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{
    "pk": 28143,
    "title": "Entropy, order and agency: The cognitive basis of the link between agents and order",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "People often believe that orderly structures were created by\nagents. We examine the cognitive basis of this tendency,\nasking if learned associations or causal reasoning drives us to\nlink order with agents. Causal reasoning predicts that\nknowledge of an alternative physical-mechanical cause\nshould ‘explain away’ orderliness, weakening the link with\nagents. In a preregistered experiment, we manipulated the\ncontext to provide (or not provide) a physical-mechanical\nexplanation for orderly outcomes, and participants judged if\nan object or agent had been present. We compared outcomes\ndiffering in (a)levels of orderliness and (b)whether context\nprovided an alternative explanation. We found that\nenvironmental context ‘explained away’ orderliness, such that\nparticipants observing order inferred agency only when there\nwas no alternative explanation. The link between order and\nagents is moderated by causal reasoning, and is malleable: It\ncan be weakened by understanding alternative causal\nmechanisms by which order could arise.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "causal reasoning"
        },
        {
            "word": "inference"
        },
        {
            "word": "order"
        },
        {
            "word": "agency"
        },
        {
            "word": "animacy"
        },
        {
            "word": "music"
        },
        {
            "word": "event perception"
        },
        {
            "word": "social cognition"
        },
        {
            "word": "Religion"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Publication-based-Talks",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/74c6105q",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Adena",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Schachner",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCSD",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Min-Ju",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Kim",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UCSD",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2018-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28143/galley/17802/download/"
        }
    ]
}