The target article challenges standard approaches to prejudice reduction, warning that they may inure people to inequality and deflect them from seeking collective solutions to it. I argue that the collective action approach has its own risks and limitations and that standard contact and common identity approaches may complement rather than work against it.

Fincher & Thornhill (F&T) present a model of in-group assortative sociality resulting from differing levels of parasite-stress in differing geographical locations in the United States and the world. Their model, while compelling, overlooks some important issues, such as mutualistic associations with parasites that are beneficial to humans and how some religious practices increase parasite risk.

In this commentary, we do two things. First, we sketch two further routes to psychological constructionism. They are complementary to Lindquist et al.'s meta-analyses and have potential to add new evidence. Second, we look at a challenging kind of case for constructionism, namely, emotional anomalies where there are correlated, and probably relevant, brain anomalies. Psychopaths are our example.

Design features for language and stone toolmaking (not tool use) involve similar if not homologous cognitive processes. Both are arbitrary transformations of internal “intrinsic” symbolization, whereas non-human tool using is mostly an iconic transformation. The major discontinuity between humans and non-humans (chimpanzees) is language. The presence of stone tools made to standardized patterns suggests communicative and social control skills that involved language.

Children's reading and spelling errors show that orthographic learning involves complex interactions with phonology, morphology, and meaning throughout development. Even young children seek to make their visual word recognition strategies linguistically coherent. Orthographic knowledge gained through spelling affects reading, and vice versa. Developmental data support Frost's claim that letter-coding flexibility reflects the optimization of encoding resources in a highly developed system.

Guala argues that there is a mismatch between most laboratory experiments on costly punishment and behavior in the field. In the lab, experimental designs typically suppress retaliation. The same is true for most theoretical models of the co-evolution of costly punishment and cooperation, which a priori exclude the possibility of defectors punishing cooperators.

We propose that Vaesen's target article (a) underestimates the role of language in humans' cognitive toolkit and thereby (b) overestimates the proposed cognitive discontinuity between chimps and humans. We provide examples of labeling, numerical computation, executive control, and the relation between language and body, concluding that language plays a crucial role in “supersizing humans' cognitive toolkit.”

We suggest that, in animals, the core-affect system is linked to partially assimilated behavioral dispositions that act as developmental scaffolds for the ontogenetic construction of emotions. We also propose that in humans the evolution of language altered the control of emotions, leading to categories that can be adequately captured only by emotion-words.

Frost proposes a new agenda for reading research, whereby cross-linguistic experiments would uncover linguistic universals to be integrated within a universal theory of reading. We reveal the dangers of following such a call, and demonstrate the superiority of the very approach that Frost condemns.

Group assortative biases are stronger in regions where pathogen stress has been historically prevalent. Pushing the logic of this approach, extensions should include investigations of how cultural norms related to prosociality and relational striving may also covary with regional pathogen stress. Likewise, the pan-specific observation that diseased animals show decreased motor activity to facilitate recovery suggests that norms relevant to sickness behaviors may also vary as a function of regional parasite stress.

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.

Three points that are implicit in Dixon et al.'s paradigm-challenging paper serve to make prejudice potent. First, prejudice reflects understandings of social identity – the relationship of “us” to “them” – that are shared within particular groups. Second, these understandings are actively promoted by leaders who represent and advance in-group identity. Third, prejudice is identified in out-groups, not in-groups.

The author describes “higher” and “uniquely human” sociocognitive skills that he argues as being necessary for tool use. We propose that those skills could be based on simpler detection systems humans could share with other animal tool users. More specifically, we discuss the impact of object affordances on the understanding and the social learning of tool use.

In addition to active wake, emotions are generated and experienced in a variety of functionally different states such as those of sleep, during which external stimulation and cognitive control are lacking. The neural basis of emotions can be specified by regarding the multitude of emotion-related brain states, as well as the distinct neuro- and psychodynamic stages (generation and regulation) of emotional experience.

The principles for universal reading models proposed by Frost correspond to developmental theories, in which neurocognitive constraints and cultural experiences shape development. We question his contention that Hebrew word identification is fundamentally about roots, excluding verbal and nominal word-pattern morphemes; and we propose that readers use all information available in stimuli, adjusting for volume and usefulness.

Dixon et al. overlook the fact that contact predicts not only favorable out-group attitudes/evaluations, but also cognitions, affect, and behavior. The weight of evidence supporting the benefits of intergroup contact cautions against throwing the (contact) baby out with the bathwater. The goal to “ignite struggles” in pursuit of social equality, we argue, incautiously risks hurling us down the proverbial rabbit hole.

The hypothesis that high levels of religiosity are partly caused by high disease loads is in accord with studies showing that societal dysfunction promotes mass supernaturalism. However, some cultures suffering from high rates of disease and other socioeconomic dysfunction exhibit low levels of popular religiosity. At this point, it appears that religion is hard pressed to thrive in healthy societies, but poor conditions do not always make religion popular, either.

It is argued that the generality of strong reciprocity theory (SRT) is limited by the existence of anonymous spontaneous cooperation, maintained in the absence of punishment, despite free-riding. We highlight how individual differences, status, sex, and the legitimacy of non-cooperation need to be examined to increase the internal and ecological validity of SRT experiments and, ultimately, SRT's external validity.

I argue that field (experimental) studies on (costly) peer punishment in social dilemmas face the problem that in equilibrium punishment will be rare and therefore may be hard to observe in the field. I also argue that the behavioral logic uncovered by lab experiments is not fundamentally different from the behavioral logic of cooperation in the field.

Dixon et al. have highlighted the importance of a political conceptualisation of intergroup relations that challenges individualising models of social change. As important as this paper is for the development of critical debates in psychology, we can detect at least three issues that warrant further discussion: (a) the cultural and historical conditions of structural inequality and its perception, (b) the marginalisation of post-colonial works on collective mobilisation, and (c) acknowledging the complex perspectives and politics of those targeted by prejudice.