In this enlightening exploration of our nearest primate relatives, Michael Tomasello and Josep Call address the current state of our knowledge about the cognitive skills of non-human primates and integrate empirical findings from the beginning of the century to the present.

As Bruner so eloquently points out, and Gauvain echoes, human beings are unique in their “locality.” Individual groups of humans develop their own unique ways of symbolizing and doing things – and these can be very different from the ways of other groups, even those living quite nearby. Our attempt in the target article was to propose a theory of the social-cognitive and social-motivational bases of humans' ability and propensity to live in this local, that is, this cultural, way – (...) which no other species does – focusing on such things as the ability to collaborate and to create shared material and symbolic artifacts. (shrink)

Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from. -/- Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes (...) place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities that emerge early in human ontogeny. These include capacities for sharing attention with other persons; for understanding that others have intentions of their own; and for imitating, not just what someone else does, but what someone else has intended to do. In his discussions of language, symbolic representation, and cognitive development, Tomasello describes with authority and ingenuity the "ratchet effect" of these capacities working over evolutionary and historical time to create the kind of cultural artifacts and settings within which each new generation of children develops. He also proposes a novel hypothesis, based on processes of social cognition and cultural evolution, about what makes the cognitive representations of humans different from those of other primates. -/- Lucid, erudite, and passionate, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition will be essential reading for developmental psychology, animal behavior, and cultural psychology. (from the HUP website). (shrink)

In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially ...

The aim of this article is to clarify the critical role of Hegel's early logic, through an assessment of the dialectical process of sublation [Aufhebung] of the determinations of finite thinking at stake within its exposition. I want to show that the dialectical-critical work of logic has a speculative meaning for Hegel, thereby displaying the inward correspondence between critical and speculative aspects of philosophical activity. By pointing out the evidence from fragmentary texts on logic relating to Hegel's teaching activity in (...) 1801–1802, I will first put into question the idea of an introductory role of logic. In so doing I challenge a widespread reading which argues for the presence of a sharp separation between critical logic and speculative metaphysics. I will then focus on the texts on logic in the 1804–1805 Reinschrift, reading them as the worksite wherein the dawning form of a full-fledged dialectical logic is first prepared and elaborated. More generally, if this paves the way for establishing a continuity between Hegel's early and mature logic and his concept of dialectic, it is also paramount for understanding how the activity of systematic philosophy in the mature version of the system essentially constitutes an ongoing work on the forms of the finite. (shrink)

As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by (...) other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for “cultural intelligence,” which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition. (shrink)

Although psychologists have paid scant attention to the sense of obligation as a distinctly human motivation, moral philosophers have identified two of its key features: First, it has a peremptory, demanding force, with a kind of coercive quality, and second, it is often tied to agreement-like social interactions in which breaches prompt normative protest, on the one side, and apologies, excuses, justifications, and guilt on the other. Drawing on empirical research in comparative and developmental psychology, I provide here a psychological (...) foundation for these unique features by showing that the human sense of obligation is intimately connected developmentally with the formation of a shared agent “we,” which not only directs collaborative efforts but also self-regulates them. Thus, children's sense of obligation is first evident inside, but not outside, of collaborative activities structured by joint agency with a partner, and it is later evident in attitudes toward in-group, but not out-group, members connected by collective agency. When you and I voluntarily place our fate in one another's hands in interdependent collaboration – scaled up to our lives together in an interdependent cultural group – this transforms the instrumental pressure that individuals feel when pursuing individual goals into the pressure that “we” put on me to live up to our shared expectations: a we > me self-regulation. The human sense of obligation may therefore be seen as a kind of self-conscious motivation. (shrink)

