What determines adults' difficulties in mental state inference? An investigation of the effects of type of mental states and type of executive demands

Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goals, beliefs, desires, and intentions. Reasoning about the relation between behavior and mental states is therefore considered to be an effortful process. We argue that people use simple strategies to deal with high cognitive demands of mental state inference. To test this hypothesis, we developed a computational cognitive model, which was able to simulate previous empirical findings: In two-player games, people apply simple strategies at first. They only start revising their strategies when these do not pay off. The model could simulate these findings by recursively attributing its own problem solving skills to the other player, thus increasing the complexity of its own inferences. The model was validated by means of a comparison with findings from a developmental study in which the children demonstrated similar strategic developments.

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Weighing Outcome vs. Intent Across Societies_preprint

10.31234/osf.io/kesbu ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rita Anne McNamara ◽

Aiyana Koka Willard ◽

Ara Norenzayan ◽

Joseph Henrich

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Direct Result ◽

Individual Autonomy ◽

Social Worlds ◽

North Americans ◽

Moral Wrong ◽

The Social ◽

State Inference

Mental state reasoning has been theorized as a core feature of how we navigate our social worlds, and as especially vital to moral reasoning. Judgments of moral wrong-doing and punish-worthiness often hinge upon evaluations of the perpetrator’s mental states. In two studies, we examine how differences in cultural conceptions about how one should think about others’ minds influence the relative importance of intent vs. outcome in moral judgments. We recruit participation from three societies, differing in emphasis on mental state reasoning: Indigenous iTaukei Fijians from Yasawa Island (Yasawans) who normatively avoid mental state inference in favor of focus on relationships and consequences of actions; Indo-Fijians who normatively emphasize relationships but do not avoid mental state inference; and North Americans who emphasize individual autonomy and interpreting others’ behaviors as the direct result of mental states. In study 1, Yasawan participants placed more emphasis on outcome than Indo-Fijians or North Americans by judging accidents more harshly than failed attempts. Study 2 tested whether underlying differences in the salience of mental states drives study 1 effects by inducing Yasawan and North American participants to think about thoughts vs. actions before making moral judgments. When induced to think about thoughts, Yasawan participants shifted to judge failed attempts more harshly than accidents. Results suggest that culturally-transmitted concepts about how to interpret the social world shape patterns of moral judgments, possibly via mental state inference.

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An fMRI Investigation of Spontaneous Mental State Inference for Moral Judgment

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21137 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (7) ◽

pp. 1396-1405 ◽

Cited By ~ 117

Author(s):

Liane Young ◽

Rebecca Saxe

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Moral Judgment ◽

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Medial Pfc ◽

The Right ◽

State Inference ◽

Moral Facts

Human moral judgment depends critically on “theory of mind,” the capacity to represent the mental states of agents. Recent studies suggest that the right TPJ (RTPJ) and, to lesser extent, the left TPJ (LTPJ), the precuneus (PC), and the medial pFC (MPFC) are robustly recruited when participants read explicit statements of an agent's beliefs and then judge the moral status of the agent's action. Real-world interactions, by contrast, often require social partners to infer each other's mental states. The current study uses fMRI to probe the role of these brain regions in supporting spontaneous mental state inference in the service of moral judgment. Participants read descriptions of a protagonist's action and then either (i) “moral” facts about the action's effect on another person or (ii) “nonmoral” facts about the situation. The RTPJ, PC, and MPFC were recruited selectively for moral over nonmoral facts, suggesting that processing moral stimuli elicits spontaneous mental state inference. In a second experiment, participants read the same scenarios, but explicit statements of belief preceded the facts: Protagonists believed their actions would cause harm or not. The response in the RTPJ, PC, and LTPJ was again higher for moral facts but also distinguished between neutral and negative outcomes. Together, the results illuminate two aspects of theory of mind in moral judgment: (1) spontaneous belief inference and (2) stimulus-driven belief integration.

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Spontaneous Mentalizing Predicts the Fundamental Attribution Error

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00513 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 569-576 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Joseph M. Moran ◽

Eshin Jolly ◽

Jason P. Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Social Situation ◽

Mental States ◽

Situational Factors ◽

Personality Characteristics ◽

Fundamental Attribution Error ◽

Dispositional Attributions ◽

Attribution Error ◽

Medial Pfc ◽

State Inference

When explaining the reasons for others' behavior, perceivers often overemphasize underlying dispositions and personality traits over the power of the situation, a tendency known as the fundamental attribution error. One possibility is that this bias results from the spontaneous processing of others' mental states, such as their momentary feelings or more enduring personality characteristics. Here, we use fMRI to test this hypothesis. Participants read a series of stories that described a target's ambiguous behavior in response to a specific social situation and later judged whether that act was attributable to the target's internal dispositions or to external situational factors. Neural regions consistently associated with mental state inference—especially, the medial pFC—strongly predicted whether participants later made dispositional attributions. These results suggest that the spontaneous engagement of mentalizing may underlie the biased tendency to attribute behavior to dispositional over situational forces.

