Why are we good at detecting cheaters? A reply to Fodor.

Full Abstract

It is argued that the recent criticism by Fodor (Cognition 75 (2000) 29) of "cheater detection" in the Wason selection task is based upon a false presumption about what the task entails. Fodor compares two different ways of presenting the task, rather than two different task domains (social and non-social). Consequently, the conclusion that the selection task can tell us nothing about either the architecture or the history of cognition is invalid. Fodor's explanation of the Wason selection task is examined experimentally and compared to predictions derived from social contract theory (Cognition 31 (1989) 187). It is concluded that, although Fodor's variant of the Wason selection task improves performance, this improvement is independent of the task domain and is insufficient to account for the "cheater detection" effect.

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Author information

Author/s: Beaman, C Philip (CP);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Whiteknights, Reading, UK. c.p.beaman@reading.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Comment; Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial

Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Mar; vol 83 (issue 2) : pp 215-20; discussion 221

Dates: Created 2002/02/28; Completed 2002/05/13; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 11869725, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentOn: Cognition. 2000 Apr 14;75(1):29-32. (PMID: 10815776)

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