So far no clear explication of the notion of realization has been offered, in spite of the frequent uses of the notion in the literature to discharge important jobs, such as that of accounting for the causal efficacy of the mental in a physical world, and that of providing a viable characterization of physicalism, and/or psychophysical reduction. I put forward an account of realization as an identity-like relation. I argue that such account has the following advantages: it provides a picture (...) under which it makes sense to use the same term, i.e. 'realization', to pick out relations that differ in their relata, as it happened in the original uses of the term 'realization'; it helps to understand how well, if at all, some appeals to realization in the literature can discharge the jobs mentioned; more generally, it makes clear what realization can do. \\\ Hasta el momento no se ha expuesto detalladamente ninguna explicación clara de la nocion de realización, a pesar de que se usa con frecuencia en los textos filósoficos para desempeñar funciones importantes, como explicar la eflcacia causal de lo mental en un mundo fisico, y proporcionar una caracterización viable del fisicalismo, y/o de la reducción psicofisica. Presento una explicación de la realización como una relatión del tipo de la identidad. Sostengo que tal explicación tiene las siguientes ventajas: ofrece una caracterización dentro de cuyo marco resulta razonable usar el mismo termino, i.e., "realización", para distinguir relaciones que difieren en sus relata, como sucedió cuando se usó originalmente el termino "realizacion"; ayuda a comprender hasta que punto la realizacion que se invoca en algunos textos filosoficos puede desempeñar correctamente las tareas mencionadas; mas en general, aclara qué puede hacer la realización. (shrink)

This article analyses the Tractatus in psalmos 82, 83 and 84, reported in the two series that transmit Jerome’s homilies. The first part analyses the polemical terminology employed in regard to heretics and Jews, and the juxtaposition between the simplicity of the Christian style and the eloquence of rhetoricians. In the second part, the homilies of the two series are compared, and exegetical differences are pointed out. Lastly, an overview of a possible chronology of the Tractatus is proposed.

A proposal that extends the enactive approach developed in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to issues in affective science.

For many years emotion theory has been characterized by a dichotomy between the head and the body. In the golden years of cognitivism, during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, emotion theory focused on the cognitive antecedents of emotion, the so-called “appraisal processes.” Bodily events were seen largely as byproducts of cognition, and as too unspecific to contribute to the variety of emotion experience. Cognition was conceptualized as an abstract, intellectual, “heady” process separate from bodily events. Although current emotion theory has moved (...) beyond this disembodied stance by conceiving of emotions as involving both cognitive processes (perception, attention, and evaluation) and bodily events (arousal, behavior, and facial expressions), the legacy of cognitivism persists in the tendency to treat cognitive and bodily events as separate constituents of emotion. Thus the cognitive aspects of emotion are supposedly distinct and separate from the bodily ones. This separation indicates that cognitivism’s disembodied conception of cognition continues to shape the way emotion theorists conceptualize emotion. (shrink)

The idea for _Philosophy in a Time of Terror_ was born hours after the attacks on 9/11 and was realized just weeks later when Giovanna Borradori sat down with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in New York City, in separate interviews, to evaluate the significance of the most destructive terrorist act ever perpetrated. This book marks an unprecedented encounter between two of the most influential thinkers of our age as here, for the first time, Habermas and Derrida overcome their (...) mutual antagonism and agree to appear side by side. As the two philosophers disassemble and reassemble what we think we know about terrorism, they break from the familiar social and political rhetoric increasingly polarized between good and evil. In this process, we watch two of the greatest intellects of the century at work. (shrink)

