This research examined how and why group membership diminishes the attribution of mind to individuals. We found that mind attribution was inversely related to the size of the group to which an individual belonged . Mind attribution was affected by group membership rather than the total number of entities perceived at once . Moreover, mind attribution to an individual varied with the perception that the individual was a group member. Participants attributed more mind to an individual that appeared distinct or (...) distant from other group members than to an individual that was perceived to be similar or proximal to a cohesive group . This effect occurred for both human and nonhuman targets, and was driven by the perception of the target as an entitative group member rather than by the knowledge that the target was an entitative group member. (shrink)

Perceiving others? minds is a crucial component of social life. People do not, however, always ascribe minds to other people, and sometimes ascribe minds to non-people. This article reviews when mind perception occurs, when it does not, and why mind perception is important. Causes of mind perception stem both from the perceiver and perceived, and include the need for social connection and a similarity to oneself. Mind perception also has profound consequences for both the perceiver and perceived. Ascribing mind confers (...) an entity moral rights and also makes its actions meaningful. Understanding the causes and consequences of mind perception can explain when this most social of cognitive skills will be used, and why it matters. (shrink)

Cross-culturally, misfortune is often attributed to witchcraft despite the high human and social costs of these beliefs. The evolved cognitive features that are often used to explain religion more broadly, in combination with threat perception and coalitional psychology, may help explain why these particular supernatural beliefs are so prevalent. Witches are minimally counter intuitive, agentic, and build upon intuitive understandings of ritual efficacy. Witchcraft beliefs may gain traction in threatening contexts and because they are threatening themselves, while simultaneously activating coalitional (...) reasoning systems that make rejection of the idea costly. This article draws possible connections between these cognitive and environmental features with an eye toward future empirical examination. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have increasingly turned to cultural transmission to explain the widespread nature of religion. One key hypothesis focuses on memory, proposing that that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) content facilitates the transmission of supernatural beliefs. We propose two caveats to this hypothesis. (1) Memory effects decrease as MCI concepts become commonly used, and (2) people do not believe counterintuitive content readily; therefore additional mechanisms are required to get from memory to belief. In experiments 1–3 (n = 283), we examined the relationship (...) between MCI, belief, and memory. We found that increased tendencies to anthropomorphize predicted poorer memory for anthropomorphic-MCI content. MCI content was found less believable than intuitive content, suggesting different mechanisms are required to explain belief. In experiment 4 (n = 70), we examined the non-content-based cultural learning mechanism of credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) and found that it increased participants’ belief in MCI content, suggesting this type of learning can better explain the transmission of belief. (shrink)

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub-disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit (...) responses, revealing anthropomorphic notions of God's mind. Together, data from children and adults suggest the intuitive nature of perceiving God's mind as human-like. We then propose three complementary explanations for why anthropomorphism persists in adulthood, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic; a reflection of early testimony; and/or an evolutionary byproduct. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that how people conceive of minds depends on the culture in which they live, both in determining how they interact with other human minds and how they infer the unseen minds of gods. We use exploratory factor analysis to compare how people from different societies with distinct models of human minds and different religious traditions perceive the minds of humans and gods. In two North American samples (American adults, N = 186; Canadian students, N = 202), we (...) replicated a previously found two‐factor agency/experience structure for both human and divine minds, but in Fijian samples (Indigenous iTaukei Fijians, N = 77; Fijians of Indian descent, N = 214; total N = 679) we found a three‐factor structure, with the additional containing items related to social relationships. Further, Fijians’ responses revealed a different three‐factor structure for human minds and gods’ minds. We used these factors as dimensions in the conception of minds to predict (a) expectations about human and divine tendencies towards punishment and reward; and (b) conception of gods as more embodied (an extension of experience) or more able to know people's thoughts (an extension of agency). We found variation in how these factors predict conceptions of agents across groups, indicating further theory is needed to explain how culturally generated concepts of mind lead to other sorts of social inferences. We conclude that mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations and recommend further work in different cultural contexts to examine the interplay between culture and social cognition. (shrink)

Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross‐culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God—an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma—another culturally widespread but ostensibly non‐agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high‐powered samples, including mostly (...) Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N = 2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N = 1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma—including morally laden, non‐agentic, and agentic conceptualizations—above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts. (shrink)

Robots seemingly in possession of an experiential mind, as well as humans allegedly incapable thereof, have been reported to elicit feelings of eeriness in their perceivers. The current work re-examined this claim, asking participants to rate both robots and humans in various social situations regarding their mind capacities, non-mind qualities, and overall appeal. It was found that feelings of eeriness towards both targets formed a distinct emotional response that was separable from simple dislike. Yet, unexpectedly, eeriness towards both targets intensified, (...) the less they were seen as possessing a typical human mind. For robots, however, this association was less consistent. Moreover, eeriness towards robots, but not towards humans, was most strongly predicted by a lack of perceived usefulness. These results indicate that mind attributions affect people’s attitudes towards each other more strongly than their attitudes towards humanoid robots. (shrink)

