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Daniel Fessler

University of California, Los Angeles, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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Papers by Daniel Fessler

Electoral fortunes reverse, mindsets do not

PloS one, 2018

Conservatives and liberals have previously been shown to differ in the propensity to view sociall... more Conservatives and liberals have previously been shown to differ in the propensity to view socially-transmitted information about hazards as more plausible than that concerning benefits. Given differences between conservatives and liberals in threat sensitivity and dangerous-world beliefs, correlations between political orientation and negatively-biased credulity may thus reflect endogenous mindsets. Alternatively, such results may owe to the political hierarchy at the time of previous research, as the tendency to see dark forces at work is thought to be greater among those who are out of political power. Adjudicating between these accounts can inform how societies respond to the challenge of alarmist disinformation campaigns. We exploit the consequences of the 2016 U.S. elections to test these competing explanations of differences in negatively-biased credulity and conspiracism as a function of political orientation. Two studies of Americans reveal continued positive associations be...

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies

Psychological science, Jan 25, 2018

Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all form... more Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all forms of human social interaction. Here, we examined whether listeners around the world, irrespective of their own native language and culture, can distinguish between spontaneous laughter and volitional laughter-laugh types likely generated by different vocal-production systems. Using a set of 36 recorded laughs produced by female English speakers in tests involving 884 participants from 21 societies across six regions of the world, we asked listeners to determine whether each laugh was real or fake, and listeners differentiated between the two laugh types with an accuracy of 56% to 69%. Acoustic analysis revealed that sound features associated with arousal in vocal production predicted listeners' judgments fairly uniformly across societies. These results demonstrate high consistency across cultures in laughter judgments, underscoring the potential importance of nonverbal vocal communic...

Ectoparasite defence in humans: relationships to pathogen avoidance and clinical implications

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 19, 2018

Currently, disgust is regarded as the main adaptation for defence against pathogens and parasites... more Currently, disgust is regarded as the main adaptation for defence against pathogens and parasites in humans. Disgust's motivational and behavioural features, including withdrawal, nausea, appetite suppression and the urge to vomit, defend effectively against ingesting or touching sources of pathogens. However, ectoparasites do not attack their hosts via ingestion, but rather actively attach themselves to the body surface. Accordingly, by itself, disgust offers limited defence against ectoparasites. We propose that, like non-human animals, humans have a distinct ectoparasite defence system that includes cutaneous sensory mechanisms, itch-generation mechanisms and grooming behaviours. The existence of adaptations for ectoparasite defence is supported by abundant evidence from non-human animals, as well as more recent evidence concerning human responses to ectoparasite cues. Several clinical disorders may be dysfunctions of the ectoparasite defence system, including some that are p...

May God Guide Our Guns : Visualizing Supernatural Aid Heightens Team Confidence in a Paintball Battle Simulation

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), Jan 18, 2018

The perceived support of supernatural agents has been historically, ethnographically, and theoret... more The perceived support of supernatural agents has been historically, ethnographically, and theoretically linked with confidence in engaging in violent intergroup conflict. However, scant experimental investigations of such links have been reported to date, and the extant evidence derives largely from indirect laboratory methods of limited ecological validity. Here, we experimentally tested the hypothesis that perceived supernatural aid would heighten inclinations toward coalitional aggression using a realistic simulated coalitional combat paradigm: competitive team paintball. In a between-subjects design, US paintball players recruited for the study were experimentally primed with thoughts of supernatural support using a guided visualization exercise analogous to prayer, or with a control visualization of a nature scene. The participants then competed in a team paintball battle game modeled after "Capture the Flag." Immediately before and after the battle, participants comp...

An evolutionary account of vigilance in grief

Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2018

Grief is characterized by a number of cardinal cognitive symptoms, including preoccupation with t... more Grief is characterized by a number of cardinal cognitive symptoms, including preoccupation with thoughts of the deceased and vigilance toward indications that the deceased is in the environment. Compared with emotional symptoms, little attention has been paid to the ultimate function of vigilance in grief. Drawing on signal-detection theory, we propose that the ultimate function of vigilance is to facilitate the reunification (where possible) with a viable relationship partner following separation. Preoccupation with thoughts about the missing person creates the cognitive conditions necessary to maintain a low baseline threshold for the detection of the agent-any information associated with the agent is highly salient, and attention is correspondingly readily deployed toward such cues. These patterns are adaptive in cases of an absent but living partner, but maladaptive in cases of the death of a partner. That they occur in the latter likely reflects the intersection of error-manage...

Disgust as a Mechanism for Decision Making Under Risk: Illuminating Sex Differences and Individual Risk-Taking Correlates of Disgust Propensity

Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2018

The emotion disgust motivates costly behavioral strategies that mitigate against potentially larg... more The emotion disgust motivates costly behavioral strategies that mitigate against potentially larger costs associated with pathogens, sexual behavior, and moral transgressions. Because disgust thereby regulates exposure to harm, it is by definition a mechanism for calibrating decision making under risk. Understanding this illuminates two features of the demographic distribution of this emotion. First, this approach predicts and explains sex differences in disgust. Greater female disgust propensity is often reported and discussed in the literature, but, to date, conclusions have been based on informal comparisons across a small number of studies, while existing functionalist explanations are at best incomplete. We report the results of an extensive meta-analysis documenting this sex difference, arguing that key features of this pattern are best explained as one manifestation of a broad principle of the evolutionary biology of risk-taking: for a given potential benefit, males in an eff...