The experience of agency refers to the feeling that we control our own actions, and through them the outside world. In many contexts, sense of agency has strong implications for moral responsibility. For example, a sense of agency may allow people to choose between right and wrong actions, either immediately, or on subsequent occasions through learning about the moral consequences of their actions. In this study we investigate the relation between the experience of operant action, and responsibility for action outcomes (...) using the intentional binding effect as an implicit, quantitative measure related to sense of agency. We studied the time at which people perceived simple manual actions and their effects, when these actions were embedded in scenarios where their actions had unpredictable consequences that could be either moral or merely economic. We found an enhanced binding of effects back towards the actions that caused them, implying an enhanced sense of agency, in moral compared to non-moral contexts. We also found stronger binding for effects with severely negative, compared to moderately negative, values. A tight temporal association between action and effect may be a low-level phenomenal marker of the sense of responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper we adopt Sterelny's framework of the scaffolded mind, and his related dimensional approach, to highlight the many ways in which human affectivity is environmentally supported. After discussing the relationship between the scaffolded-mind view and related frameworks, such as the extended-mind view, we illustrate the many ways in which our affective states are environmentally supported by items of material culture, other people, and their interplay. To do so, we draw on empirical evidence from various disciplines, and develop phenomenological (...) considerations to distinguish different ways in which we experience the world affectively. (shrink)

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and (...) evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention. Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Key Words: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention. (shrink)

How do we feel our body in emotion experience? In this paper I initially distinguish between foreground and background bodily feelings, and characterize them in some detail. Then I compare this distinction with the one between reflective and pre-reflective bodily self-awareness one finds in some recent philosophical phenomenological works, and conclude that both foreground and background bodily feelings can be understood as pre-reflective modes of bodily self-awareness that nevertheless differ in degree of self-presentation or self-intimation. Finally, I use the distinction (...) between foreground and background bodily feelings to characterize the experience of being absorbed in an activity, as opposed to accounts that imply that absorption involves bodily inconspicuousness. (shrink)

I introduce the special issue by: (1) outlining something of the relationship between mainstream cognitive science and the study of nonhuman primate cognition; (2) providing a brief overview of the scientific study of primate cognition and how the papers of this special issue fit into that scientific paradigm; and (3) explicating my own views about the relationship between nonhuman primate cognition and human cognition.

Emotion theorists tend to separate “arousal” and other bodily events such as “actions” from the evaluative component of emotion known as “appraisal.” This separation, I argue, implies phenomenologically implausible accounts of emotion elicitation and personhood. As an alternative, I attempt a reconceptualization of the notion of appraisal within the so-called “enactive approach.” I argue that appraisal is constituted by arousal and action, and I show how this view relates to an embodied and affective notion of personhood.

The theory of autopoiesis is central to the enactive approach. Recent works emphasize that the theory of autopoiesis is a theory of sense-making in living systems, i.e. of how living systems produce and consume meaning. In this chapter I first illustrate (some aspects of) these recent works, and interpret their notion of sense-making as a bodily cognitive- emotional form of understanding. Then I turn to modern emotion science, and I illustrate its tendency to over-intellectualize our capacity to evaluate and understand. (...) I show that this overintellectualization goes hand in hand with the rejection of the idea that the body is a vehicle of meaning. I explain why I think that this over-intellectualization is problematic, and try to reconceptualize the notion of evaluation in emotion theory in a way that is consistent and continuous with the autopoietic notion of sense-making. (shrink)

This target article presents a theory of human cultural learning. Cultural learning is identified with those instances of social learning in which intersubjectivity or perspective-taking plays a vital role, both in the original learning process and in the resulting cognitive product. Cultural learning manifests itself in three forms during human ontogeny: imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning – in that order. Evidence is provided that this progression arises from the developmental ordering of the underlying social-cognitive concepts and processes involved. (...) Imitative learning relies on a concept of intentional agent and involves simple perspective-taking. Instructed learning relies on a concept of mental agent and involves alternating/coordinated perspective-taking (intersubjectivity). Collaborative learning relies on a concept of reflective agent and involves integrated perspective-taking (reflective intersubjectivity). A comparison of normal children, autistic children and wild and enculturated chimpanzees provides further evidence for these correlations between social cognition and cultural learning. Cultural learning is a uniquely human form of social learning that allows for a fidelity of transmission of behaviors and information among conspecifics not possible in other forms of social learning, thereby providing the psychological basis for cultural evolution. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a decision procedure for Dummett's logic LC, such that with any given formula will be associated either a proof in a sequent calculus equivalent to LC or a finite linear Kripke countermodel.

