32 research outputs found
Character and theory of mind: an integrative approach
Traditionally, theories of mindreading have focused on the representation of beliefs and desires. However, decades of social psychology and social neuroscience have shown that, in addition to reasoning about beliefs and desires, human beings also use representations of character traits to predict and interpret behavior. While a few recent accounts have attempted to accommodate these findings, they have not succeeded in explaining the relation between trait attribution and belief-desire reasoning. On my account, character-trait attribution is part of a hierarchical system for action prediction, and serves to inform hypotheses about agentsâ beliefs and desires, which are in turn used to predict and interpret behavior
Beyond âInteractionâ: How to Understand Social Effects on Social Cognition
In recent years, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have advocated for an âinteractive turnâ in the methodology of social-cognition research: to become more ecologically valid, we must design experiments that are interactive, rather than merely observational. While the practical aim of improving ecological validity in the study of social cognition is laudable, we think that the notion of âinteractionâ is not suitable for this task: as it is currently deployed in the social cognition literature, this notion leads to serious conceptual and methodological confusion. In this paper, we tackle this confusion on three fronts: 1) we revise the âinteractionistâ definition of interaction; 2) we demonstrate a number of potential methodological confounds that arise in interactive experimental designs; and 3) we show that ersatz interactivity works just as well as the real thing. We conclude that the notion of âinteractionâ, as it is currently being deployed in this literature, obscures an accurate understanding of human social cognition
Spontaneous mindreading: a problem for the two-systems account
According to the two-systems account of mindreading, our mature perspective-taking abilities are subserved by two distinct mindreading systems: a fast but inflexible, âimplicitâ system, and a flexible but slow âexplicitâ one. However, the currently available evidence on adult perspective-taking does not support this account. Specifically, both Level-1 and Level-2 perspective-taking show a combination of efficiency and flexibility that is deeply inconsistent with the two-systems architecture. This inconsistency also turns out to have serious consequences for the two-systems framework as a whole, both as an account of our mature mindreading abilities and of the development of those abilities. What emerges from this critique is a conception of context-sensitive, spontaneous mindreading that may provide insight into how mindreading functions in complex social environments. This in turn offers a bulwark against skepticism about the role of mindreading in everyday social cognition
Stereotypes, theory of mind, and the actionâprediction hierarchy
Both mindreading and stereotyping are forms of social cognition that play a pervasive role in our everyday lives, yet too little attention has been paid to the question of how these two processes are related. This paper offers a theory of the influence of stereotyping on mental-state attribution that draws on hierarchical predictive coding accounts of action prediction. It is argued that the key to understanding the relation between stereotyping and mindreading lies in the fact that stereotypes centrally involve character-trait attributions, which play a systematic role in the actionâprediction hierarchy. On this view, when we apply a stereotype to an individual, we rapidly attribute to her a cluster of generic character traits on the basis of her perceived social group membership. These traits are then used to make inferences about that individualâs likely beliefs and desires, which in turn inform inferences about her behavior
THE ARCHITECTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MINDREADING: BELIEFS, PERSPECTIVES, AND CHARACTER
This dissertation puts forward a series of arguments and theoretical proposals about the architecture and development of the human capacity to reason about the internal, psychological causes of behavior, known as âtheory of mindâ or âmindreading.â
Chapter 1, âFoundations and motivations,â begins by articulating the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary theory-of-mind debates, especially the dispute between empiricists and nativists. I then argue for a nativist approach to theory-of-mind development, and then go on to outline how the subsequent chapters each address specific challenges for this nativist perspective.
Chapter 2, âPragmatic development and the false-belief task,â addresses the central puzzle of the theory-of-mind development literature: why is it that children below the age of five fail standard false-belief tasks, and yet are able to pass implicit versions of the false-belief task at a far younger age? According to my novel, nativist account, while they possess the concept of BELIEF very early in development, childrenâs early experiences with the pragmatics of belief discourse initially distort the way they interpret standard false-belief tasks; as children gain the relevant experience from their social and linguistic environment, this distortion eventually dissipates. In the Appendix (co-authored with Peter Carruthers), I expand upon this proposal to show how it can also account for another set of phenomena typically cited as evidence against nativism: the Theory-of-Mind Scale.
Chapter 3, âSpontaneous mindreading: A problem for the two-systems account,â challenges the âtwo-systemsâ account of mindreading, which provides a different explanation for the implicit/explicit false-belief task gap, and has implications for the architecture of mature, adult mindreading. Using evidence from adultsâ perspective-taking abilities I argue that this account is theoretically and empirically unsound.
Chapter 4, âCharacter and theory of mind: An integrative approach,â begins by noting that contemporary accounts of mindreading neglect to account for the role of character or personality-trait representations in action-prediction and interpretation. Employing a hierarchical, predictive coding approach, I propose that character-trait representations are rapidly inferred in order to inform and constrain our mental-state attributions.
Because this is a âcovering conceptâ dissertation, each of these chapters (including the Appendix) is written so that it is independent of all of the others; they can be read in any order, and do not presuppose one another
Virtue Signaling and Moral Progress
âVirtue signalingâ is the practice of using moral talk in order to enhance oneâs moral reputation. Many find this kind of behavior irritating. However, some philosophers have gone further, arguing that virtue signaling actively undermines the proper functioning of public moral discourse and impedes moral progress. Against this view, I argue that widespread virtue signaling is not a social ill, and that it can actually serve as an invaluable instrument for moral change, especially in cases where moral argument alone does not suffice. Specifically, virtue signaling can change the broader publicâs social expectations, which can in turn motivate the adoption of new, positive social norms. I also argue that the reputation-seeking motives underlying virtue signaling impose important constraints on virtue signalersâ behavior, which serve to keep the worst excesses of virtue signaling in check
Why is knowledge faster than (true) belief?
Phillips and colleagues convincingly argue that knowledge attribution is a faster, more automatic form of mindreading than belief attribution. However, they do not explain what it is about knowledge attribution that lends it this cognitive advantage. I suggest an explanation of the knowledge-attribution advantage that would also help to distinguish it from belief-based and minimalist alternatives
Symbolic Belief in Social Cognition
Keeping track of what others believe is a central part of human social cognition. However, the social relevance of those beliefs can vary a great deal. Some belief-attributions mostly tell us about what a person is likely to do next. Other belief-attributions tell us more about a personâs social identity. In this paper, I argue that we cope with this challenge by employing two distinct concepts of belief in our everyday social interactions. The epistemic concept of belief is primarily used to keep track of what other people take to be true, and this informs how we predict and interpret their behaviors. The symbolic concept of belief, in contrast is primarily used as a means of signaling to oneâs social identity to other members of oneâs community. In turn, community members closely monitor each otherâs symbolic beliefs as a means of enforcing social norms
Getting to know you: Accuracy and error in judgments of character
Character judgments play an important role in our everyday lives. However, decades of empirical research on trait attribution suggest that the cognitive processes that generate these judgments are prone to a number of biases and cognitive distortions. This gives rise to a skeptical worry about the epistemic foundations of everyday characterological beliefs that has deeply disturbing and alienating consequences. In this paper, I argue that this skeptical worry is misplaced: under the appropriate informational conditions, our everyday character-trait judgments are in fact quite trustworthy. I then propose a mindreading-based model of the socio-cognitive processes underlying trait attribution that explains both why these judgments are initially unreliable, and how they eventually become more accurate