Attributing Mind to Groups and Their Members on Two Dimensions

Abstract

Psychological research has revealed that people attribute mental states to groups such as companies, especially to those groups that are highly entitative. Moreover, attributing a mind to a group results in the decreased attribution of mind to individual group members. Recent research has demonstrated that the minds of others are perceived in two dimensions—agency and experience. The present study investigated the possibility that this two-dimensional structure exists in mind attribution to groups, and group entitativity has different patterns of relations with these dimensions. A vignette experiment revealed that highly entitative groups were attributed both agency and experience to greater degrees compared to non-entitative groups, while group entitativity reduced only the attribution of agency to the individual group members. Individual members were attributed an equivalent amount of experience regardless of group entitativity. Mind attribution to individual members showed an unpredicted third factor of other-recognition, which was positively related to group entitativity. The implications of mind attribution to moral issues were discussed.

Members of highly entitative groups are implicitly expected to behave consistently based on their deep-level goals instead of their shallow-level movements.

“…The contribution of the present study to the literature is that it expands the impact role of the subjective essentialism view of groups to expecting unknown group members’ behaviors and illustrates that this belief is based on the majority behavior in social groups. The expectation of consistent deep property among group members also highlights the mind attribution to the group, showing that the higher the group’s entitativity is, the more that this group’s mind is attributed to (Tanibe et al, 2019; Waytz & Young, 2012). Regarding unified groups, the tendency to search for a common deep property across group members could drive perceivers to attribute a central mind to the group, with this mind dominating all consistent characteristics.…”

Entitativity and implicit measures of social cognition

“…Importantly, though, this sort of effect appears to be modulated by dynamical entitativity perception, not categorical entitativity perception. As some theorists have suggested, a natural explanation of this fact is that dynamical groups are seen as having agency in a way that categorical groups are not (Malle, 2010;Newheiser et al, 2010, p. 935; see also Tanibe et al, 2019). Some studies have also found that those groups that are perceived as high in dynamical entitativity are perceived as a threat.…”

Entitativity and Implicit Measures of Social Cognition

“…Importantly, though, this sort of effect appears to be modulated by dynamical entitativity perception, not categorical entitativity perception. As some theorists have suggested, a natural explanation of this fact is that dynamical groups are seen as having agency in a way that categorical groups are not (Malle, 2010;Newheiser et al, 2010, p. 935; see also Tanibe et al, 2019).…”

“…Additional studies have also found that high-entitative groups are not processed in the same way as low-entitative groups. For example, the former are processed in a more on-line and "integrative" manner ; they are seen as more of a threat than low-entitative groups (e.g., see Fessler & Holbrook, 2016); they are seen as having more agency than low-entitative groups (Tanibe et al, 2019); and they are seen as having greater collective responsibility for the actions of individual members (Abelson et al, 1998;Leonard, 2019;Lickel et al, 2003;Newheiser et al, 2012).…”