Philosophical reflection is a constitutive element of Schiller’s dramatic production from its very beginning. This chapter reconstructs the different stages of the interaction between Schiller’s tragedies and philosophy, the turning point of which can be seen in his theoretical work inspired by Kant. In his early tragedies, philosophical themes enter directly into the dramatic construction: in Die Räuber, we find a philosophical anthropology and critique of materialism, whereas in Fiesco and in Don Karlos echoes of the thought of Shaftesbury, Montesquieu (...) and Ferguson bring out the relationship between moral principles and political action. Instead, the late tragedies, beginning with Wallenstein, show a more complex and critical attitude towards philosophical thought, and are partly conceived as a response to questions left open in his theoretical writings. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an experiment on mutual versus common knowledge of advice in a two-player weak-link game with random matching. Our experimental subjects play in pairs for thirteen rounds. After a brief learning phase common to all treatments, we vary the knowledge levels associated with external advice given in the form of a suggestion to pick the strategy supporting the payoff-dominant equilibrium. Our results are somewhat surprising and can be summarized as follows: in all our treatments both (...) the choice of the efficiency-inducing action and the percentage of efficient equilibrium play are higher with respect to the control treatment, revealing that even a condition as weak as mutual knowledge of level 1 is sufficient to significantly increase the salience of the efficient equilibrium with respect to the absence of advice. Furthermore, and contrary to our hypothesis, mutual knowledge of level 2 induces, under suitable conditions, successful coordination more frequently than common knowledge. (shrink)

Las Comunidades de Aprendizaje son reconocidas por sus estrategias de inclusión y participación democrática. El objetivo de este texto es conocer las estrategias de participación democrática que se llevan a cabo en una escuela constituida como Comunidad de Aprendizaje. Los resultados muestran las experiencias de éxito educativo, convivencia e implicación de la comunidad educativa que surgen como consecuencia de la transformación de la escuela hacia un proyecto más inclusivo y participativo. En definitiva, la participación democrática representa una estrategia educativa y (...) reivindicativa que pretende acabar con las desigualdades que convergen en los espacios educativos. (shrink)

explanation of the mention of the goats of Scyros in [Hp.] Mul. I 44 in the context of dietary advices for nursing mothers.

Vittorio Guidano, fondatore della psicoterapia cognitivista post-razionalista, ha offerto alcuni spunti di riflessione sui cambiamenti del senso di identità che presumibilmente si sono succeduti nel corso delle epoche storiche in relazione ai diversi contesti di vita. Dell’interesse per questo tema testimonia una lezione, di cui l’autrice riporta alcuni stralci sinora inediti. La lezione si è tenuta a Roma, presso l’APC- Associazione di Psicoterapia Cognitiva, in data 26 gennaio del 1999, nell’ambito di un training di formazione in psicoterapia. Il tema discusso (...) è l’influenza della scrittura alfabetica nel dar forma all’esperienza umana, un argomento su cui è possibile intrecciare proficuamente le analisi di Guidano e le riflessioni di Carlo Sini. (shrink)

Currently, many consumers have expressed strong opinions about food production process, its distribution, and guaranteeing models. Consumers’ concerns about ecological and social sustainability issues can have significant impacts on both food demand and food policies. The choice of approach to an asset or service could determine the orientation of the markets; therefore, it is particularly important to pay attention to novel, collective, social movements which are practicing alternatives to the mainstream models of production, distribution, and consumption. Farmers markets, solidarity-based purchasing (...) groups, box scheme, shopping groups, ‘pick your own’, social shopping, are all examples of sustainable consumption patterns involving thousands of people seeking quality and ethical products and services at the best price. While a variety of definitions of the concept of ethical consumption have been suggested, throughout this paper it will refer to the participation of consumers in, and their orientation toward, political discourses on sustainable and fair agro-food production. Ethical consumption attitude has been analysed in the framework of political consumerism theory by administering six focus groups among Italian participants of a specific form of collective action, namely the solidarity-based purchasing group. Findings provide insights that represent a fruitful starting point for deepening the analysis of ethical consumers’ behaviour at a broader level in order to sustain and spread eco-socially production practices and ethical consumption behaviour. (shrink)

