Abstract
People often think of other people who have died, and yet this is an underexplored area of social psychology. We discuss the ways in which the living think of the dead (e.g., how they remember or imagine them), and how the mental processes and states of the living affect that construal. Moreover, we discuss how thinking of the dead can influence the behaviors and thoughts of the living. Throughout the paper, new hypotheses are laid out, setting an agenda for future research. Moreover, a fundamental question is discussed: Is there something special in how the living think of the dead, or are those thought processes the same as those involved in how the living think of each other?
Add the publication’s full text or supplementary notes here. You can use rich formatting such as including code, math, and images.
Francisco Cruz
Invited Assistant Professor
Francisco Cruz is an invited assistant professor in psychology, statistics, and methods at the Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, and Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Europeia. Junior Consulting Editor at the Journal of European Social Psychology, 2025-present. Social Psychology Ph.D. on lay beliefs about science, supervised by Prof. André Mata (Universidade de Lisboa) and Prof. Tania Lombrozo (Princeton University), 2022-2025. Visiting Student Research Collaborator at Princeton University, 2023-2024. Society for General Psychology and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Fulbright Portugal, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia awardee. His research interests include lay beliefs about science (i.e., what people believe that science can or cannot explain and why), motivated beliefs in science (i.e., the contexts in which people are more prone to accepting scientific explanations), representation of social groups (i.e., how people integrate information to provide judgments on shared homogeneity vs. heterogeneity across group members), epistemic trespassing (i.e., when people provide judgments on domains beyond those in which they are experts), intuitive mind-body dualism (i.e., a natural tendency to see the world as split in material and immaterial portions), and face perception (i.e., features driving the advantage in recall for own- vs. other-race faces).