Entries by Constance Cummings

Focused Discussion: S4SN Annual Meeting (Feb 2021)

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The group discussed some key findings from the social neuroscience conference that shed light on neural underpinnings, or antecedents, of interpersonal biases and prejudice, primarily focusing on Shihui Han, Lasana Harris, Oriel FeldmanHall, and Kay Tye on (1) face perception/categorization; (2) dehumanization; (3) politically based neural synchrony; and (4) social homeostasis. Below is a brief recap of the talks mentioned followed by a summary of the CMB network discussion.

CMB Media Showcase

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Video and text summaries are now available of the CMB network meeting on Friday, January 29, 2021, to showcase the work of  CMB members who received honoraria last Summer as part of our Media Competency/Best Practices and Curricular Development Project. Presenters shared demonstrations and lessons learned from: Creating new online course modules; new forms of public outreach; online labs, activities, data analysis; podcasting; and video production.

List of Readings: Hearing Voices

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Hearing a voice, feeling the presence of another being, or feeling that another being is present in one’s own body are human experience that are both surprising common, and central to religious practice in many societies. They have been explained, or at least discussed scientifically, in a range of ways—dissociation, hypnosis, absorption, psychosis, reality monitoring and so forth— and there is still no settled consensus about how to make sense of these events or whether they are, in the end, the same kinds of events. All share what a non-faith perspective might call “non-agency”: a person experiences a thought or sensation, but attributes the thought or sensation to a source not themselves. We’ll talk about our work on this topic as a means of generating discussion.