Objectives: Investigate and identify the relationship between physical exercise and cognitive performance measured by using different cognitive tests taken from Cambridge Brain Science.Methods: Thirty subjects, divided into two groups, undergo twelve cognitive tests from CBS. A comparison between the pre- and post-exercise results in terms of cognitive performance differences is carried out. Regression analysis between Heart Rate Variability features and CBS tests results is performed.Results: In most CBS tests, there is an improvement, or at least a confirmation, of the subject's (...) cognitive ability, for both groups. Reasoning, concentration, and planning tests seem to undergo critical positive changes. The regression analysis, performed by using a set of different algorithms, has demonstrated that it is possible, by monitoring the HRV during the exercise, to predict to some extent the cognitive performance, i.e., the CBS tests results. The best performing regression algorithms are Simple Linear and REPTree. The statistical analysis has proved that physical activity is statistically useful for the subjects in improving their cognitive performance.Conclusions: This study has numerically appraised the improvement, the conservation, or the worsening on different aspects of cognition. The found mathematical relationship between physical exercise and cognitive performance suggests that it is possible to predict the beneficial effect of various exercises on executive and attentive control. (shrink)

To explain the evolutionary emergence of uniquely human skills and motivations for cooperation, Tomasello et al. (2012, in Current Anthropology 53(6):673–92) proposed the interdependence hypothesis. The key adaptive context in this account was the obligate collaborative foraging of early human adults. Hawkes (2014, in Human Nature 25(1):28–48), following Hrdy (Mothers and Others, Harvard University Press, 2009), provided an alternative account for the emergence of uniquely human cooperative skills in which the key was early human infants’ attempts to solicit care (...) and attention from adults in a cooperative breeding context. Here we attempt to reconcile these two accounts. Our composite account accepts Hrdy’s and Hawkes’s contention that the extremely early emergence of human infants’ cooperative skills suggests an important role for cooperative breeding as adaptive context, perhaps in early Homo. But our account also insists that human cooperation goes well beyond these nascent skills to include such things as the communicative and cultural conventions, norms, and institutions created by later Homo and early modern humans to deal with adult problems of social coordination. As part of this account we hypothesize how each of the main stages of human ontogeny (infancy, childhood, adolescence) was transformed during evolution both by infants’ cooperative skills “migrating up” in age and by adults’ cooperative skills “migrating down” in age. (shrink)

Although trust and reciprocity are ubiquitous in social exchange, their neurobiological substrate remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—a brain region critical for valuing social information—on individuals’ decisions in a trust game and in a risk game. In the trust game, one player, the investor, is endowed with a sum of money, which she can keep or invest. The amount she decides to invest is tripled and sent to the other player, (...) the trustee, who then decides what fraction to return to the investor. In separate runs, ten patients with focal bilateral damage to the vmPFC and control participants made decision while playing in the role of either investor or trustee with different anonymous counterparts in each run. A risk game was also included in which the investor faced exactly the same decisions as in the trust game, but a random device (i.e., a computer), not another player, determined the final payoffs. Results showed that vmPFC patients’ investments were not modulated by the type of opponent player (e.g., human vs. computer) present in the environment. Thus, vmPFC patients showed comparable risk-taking preferences both in social (trust game) and nonsocial (risk game) contexts. In stark contrast, control participants were less willing to take risk and invest when they believed that they were interacting with people than a computer. Furthermore, when acted as trustee, vmPFC patients made lower back transfers toward investors, thereby showing less reciprocity behavior. Taken together, these results indicate that social valuation and emotion subserved by vmPFC have a critical role in trusting and reciprocity decisions. The present findings support the hypothesis that vmPFC damage may impair affective systems specifically designed for mediating social transaction with other individuals. (shrink)

Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic motives; it is more likely a result of (...) children’s growing identification with their cultural group, which leads to prosocial motives for preserving its ways of doing things. (shrink)

Recent analytic-philosophical works in the field of situated cognition have proposed to conceptualize the self as deeply entwined with the environment, and even as constituted by it. A common move has been to characterize the self in narrative terms, and then to argue that the narrative self is partly constituted by narratives about the past that are scaffolded (shaped and maintained) by, or distributed over, a variety of objects that can rekindle episodic memories. While we are sympathetic to these approaches, (...) here we propose a different strategy to situate the self—one which can be seen as complementing the narrative one, and which draws from concepts and ideas central to the phenomenological-existentialist tradition. We suggest, first, that the self has a sense of its past not just via narratives and episodic memories, but in virtue of being embodied and thus, importantly, _sedimented_ (in other words, it has, or rather is, a _body memory_). Embodiment and sedimentation, in turn, always necessarily imply an environment or a situation, entailing that the self is also _inherently situated_. Second, we discuss the future-oriented dimension of selfhood, and argue that we understand ourselves as _projected_ into the future, again not necessarily only narratively and reflectively, but also tacitly, in a bodily and inherently situated way. (shrink)

«Si lo que se busca es una guía definitiva que explique cómo los humanos se convirtieron en una especie ultracooperativa y, eventualmente, moral, Una historia natural de la moralidad humana es el libro indicado. Después de Una historia natural del pensamiento humano, el antropólogo evolutivo Michael Tomasello nos brinda otra contribución seminal.» —New Scientist. Una historia natural de la moralidad humana ofrece la explicación más detallada de la evolución de la psicología moral humana. Según Tomasello, hubo dos etapas (...) clave en esta evolución. La primera se dio en la medida en que los retos ecológicos obligaron a los humanos primigenios a recolectar en grupo o morir. Para coordinar estas actividades colaborativas, los humanos desarrollaron habilidades cognitivas de intencionalidad conjunta que aseguraban que los socios supieran los estándares normativos de cada rol y los comprometían a repartirse lo recolectado según un sentido compartido de confianza, respeto y responsabilidad. La segunda etapa se dio en la medida en que la población humana creció y la división del trabajo se hizo más compleja. Surgieron distintos grupos culturales que exigían de sus miembros lealtad, acuerdo e identidad cultural. Al ser miembros de un nuevo «nosotros» cultural, los humanos modernos desarrollaron habilidades cognitivas de intencionalidad colectiva, que dieron lugar a normas del bien y del mal, creadas y objetivadas culturalmente, que todos en el grupo pudieran ver como legítimas para aquellos que fueran uno de «nosotros». Así, Tomasello reconstruye, basado en extensos datos experimentales que comparan a los grandes simios con los niños, la manera en que los humanos primigenios se convirtieron gradualmente en una especie ultracooperativa y, eventualmente, moral. (shrink)

Family firms are ubiquitous and play a crucial role across all world economies, but how they differ in the disclosure of social and environmental actions from non-family firms has been largely overlooked in the literature. Advancing the discourse on corporate social responsibility reporting, we examine how family influence on a business organization affects CSR reporting. The arguments developed here draw on institutional theory, using a rich body of empirical evidence gathered through a content analysis of the CSR reports of 98 (...) large- and medium-sized Italian firms. The grounded theory analysis informs and contextualizes several differences in the type and content of corporate social responsibility reports of family and non-family firms. Our findings show that in comparison to non-family firms, family firms disseminate a greater variety of CSR reports, are less compliant with CSR standards and place emphasis on different CSR topics. We, thus, contribute to the family business and corporate social responsibility reporting literatures in several ways, offering implications for practice and outlining promising avenues for future research. (shrink)