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Abstract
Beliefs about the world affect language processing and interpretation in several empirical domains. In two experiments, we tested whether subjective prior beliefs about the probability of utterance content modulate projection, that is, listeners' inferences about speaker commitment to that content. We find that prior beliefs predict projection at both the group and the participant level: the higher the prior belief in a content, the more speakers are taken to be committed to it. This result motivates the integration of formal analyses of projection with cognitive theories of language understanding.

Abstract
There are various approaches to building a picture of the 'spiritual' entities in which indigenous Formosans believed in 'Aboriginal Taiwan'. This article does so by studying what sources written in the seventeenth century tell us about them. One source was written by a Chinese observer, and others by two groups of Europeans: Dutch East India Company employees and Spanish missionaries. Thus, one methodological issue is that these authors looked at Formosan belief systems through the different lenses of their own religious experience and tried to fit the Formosan belief systems into their own 'existing knowledge grids'. A related problem is that the authors' usage of terms may differ and indeed does differ from modern usage in the anthropology of religion. Despite these methodological issues, the article argues that these sources indicate that different Formosan tribes believed in different spiritual entities and were therefore marked by their heterogeneity.

My commitment to combining normative concerns with empirical social science led, perhaps a bit counterintuitively, to early adoption of rational choice political economy. However, it was a modified form of rational choice that takes into account ethical and societal concerns. This was the approach I applied to considerations of compliance and consent with government, what makes a trustworthy government, the formation of legitimating beliefs, and finally the construction of an expanded and inclusive community of fate as a building block for a new moral political economy.

Aaron Zimmerman presents a new pragmatist account of belief, in terms of information poised to guide our more attentive, controlled actions. And he explores the consequences of this account for our understanding of the relation between psychology and philosophy, the mind and brain, the nature of delusion, faith, pretence, racism, and more.

Reviewed is work on subjective probability & strength of belief, particularly in situations involving a high degree of risk. Work concerned mostly with cognitive limitations & shortcomings is discussed & implications for societal responses to risky technology offered. There is, in the literature on subjective probability, a dearth of work on small probabilities & the emotional influence of belief formation on situations related to large social values. HA.

In the 1960s, camp's ironic register expanded to many of the decade's cultural and artistic discourses, becoming hegemonic in historical accounts. This essay examines the response of two queer diasporic Puerto Rican artists, the filmmaker José Rodríguez-Soltero and the drag performer "superstar" Mario Montez, who were members of New York's artistic underground, to such an expansion. While Puerto Rican and Latino migrants to the city were associated in the works of underground artists with a seamlessly unfractured culture of fervor and belief that often made their cultural practices illegible as "art," queer diasporic Puerto Rican artists, who were the product of multiple colonial and metropolitan displacements, promoted an aesthetics of mediation that combined calculation with surrender, and self-conscious dismantling of cinematic and artistic conventions with exaltation and belief. The essay further examines the recent comeback of Montez in contemporary queer debates on camp, failure, and shame in light of this diasporic aesthetics.

The contributors to this book also suggest the need for a more integrated perspective on the meaning, as well as the role, of knowledge and beliefs in economics in the future. Possible lines of future research such as the extension of the concept of rationality in economics or the focus on cognitive processes in economic action are discussed

The pattern of communications between representatives and constituents has become a matter of central concern to many students of legislative behavior. As Lewis A. Dexter points out, the statement that a Congressman "represents" his district is only shorthand for the fact that the Congressman "represents his image of the district or of his constituents." This image is established, according to Dexter, by the communications between representative and constituents: "what he hears from the district as he interprets it." Miller and Stokes explore directly Congressmen's images of their constituents' opinions. The representative's image of his district is significant because it may constitute part of the explanation for various important types of behavior, such as his roll call voting, the stands he takes on issues of public policy, and the formulation of his campaign strategies.A portion of a representative's image of his district is composed of his beliefs about voters, his explicit or implicit theory of voting behavior. Because his position is contingent upon the approval of a majority of voters in an election, he is likely to consider at least to some degree the effect that various of his decisions might have on election outcomes. In making such judgments, the representative probably makes some assumptions, conscious or not, about the manner in which voters make their choices. If he believes, for example, that voters pay close attention to his actions, he probably feels more constrained by his district's likely opinions than if he does not hold that belief.

AbstractAmericans have long believed in upward mobility and the narrative of the American Dream. Even in the face of rising income inequality and substantial empirical evidence that economic mobility has declined in recent decades, many Americans remain convinced of the prospects for upward mobility. What explains this disconnect? I argue that their media diets play an important role in explaining this puzzle. Specifically, contemporary Americans are watching a record number of entertainment TV programs that emphasize "rags‐to‐riches" narratives. I demonstrate that such shows have become a ubiquitous part of the media landscape over the last two decades. Online and lab‐in‐the‐field experiments as well as national surveys show that exposure to these programs increases viewers' beliefs in the American Dream and promotes internal attributions of wealth. Media exemplars present in what Americans leisurely consume every day can powerfully distort economic perceptions and have important implications for public preferences for economic redistribution.