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) create an increasing similarity between the performance of AI systems or AI-based robots and human communication. They raise the questions: whether it is possible to communicate with, understand, and even empathically perceive artificial agents; whether we should ascribe actual subjectivity and thus quasi-personal status to them beyond a certain level of simulation; what will be the impact of an increasing dissolution of the distinction between simulated and real encounters. (1) To answer these questions, the paper (...) argues that the precondition for actually understanding others consists in the implicit assumption of the subjectivity of our counterpart, which makes shared feelings and a „we-intentionality” possible. This assumption is ultimately based on the presupposition of a shared form of life, conceived here as „conviviality.” (2) The possibility that future artificial agents could meet these preconditions is refuted on the basis of embodied and enactive cognition, which links subjectivity and consciousness to the aliveness of an organism. (3) Even if subjectivity is in principle impossible for artificial agents, the distinction between simulated and real subjectivity might nevertheless become increasingly blurred. Here, possible consequences are discussed, especially using the example of virtual psychotherapy. Finally, the paper makes case for a mindful appproach to the language we use to talk about artificial systems and pleads for preventing a systematic pretense of subjectivity. (shrink)

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a (...) class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)

Intelligent personal assistants own anthropomorphic features which enable users’ perception of anthropomorphism. Adopting the perspective of mind-based anthropomorphism, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how mind-based anthropomorphism influences users’ exploratory usage of IPAs. Based on the notion that anthropomorphism can satisfy people’s sociality and effectance motivation, we hypothesize that mind-based anthropomorphism can enhance people’s social connection with IPAs and IPA self-efficacy, which can in turn influence their exploratory usage of IPAs. Questionnaires were developed and distributed to users who (...) had experience in smart speaker-based IPAs on Wenjuanxing and 551 valid questionnaires were collected to test the research model. The results revealed that cognitive and affective anthropomorphism exerted common and differential impacts on IPA self-efficacy and social connection. Cognitive anthropomorphism versus affective anthropomorphism had stronger influences on IPA self-efficacy, while affective anthropomorphism had stronger impacts on social connection. Both IPA self-efficacy and social connection enhanced users’ intentions to explore IPAs. This study enriches previous studies on IPA adoption or post-adoption by investigating exploratory usage which captures how users are deeply engaged with IPAs. (shrink)

Gaze following occurs automatically in social interactions, but the degree to which gaze is followed depends on whether an agent is perceived to have a mind, making its behavior socially more relevant for the interaction. Mind perception also modulates the attitudes we have towards others, and deter-mines the degree of empathy, prosociality and morality invested in social interactions. Seeing mind in others is not exclusive to human agents, but mind can also be ascribed to nonhuman agents like robots, as long (...) as their appearance and/or behavior allows them to be perceived as intentional beings. Previous studies have shown that human appearance and reliable behavior induce mind perception to robot agents, and positively affect attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. What has not been investigated so far is whether different triggers of mind perception have an independent or interactive effect on attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. We examine this question by manipulating agent appearance (human vs. robot) and behavior (reliable vs. random) within the same paradigm and examine how congruent (human/reliable vs. robot/random) versus incongruent (human/random vs. robot/reliable) combinations of these triggers affect performance (i.e., gaze fol-lowing) and attitudes (i.e., agent ratings) in human-robot interaction. The results show that both ap-pearance and behavior affect human-robot interaction but that the two triggers seem to operate in iso-lation, with appearance more strongly impacting attitudes, and behavior more strongly affecting per-formance. The implications of these findings for human-robot interaction are discussed. (shrink)

This thesis aimed at examining the impact of decorative pictures, defined as pictures which make an instructional material aesthetically appealing rather than conveying information for learning. In research, the use of decorative pictures was considered to be detrimental for learning for a long time. In contrast, recent research revealed that the impact of these pictures is moderated by a number of variables. In a series of experiments which were based on cognitive-affective theories of learning with media, a selected number of (...) theoretically derived moderators were examined in a series of experiments. A first experiment investigat-ed the effectiveness of different levels of emotional charge and the impact of different contexts shown in decorative pictures. Results showed that learning performance was higher for positive than negative pictures, while the measured pleasure of students mediated this effect. Decorative pictures showing a learning context were also found to enhance learning while the students’ assessments of arousal and dominance were raised for these pictures. In a second experiment, design features of anthropomorphism, defined as features which elicit the tendency to attribute human characteristics to non-human objects, were implemented in decorative pictures. Based on a two-factorial design with the inclusion of human faces and personalized labels, both human faces and personalized labels were found to foster learning. In comparison to a control group without decorative pictures, the inclusion of both mentioned anthropomorphic features in decorative pictures led to a higher learning performance. In contrast, decorative pictures without anthropomorphic features decreased learning. Both features additionally enhanced the mental effort and intrinsic motivation of students, although a task-irrelevant cognitive load was increased by the inclusion of decorative pictures. The emotional charge and the degree of text-picture connectedness of decorative pictures were additionally examined in three other experiments. Moreover, these groups were compared with an additional control group without decorative pictures. All three experiments revealed that decorative pictures with a strong connection to the learning topic of a text and a positive charge increased learning. In comparison with the control group, positive, strongly connected pictures mainly enhanced and negative, weakly connected pictures mainly impaired learning. Results can be explained by significant differences among the assessment of cognitive processes of learners. In conclusion, decorative pictures may be used in order to enrich an instructional material if boundary conditions like the context-relatedness, the degree of anthropomorphism, the text-picture connectedness, and the emotional charge are taken into account. (shrink)