Is there a Hierarchy of Social Inference? Intentionality, Mind, and Morality

社会推理是否存在等级制度？

• 批准号: 0746381
• 负责人: Bertram Malle
• 金额: $ 26.46万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-03-01 至 2009-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0746381&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: there; Hierarchy; Social; Inference; Intentionality

Whenever people encounter another person's behavior, they have to process a bewildering amount of information: What is the person's gender, age, role, social group membership? Is the behavior intentional? What is the person's goal, what is she thinking, what is he feeling? Is this behavior good or bad? And does it reveal the person's personality? Answers to these questions demand social inferences: conjectures about the other person's intentional behavior, thoughts and feelings, and morality. Previous research has provided some insight into each of these inferences, but they were always studied in separation. In real life, different types of social inferences occur simultaneously within the human perceiver and must also be studied simultaneously in research. This project's first objective is therefore to investigate the relationships among these multiple inferences. Is there a hierarchy of social inferences -- a priority by which people infer intentionality, mind, and morality? (For example, do people assign blame to somebody even before they infer the person's specific goal?) How frequently and how fast are these inferences made, and do some inferences compete with each other or speed each other up? (For example, are inferences about goals faster than those about personality and do inferences of intentionality speed up inferences about blame?) The project's second objective is to investigate which information contained in an observed behavior triggers the various inferences -- that is, exactly what do people look at when they infer a behavior's intentionality, the actor's emotion, or the blameworthiness of the action? To conduct this research, the PI developed a theoretical model and experimental paradigm for the simultaneous examination of multiple social inferences. Unlike previous research that used written sentences to elicit social inferences, the present project presents videotaped human behaviors as dynamic experimental stimuli. Thus, while perceivers make social inferences as they normally would in real life, the researcher uses computerized presentation and measurement to assess the frequency and exact timing of these inferences. Moreover, with a fine-grained tracking of the perceiver's eye movements while watching the behaviors, the researcher can capture the specific information on which these inferences are based. By providing a clearer understanding of the fundamental social capacities involved in inferring intentionality, mental states, and morality, this project will inform legal processes, models of autism (where these capacities have been shown to be deficient), relationship counseling, and cross-cultural communication. Illuminating the exact processes by which people interpret each other's behavior will help meet a key challenge in contemporary society: to improve communication and avoid misunderstandings in personal, business, and political interactions. Furthermore, the theoretical and methodological innovations in this proposal will provide scientists with valuable new tools for the study of human social cognition. Finally, because many of the proposed studies can be conducted on a portable laptop computer, they permit recruitment of diverse community members who would normally not enter the psychologist's laboratory. The proposed research will be integrated into training and teaching of undergraduate and graduate students, benefit from national and international collaborations, and will be disseminated in scientific publications and communities across multiple disciplines.

每当人们遇到另一个人的行为时，他们就不得不处理大量令人困惑的信息：这个人的性别、年龄、角色、社会团体成员身份？这种行为是故意的吗？这个人的目标是什么，她在想什么，他在想什么？这种行为是好是坏？它能揭示出这个人的个性吗？这些问题的答案需要社会推断：对另一个人的故意行为、思想和情感以及道德的猜测。以前的研究已经对这些推论提供了一些见解，但它们总是分开研究。在现实生活中，不同类型的社会推理在人类知觉体内同时发生，也必须在研究中同时进行研究。因此，这个项目的第一个目标是调查这些多重推论之间的关系。有没有社会推理的等级--人们用来推断意向性、心智和道德的优先顺序？(例如，人们会在推断某人的具体目标之前就将责任归咎于他吗？)这些推论的频率和速度有多快？是否有一些推论相互竞争或相互加速？(例如，对目标的推论是否比对个性的推论更快，而对意向性的推论是否会加快对责备的推论？)该项目的第二个目标是调查观察到的行为中包含的哪些信息触发了各种推断--也就是说，当人们推断行为的意图、行为的情感或行为的可责性时，他们到底看了什么？为了进行这项研究，PI开发了一种同时检验多种社会推理的理论模型和实验范式。与以前使用书面句子来得出社会推理的研究不同，本项目将人类行为的录像带作为动态实验刺激。因此，虽然感知者会像在现实生活中一样进行社交推理，但研究人员使用计算机呈现和测量来评估这些推理的频率和准确的时间。此外，通过细粒度地跟踪观察者在观察行为时的眼球运动，研究人员可以捕捉到这些推断所基于的特定信息。通过提供对推断意向性、精神状态和道德的基本社会能力的更清楚的了解，该项目将为法律程序、自闭症模型(这些能力已被证明是不足的)、关系咨询和跨文化交流提供信息。阐明人们解释彼此行为的确切过程将有助于应对当代社会的一个关键挑战：改善沟通，避免个人、商业和政治互动中的误解。此外，这一建议的理论和方法创新将为科学家研究人类社会认知提供宝贵的新工具。最后，由于许多拟议的研究可以在便携式笔记本电脑上进行，它们允许招募通常不会进入心理学家实验室的不同社区成员。拟议的研究将纳入本科生和研究生的培训和教学，受益于国家和国际合作，并将在多个学科的科学出版物和社区中传播。