The effects of corpse viewing and corpse condition on vigilance for deceased loved ones

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2016

One cognitive facet of the adaptive response to the absence of a valued relationship partner is i... more One cognitive facet of the adaptive response to the absence of a valued relationship partner is increased vigilance toward indications of the agent's return, manifested in part as a lowered threshold for the detection of such indications. However, increased vigilance is dysfunctional when death is the cause of the partner's absence. Reliable cues of death should therefore diminish vigilance and raise detection thresholds. In the contemporary West, grief and related experiences often follow the death of a beloved pet, affording the opportunity to study the effects of exposure to cues of the death of a relationship partner free of the Western medicalized and professionalized aspects of human dying and mortuary preparation. Consonant with our thesis, in an online survey of 142 recently bereaved pet owners, we find evidence that seeing a corpse that exhibits reliable cues of death, such as grievous injuries or extensive disruptions to the body envelope, reduces vigilance to seek out the agent in the environment; in contrast, visual exposure to an intact corpse is insufficient to diminish vigilance for that agent. We discuss the implications of our evolutionary approach for bereavement research and modern funerary practices.

Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

Psychological science, 2017

To benefit from information provided by other people, people must be somewhat credulous. However,... more To benefit from information provided by other people, people must be somewhat credulous. However, credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing misinformation and failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, given that disregarding accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no equivalent asymmetry exists for information concerning benefits, people should generally be more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general and is more prominent among people who believe the world to be more dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and beliefs about the dangerousness of the world differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively correlate with negatively biased cr...

Synchronized behavior increases assessments of the formidability and cohesion of coalitions

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2016

Synchronized behavior is a common feature of martial drills and military parades in many societie... more Synchronized behavior is a common feature of martial drills and military parades in many societies. Hagen and colleagues (Hagen & Bryant, 2003; hypothesized that the intentional enactment of synchronized behavior evolved as a means of signaling coalitional strength, as individuals who can synchronize are able to act in concert in agonistic contexts. Previous research has explored either the subjective consequences of synchrony for participants in synchronized behaviors or the effect of synchrony on observers' impressions of rapport among the synchronized actors. Critically, left untested is the central tenet that, by communicating that the individuals constitute a coordinated unit, synchronized behaviors signal elevated fighting capacity. We tested this prediction in two studies by asking large U.S. samples to judge the envisioned physical formidability -previously demonstrated to summarize assessments of diverse determinants of fighting capacity -of U.S. soldiers or terrorists on the basis of audio tracks of either synchronous or asynchronous footsteps. Consonant with the agonistic signaling hypothesis, participants judged the synchronized target individuals to be larger and more muscular than the unsynchronized individuals, an effect mediated by their assessment that the former collectively constitute a single unified entity. Although synchronized footsteps also enhanced listeners' perceptions of social bonding among the target individuals, this assessment did not mediate their judgments of elevated formidability, suggesting that synchrony primarily signals fighting capacity via revealed entitativity rather than inferred motivation.

Suicide Bombings, weddings, and prison tattoos: An evolutionary perspective on subjective commitment and objective commitment

The Kiss of Death: Three Tests of the Relationship between Disease Threat and Ritualized Physical Contact within Traditional Cultures

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2017

The direct adaptive impact of rituals and other forms of behavior dictated or shaped by culture m... more The direct adaptive impact of rituals and other forms of behavior dictated or shaped by culture may be one factor influencing their persistence or lack thereof over time. Given that physical contact is a common means through which transmissible disease is spread, we explored the possibility that levels of normative physical contact would be negatively associated with levels of infectious disease prevalence. We tested this prediction across three domains of such behaviorgreetings, romantic kissing, and mortuary ritualsby compiling ethnographic information on normative behavior in traditional cultures and comparing it with epidemiological estimates of pathogen prevalence. We find small but significant negative correlations between pathogen prevalence and both greetings and romantic kissing. Ancillary analyses suggest that these relationships are driven by human-transmitted pathogens. The relationship between pathogen prevalence and mortuary rituals is non-significant. Causal mechanisms that may account for these results, as well as implications and limitations, are discussed.

Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 28, 2016

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-s... more Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms ...

