and goals across many generations. The present study explores some of the correlates of such perceptions of collective continuity (PCC). We predicted that people who see their nation as more continuous would tend to think about social groups in more strongly essentialist terms and to feel personally attached to othe…
Psychological characteristics associated with Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the United Kingdom
Identifying and understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy within distinct populations may aid future public health messaging. Using nationally representative data from the general adult populations of Ireland ( N = 1041) and the United Kingdom (UK; N = 2025), we found that vaccine hesitancy/resistance was evident for 35% and 31% of these populations respectively. Vaccine hesitant/resistant respondents in Ireland and the UK differed on a number of …
Psychology (39 obras) · Social Psychology (27 obras) · Epistemology (15 obras) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (15 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Cognition (12 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Cognitive psychology (11 obras) · Computer Science (10 obras) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (10 obras)