The Folk Concept of Intentionality

Malle, Bertram F.; Knobe, Joshua

doi:10.1006/jesp.1996.1314

Cited by 583 publications

(655 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(39 reference statements)

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“…Based on past research in social and development psychology, I distinguished two major types of social judgments: (1) Temporary inferences involving the detection and identification of a person's goals and goal-related beliefs, and (2) enduring inferences of personality traits and interpersonal scripts and norms. This distinction is also revealed in the progressive mastery of social capacities by young children up to the age of eight [Rholes et al, 1990], and in social research on the processing stages from goal identification to trait inference [Malle and Knobe, 1997;Malle et al, 2000;Reeder, et al, 2002Reeder, et al, , 2004. For instance, when an actor engages in harmful behavior, we wonder which reasons or motives may have caused this behavior (out of a motive to harm or after provocation?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, when an actor engages in helpful behavior, we wonder which reasons or motives may have compelled the actor to do so (out of sincere desire to help or to ingratiate?) and this influences whether we make a trait attribution of helpfulness or insincerity [Malle and Knobe, 1997;Malle et al, 2000;Reeder et al, 2002Reeder et al, , 2004.…”

Section: Theoretical Perspectives On Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Overwalle

2008

Human Brain Mapping

1,531

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This meta-analysis explores the location and function of brain areas involved in social cognition, or the capacity to understand people's behavioral intentions, social beliefs, and personality traits. On the basis of over 200 fMRI studies, it tests alternative theoretical proposals that attempt to explain how several brain areas process information relevant for social cognition. The results suggest that inferring temporary states such as goals, intentions, and desires of other people-even when they are false and unjust from our own perspective-strongly engages the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Inferring more enduring dispositions of others and the self, or interpersonal norms and scripts, engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), although temporal states can also activate the mPFC. Other candidate tasks reflecting general-purpose brain processes that may potentially subserve social cognition are briefly reviewed, such as sequence learning, causality detection, emotion processing, and executive functioning (action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval), but none of them overlaps uniquely with the regions activated during social cognition. Hence, it appears that social cognition particularly engages the TPJ and mPFC regions. The available evidence is consistent with the role of a TPJ-related mirror system for inferring temporary goals and intentions at a relatively perceptual level of representation, and the mPFC as a module that integrates social information across time and allows reflection and representation of traits and norms, and presumably also of intentionality, at a more abstract cognitive level.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Perspectives On Social Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Overwalle

2008

Human Brain Mapping

1,531

102

1,300

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In lay conceptions, consciousness has been identified as an ingredient of intentional actions (Malle & Knobe, 1997). Wegner and Bargh (1998) noted that "most people think of control in humans as conscious control, so much that the term unconscious control doesn't seem right at all" (p. 453).…”

Section: Links Between Conscious and Goal-related Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automaticity: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis.

Moors

Houwer

2006

Psychological Bulletin

1,202

859

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Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be disentangled on a conceptual level, because only then is the separate investigation of them worth the effort. They conclude that the conceptual analysis of features is to a large extent feasible. Not all researchers agree with this position, however. The authors show that assumptions of overlap among features are determined by the other researchers' views of automaticity and by the models they endorse for information processing in general. : automatic, unintentional, uncontrolled, autonomous, unconscious Automaticity is a concept with a long-standing history in psychology (e.g., James, 1890;Wundt, 1903). It has been invoked in domains as diverse as perception (MacLeod, 1991), memory (Jacoby, 1991), social cognition (Wegner & Bargh, 1998), learning (Cleeremans & Jiménez, 2002), motivation (Carver & Scheier, 2002), and emotion (Scherer, 1993). Despite its central nature, there is no consensus about what automaticity means. The aim of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of the concept and, in particular, the features that have been subsumed under the term. We also discuss implications of this analysis for future research. KeywordsIn the first section, we consider several contrasting views of automaticity. This overview reveals that most scholars analyze automaticity in terms of one or more features. The implication is that automaticity can be diagnosed by looking for the presence of these features in performance or processes. 1 Contemporary approaches to automaticity, moreover, have begun to argue for the separate investigation of automaticity features. In the second section, we discuss the most essential features in greater detail. One purpose is to examine whether they can be separated on a conceptual level. We analyze the features to a point at which the overlap among them is minimized. Another purpose is to show that assumptions of overlap are pervasive in the research literature despite the recent claim that individual features should be investigated separately. These assumptions arise from authors' specific views of automaticity, as well as from the specific underlying information-processing model that they endorse. Approaches to AutomaticityJames (1890), Jastrow (1906), and Wundt (1896/1897, 1903 offered some of the earliest descriptions of automaticity, and many of their ideas have reemerged in contemporary accounts. The views presented below are also based on early studies of skill development (Bryan & Harter, 1899) and early dual-task studies (Solomons & Stein, 1896; see review by Shiffrin, 1988). Automaticity as Processing With No or Minimal AttentionC...

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“…Blame is a negative evaluation of an actor based on a judgment that the actor intentionally engaged in unwarranted, norm-incongruent, negative behavior (Malle et al, 2014). To assign blame, people perform a complex set of appraisals that consider whether the actor intentionally caused the event (e.g., Cushman, 2008;Fragale et al, 2009;Malle & Knobe, 1997;Shaver, 1985;Sloman, Fernbach, & Ewing, 2009) and whether there are mitigating circumstances or reasons that may justify the action (e.g., Malle, 2004;Riordan, Marlin, & Kellogg, 1983;Scanlon, 2008). 1 In sum, blame is a judgment about an actor rather than an evaluation of a behavior or an outcome, and observers may disapprove of an action, independent of whether they also condemn the actor.…”

Section: Attributions Of Blamementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Behavior that diverges from relevant norms is perceived negatively, and this perception initiates a search to understand its cause, including the extent to which someone is to blame (Malle & Knobe, 1997;Wong & Weiner, 1981). Moreover, the magnitude of the divergence between the behavior and the norm affects how people assign blame; people are more inclined to blame someone when the divergence is greater (e.g., Alicke, 2000;Alicke & Davis, 1989;Baron & Hershey, 1988).…”

Section: Descriptive Norms and Norm Focusmentioning

confidence: 99%