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Narratives need not end well; nor say it all

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2023

Sara Andreetta
Affiliation:
Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, 34136 Trieste, Italy. sara.andreetta@ung.si davide.spalla@donders.ru.nl ale@sissa.it https://people.sissa.it/~ale/limbo.html
Davide Spalla
Affiliation:
Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, 34136 Trieste, Italy. sara.andreetta@ung.si davide.spalla@donders.ru.nl ale@sissa.it https://people.sissa.it/~ale/limbo.html
Alessandro Treves
Affiliation:
Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, 34136 Trieste, Italy. sara.andreetta@ung.si davide.spalla@donders.ru.nl ale@sissa.it https://people.sissa.it/~ale/limbo.html

Abstract

To fully embrace situations of radical uncertainty, we argue that the theory should abandon the requirements that narratives, in general, must lead to affective evaluation, and that they have to explain (and potentially simulate) all or even the bulk of the current decisional context. Evidence from studies of incidental learning show that narrative schemata can bias decisions while remaining fragmentary, insufficient for prediction, and devoid of utility values.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Current address: School of Humanities, Univerza v Novi Gorici, Vipavska 13, SI-5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

Current address: Postbus 9010 6500 GL Nijmegen, the Netherlands

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