De nombreux critiques se sont penchés sur le caractère fantastique des romans d’Iris Murdoch, d’autres ont évoqué la notion du bien. Nous avons voulu dans cet écrit mettre en relation les deux notions et montrer qu’à travers le fantastique Iris Murdoch conduit son lecteur sur le chemin du bien dans cinq romans : The Bell, A Severed Head, The Italian Girl, Bruno’s Dream et Jackson’s Dilemma. Dans une première partie, après avoir proposé quelques définitions du fantastique, nous avons relevé dans le texte murdochien tous les éléments qui nous permettent de lui apposer cette étiquette. Par l’étude de l’illusion d’optique, nous avons pu confirmer que le fantastique prend sa source dans une fissure du réel et fait sourdre un monde où règnent peur, doute, rêve et folie. Nous avons, par la suite, analysé les symboles spécifiques du genre. Dans une deuxième partie nous avons examiné le rôle du lecteur dans les écrits de la romancière et tenté de comprendre en quoi la notion de fantastique pouvait influencer le sens de sa lecture. Dans une dernière partie nous avons établi qu’Iris Murdoch s’appuie sur l’aspect fantastique et inexplicable de la nature humaine pour orienter son lecteur vers le chemin du bien. La contingence à laquelle Iris Murdoch est particulièrement attachée, c’est-à-dire l’acceptation que tout ne peut être maîtrisé, force le lecteur à reconnaître que son destin lui échappe. Dès lors il lui est possible de lâcher prise et de ne plus mettre en avant un ego aveuglant. Il devient un homme humble capable d’un amour altruiste qui l’entraîne vers le bien où se réunissent la mort, l’amour et la littérature. / A number of reviewers have dealt with the fantastic character of Iris Murdoch’s novels, others have mentioned the Good. In this study we have aimed at linking both notions to show, in five of her novels: A Severed Head, The Bell, The Italian Girl, Bruno’s Dream and Jackson’s Dilemma, that through the ‘Fantastic’ Iris Murdoch leads her reader on the way to the “Good”.In the first part, after giving a definition of the word ‘fantastic’ we have selected all the elements that point towards the fantastic features in Iris Murdoch’s writings. Starting with the optical illusion, we have shown that the ‘Fantastic’ originates from a break in reality which gives birth to fear, doubt, dream and madness. We have then analyzed the symbols that characterize the genre. In the second part, we have examined the role of the reader in Iris Murdoch’s novels and we have tried to understand in what way the ‘Fantastic’ could influence readers. In the last part we have shown that Iris Murdoch relies on the “Fantastic” and the unexplainable aspect of human beings to lead her reader on the way to the “Good”. Contingency- that is admitting that not everything can have an explanation- which Iris Murdoch sees as of paramount importance, forces the reader to realize that he cannot master his destiny. Therefore the reader cannot do anything other than let go and stop putting forward a blind ego. He or she then becomes a humble man, able to feel an altruistic love that will take him or her on the way to the Good in which death, love and literature are connected.

Making inferences in communication is a highly context-dependent endeavor. Previous research found cultural variations for context-sensitivity as well as for communication comprehension. However, the relative impact of culture and context-sensitivity on communication comprehension has not been investigated so far. The current study aimed at investigating this interplay and tested 4- and 6-year-old children from Germany (n = 132) and China (n = 129). Context-sensitivity was measured with an adapted version of the Ebbinghaus illusion. In this task, children have to discriminate the size of two target circles that only appear to be of similar size due to context circles surrounding the target circles. As expected, performance scores indicated higher degrees of context-sensitivity in Chinese compared to German children and that 6-year-olds were more context-sensitive than 4-year-olds. Further, in an object-choice communication-comprehension task, children watched videos with puppets performing everyday activities (e.g., pet care) and had to choose between two options (e.g., dog or rabbit). A puppet expressed what she wanted either directly (“I want the rabbit”) or indirectly (“I have a carrot”). The children had to choose one option to give to the puppet. In both cultures, 6-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds and children understood direct communication better than indirect communication. Culture was found to affect children’s processing speed of direct communication. Moreover, culture influenced children’s context-sensitivity while contextsensitivity influenced children’s accuracy in the indirect (but not the direct) communication task. These findings demonstrate that taking context into account is especially important when we are confronted with indirect communication.

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This thesis explores a web-based method to do studies in cultural evolution. Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is defined as social learning that allows for the accumulation of changes over time where successful modifications are maintained until additional change is introduced. In the past few decades, many interdisciplinary studies were conducted on cultural evolution. However, until recently most of those studies were limited to lab experiments. This thesis aims to address the limitations of the experimental methods by replicating a lab-based experiment online. A web-based application was developed and used for replicating an experiment on conformity by Solomon Asch [1951]. The developed application engages participants in an optical illusion test within different groups of social influence. The major finding of the study reveals that conformity increases on trials with higher social influence. In addition, it was also found that when the task becomes more difficult, the subject's conformity increases. These findings were also reported in the original experiment. The results of the study showed that lab-based experiments in cultural evolution studies can be replicated over the web with quantitatively similar results.