Science of Lay Theories

Dr. Claire Zedelius is working as a postdoctoral researcher in Jonathan Schooler’s META (Memory, Emotion, Thought, Awareness) lab. One of her research lines examines the effects of mind wandering or daydreaming on different aspects of creativity. Another line of her research focuses on the roles of meta-awareness and meta-cognitive beliefs in mind wandering. Claire did her dissertation research at the social psychology department at Utrecht University (the Netherlands), where she worked with Henk Aarts studying conscious and unconscious processes in human reward pursuit. Dr. Barbara Müller is an Assistant Professor at the Communication Science department of the Behavioural Science Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In her work, she investigates the developmental and neurocognitive mechanisms of human/robot interactions, and how these interactions can be improved. Her second line of research focuses on social influence in health communication. She is particularly interested in how people can convince themselves to adopt a healthy lifestyle, instead of being convinced by someone else. Barbara did her dissertation research at Radboud University, where she worked with Rick van Baaren and Ap Dijksterhuis on action co-representation of non-biological actions.  Dr. Jonathan Schooler is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara.  He oversees the META lab and is the Director of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential. Jonathan pursues research on consciousness, memory, the relationship between language and thought, problem-solving, and decision-making. He is particularly interested in exploring phenomena that intersect between the empirical and the philosophical such as how fluctuations in people’s awareness of their experience mediate mind-wandering and how people’s theories about the mind influence how they behave.

• Preface by Carol Dweck.- Part I: The origins and nature of lay theories.- Chapter 1. The Origins of Lay Theories: The Case of Essentialist Beliefs by Nick Haslam.- Chapter 2. The Motivated Fluidity of Lay Theories of Change by Anne E. Wilson and Jaslyn A. English.- Part II: Explorations in lay theories about human psychological attributes or phenomena.- Chapter 3. Lay Theories of Self-Control by Veronika Job and Gregory M. Walton.- Chapter 4. What are People’s Lay Theories about Mind Wandering and How do Those Beliefs Affect Them? by Claire M. Zedelius and Jonathan W. Schooler.- Chapter 5. Lay Theories of Creativity by Simone Ritter, and Eric Rietzschel.- Chapter 6. Mindsets about Malleability and Intergroup Relations by Aneeta Rattan, and Oriane Georgeac.- Chapter 7. Effects of Lay Beliefs on the Justice Motive by Michèlle Bal, and Kees van den Bos.- Part III: Insights into  lay theories about the metaphysical or supernatural.- Chapter 8. Antecedents, Manifestations, and Consequences of Belief in Mind-Body Dualism by Matthias Forstmann, and Pascal Burgmer.- Chapter 9. Lay Theories of the Mind/Brain Relationship and the Allure of Neuroscience by Diego Fernandez-Duque.- Chapter 10. Causes and Consequences of the Belief in Free Will by Davide  Rigoni, Axel Cleeremans, and Marcel Brass.- Chapter 11. Religion and its Cultural Evolutionary By-Products by Kristin Laurin.- Chapter 12. From the Impossible to the Improbable: A Probabilistic Account of Magical Beliefs and Practices Across Development and Cultures by Martin Fortier and Sunae Kim.- Part IV: Investigation of lay theories about mental and physical health.- Chapter 13. Mindsets of Body-Weight by Jeni L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt, and Kasey Orvidas.- Chapter 14. Lay Theories and Metaphors of Health and Illness by David J. Hauser, Randolph M. Nesse, and Norbert Schwarz.- Chapter 15. How Lay Theories Influenceour Mental Health by Adrian Furnham.