Insurmountable Heat: The Evolution and Persistence of Defensive Hyperthermia

The Quarterly Review of Biology, 2016

Dressed to kill? Visible markers of coalitional affiliation enhance conceptualized formidability

Aggressive Behavior, 2016

Displaying markers of coalitional affiliation is a common feature of contemporary life. In 27 sit... more Displaying markers of coalitional affiliation is a common feature of contemporary life. In 27 situations in which interaction with members of rival coalitions is likely, signaling coalitional 28 affiliation may simultaneously constitute an implicit challenge to opponents and an objective 29 commitment device, binding signalers to their coalitions. Individuals who invite conflict, and 30 who cannot readily back out of conflict, constitute a greater threat than those who avoid conflict 31 and preserve the option of feigning neutrality. As a consequence, the former should be viewed 32 as more formidable than the latter. Recent research indicates that relative formidability is 33 summarized using the envisioned physical size and strength of a potential antagonist. Thus, 34 individuals who display markers of coalitional affiliation should be conceptualized as more 35 physically imposing than those who do not. We tested this prediction in two experiments. In 36 Study 1, conducted with U.S. university students, participants inspected images of sports fans' 37 faces. In Study 2, conducted with U.S. Mechanical Turk workers, participants read vignettes 38 depicting political partisans. In both studies, participants estimated the physical formidability of 39 the target individuals and reported their own ability to defend themselves; in Study 2, 40 participants estimated the target's aggressiveness. Consonant with predictions, targets depicted 41 as signaling coalitional affiliation in situations of potential conflict were envisioned to be more 42 physically formidable and more aggressive than were those not depicted as signaling thusly. 43 Underscoring that the calculations at issue concern the possibility of violent conflict, 44 participants' estimates of the protagonist's features were inversely correlated with their ability to 45 defend themselves.

Moral parochialism misunderstood: a reply to Piazza and Sousa

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016

Datasets to accompany Fessler, Holbrook, & Dashoff's Dressed to Kill

Xxxx, Jul 1, 2015

Author(s): Fessler, Daniel M.T.; Holbrook, Colin; Dashoff, David | Abstract: Complete datasets fo... more

With God on our side: Religious primes reduce the envisioned physical formidability of a menacing adversary

Cognition, Jan 30, 2015

The imagined support of benevolent supernatural agents attenuates anxiety and risk perception. He... more The imagined support of benevolent supernatural agents attenuates anxiety and risk perception. Here, we extend these findings to judgments of the threat posed by a potentially violent adversary. Conceptual representations of bodily size and strength summarize factors that determine the relative threat posed by foes. The proximity of allies moderates the envisioned physical formidability of adversaries, suggesting that cues of access to supernatural allies will reduce the envisioned physical formidability of a threatening target. Across two studies, subtle cues of both supernatural and earthly social support reduced the envisioned physical formidability of a violent criminal. These manipulations had no effect on the perceived likelihood of encountering non-conflictual physical danger, raising the possibility that imagined supernatural support leads participants to view themselves not as shielded from encountering perilous situations, but as protected should perils arise.

format_quoteSubtle God reminders increase risk-taking through decreased self-injury perceptions, paralleling social support effects.format_quote

Agent versus appraiser relativism: An exploratory study

Looming large in others’ eyes: Racial stereotypes illuminate dual adaptations for representing threat versus prestige as physical size

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2016

We hypothesize that, paralleling the evolution of human hierarchies from social structures based ... more We hypothesize that, paralleling the evolution of human hierarchies from social structures based on dominance to those based on prestige, adaptations for representing status are derived from those for representing relative fighting capacity. Because both violence and status are important adaptive challenges, the mind contains the ancestral representational system as well as the derived system. When the two representational tasks conflict, owing to the exigent nature of potential violence, the former should take precedence over the latter. Indeed, separate literatures indicate that, despite the fact that threatening traits are generally deleterious to prestige, both threatening individuals and high-status individuals are conceptually represented as physically large. We investigated the interplay between size-based representations of threat versus prestige by examining racial danger stereotypes. In three studies, we demonstrate that (a) judgments of status only positively correlate with envisioned body size for members of groups stereotyped as safe, (b) group-based inferences of interpersonal threat are mediated by representations of physical size, (c) controlling for perceived threatening aggressiveness reduces or reverses non-positive correlations between status and size, and (d) individuating information about relative threat or status attenuates the influence of group danger stereotypes. These results support our proposal that ancestral threat-representation mechanisms and derived mechanisms for representing social rank coexistand sometimes competein the mind.

Neuromodulation of Group Prejudice and Religious Belief

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2015

People cleave to ideological convictions with greater intensity in the aftermath of threat. The p... more People cleave to ideological convictions with greater intensity in the aftermath of threat. The posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) plays a key role in both detecting discrepancies between desired and current conditions and adjusting subsequent behavior to resolve such conflicts. Building on prior literature examining the role of the pMFC in shifts in relatively lowlevel decision processes, we demonstrate that the pMFC mediates adjustments in adherence to political and religious ideologies. We presented participants with a reminder of death and a critique of their in-group ostensibly written by a member of an out-group, then experimentally decreased both avowed belief in God and out-group derogation by down-regulating pMFC activity via transcranial magnetic stimulation. The results provide the first evidence that group prejudice and religious belief are susceptible to targeted neuromodulation, and point to a shared cognitive mechanism underlying concrete and abstract decision processes. We discuss the implications of these findings for further research characterizing the cognitive and affective mechanisms at play.