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Stable neural representations of mental states across target people and stimulus modalities

10.31234/osf.io/7axzj ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽

Mark Allen Thornton ◽

Diana Tamir

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Brain Regions ◽

The Self ◽

Similarity Analysis ◽

Multiple Modalities ◽

Neural Representations ◽

Conceptual Core ◽

Stimulus Modalities ◽

Huge Variety

Each individual experiences mental states in their own idiosyncratic way, yet perceivers are able to accurately understand a huge variety of states across unique individuals. How do they accomplish this feat? Do people think about their own anger in the same ways as another person’s? Is reading about someone’s anxiety the same as seeing it? Here, we test the hypothesis that a common conceptual core unites mental state representations across contexts. Across three studies, participants judged the mental states of multiple targets, including a generic other, the self, a socially close other, and a socially distant other. Participants viewed mental state stimuli in multiple modalities, including written scenarios and images. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that brain regions associated with social cognition expressed stable neural representations of mental states across both targets and modalities. This suggests that people use stable models of mental states across different people and contexts.

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Mental state dynamics explain the origin of mental state concepts

10.31234/osf.io/kbcsj ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mark Allen Thornton ◽

Milena Rmus ◽

Diana Tamir

Keyword(s):

Neural Network ◽

Artificial Neural Network ◽

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Social World ◽

The Social ◽

Artificial Neural ◽

Ebb And Flow

People’s thoughts and feelings ebb and flow in predictable ways: surprise arises quickly, anticipation ramps up slowly, regret follows anger, love begets happiness, and so forth. Predicting these transitions between mental states can help people successfully navigate the social world. We hypothesize that the goal of predicting state dynamics shapes people’ mental state concepts. Across seven studies, when people observed more frequent transitions between a pair of novel mental states, they judged those states to be more conceptually similar to each other. In an eighth study, an artificial neural network trained to predict real human mental state dynamics spontaneously learned the same conceptual dimensions that people use to understand these states: the 3d Mind Model. Together these results suggest that mental state dynamics explain the origins of mental state concepts.

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People represent their own mental states more distinctly than others’

10.31234/osf.io/qyu69 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mark Allen Thornton ◽

Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽

Judith Mildner ◽

Diana Tamir

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Social Distance ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Mental States ◽

Direct Access ◽

Social Brain ◽

Privileged Access ◽

Behavioral Studies ◽

The Social ◽

External Cues

One can never know the internal workings of another person – one can only infer others’ mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others’ mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two neuroimaging studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one’s own states versus others’. Two behavioral studies support these findings. Further, they demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.

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Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

10.1093/oso/9780190695811.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

T.J. Kasperbauer

Keyword(s):

Moral Psychology ◽

Mental State ◽

Moral Status ◽

Mental States ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Human Beings ◽

Mental State Attribution ◽

The Relationship ◽

Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

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Propositionalism and Questions that do not have Correct Answers

Erkenntnis ◽

10.1007/s10670-021-00442-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Giulia Felappi

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Prima Facie ◽

Mental Life ◽

Do So

AbstractAs the label suggests, according to propositionalism, each intentional mental state, attitude or event is or involves a relation to a proposition. In this paper, I will discuss a case that seems prima facie not to be accountable for by propositionalism. After having presented the case, I will show why it is different from others that have been discussed in the literature as able to show that propositionalism cannot be correct. I will then consider what the propositionalist can say to fix the problem and I will show that no strategy that is genuinely propositionalist seems promising. I will not conclude that propositionalism is doomed. But I will show that if propositionalism can account for our case at all, it can only do so by losing its main appeal, i.e. its elegance and simplicity. But then propositionalism seems to have lost its advantage with respect to its obvious alternative, i.e. a pluralist account according to which mental states, attitudes and events are not all homogeneously relations to propositions, but rather our mental life should be accounted for in terms of a plurality of kinds of relata.

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Understanding the Links between Inferring Mental States, Empathy, and Burnout in Medical Contexts

Healthcare ◽

10.3390/healthcare9020158 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 158

Author(s):

Naira Delgado ◽

Helena Bonache ◽

Moisés Betancort ◽

Yurena Morera ◽

Lasana T. Harris

Keyword(s):

Adverse Effects ◽

Patient Care ◽

Emotional Exhaustion ◽

Mental State ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Healthcare Professionals ◽

Mental States ◽

Empathic Concern ◽

Personal Accomplishment ◽

Personal Distress

It is generally accepted that empathy should be the basis of patient care. However, this ideal may be unrealistic if healthcare professionals suffer adverse effects when engaging in empathy. The aim of this study is to explore the effect of inferring mental states and different components of empathy (perspective-taking; empathic concern; personal distress) in burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion; depersonalization; personal accomplishment). A total of 184 healthcare professionals participated in the study (23% male, Mage = 44.60; SD = 10.46). We measured participants’ empathy, the inference of mental states of patients, and burnout. Correlation analyses showed that inferring mental states was positively associated with perspective-taking and with empathic concern, but uncorrelated with personal distress. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion was related to greater levels of personal distress and greater levels of inferences of mental states. Depersonalization was associated with greater levels of personal distress and lower levels of empathic concern. Personal accomplishment was associated with the inference of mental states in patients, lower levels of personal distress, and perspective-taking. These results provide a better understanding of how different components of empathy and mental state inferences may preserve or promote healthcare professionals’ burnout.

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