Functional Mind

身体残疾或行动不便的人在日常生活中经常受到歧视。这个项目的重点是对这些人的非人化待遇。这项研究考察了我们是如何根据别人的身体或身体活动能力来判断他们的价值的。它还考虑了为什么我们有时认为那些缺乏身体能力的人也缺乏精神能力。长期目标是找到方法，减少对行动不便的人的非人性化。一种非人性化的新模式表明，我们经常不能仔细考虑别人的想法，特别是当别人似乎无法影响我们自己的生活时。根据这一模型，缺乏身体活动能力的人(如老年人、肥胖者、肢体残疾人)往往无法引起我们的注意。由于没有考虑到他们，我们也就没有考虑到他们的思想是老练和有能力的。对这一过程的更深入了解将有助于制定干预措施，旨在减少身体残疾人士经常经历的歧视。16项行为实验考察了别人如何看待他人与引发非人化反应之间的联系。预计认为他人与个人相关会引发更复杂思维的感知，而认为目标与个人无关会引发非人化的反应。第一条工作将确定，简单的自我相关暗示(例如即将到来的互动或直接的目光凝视)会引发这样一种感觉，即他人的头脑更成熟。第二和第三条工作将把这些发现扩展到身体活动的线索上，表明身体活动能力较差的人将被视为更不能自我行动，因此将被归因于不那么复杂的身体能力。该项目还将扩展到干预措施，以减少对肢体残疾人的非人化。预计那些被视为更有身体能力(因为使用了有效的假肢)的人将不再被剥夺人性。总而言之，这项研究在个人感知、对他人身体的感知和精神感知之间架起了一座桥梁。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People who have physical disabilities or who have difficulty moving easily often experience discrimination in everyday life. This project focuses on the dehumanizing treatment of such people. The research examines how it is that we make judgments about others' worth based on their bodies or on their physical mobility. It also considers why it is that we sometimes see those lacking physical abilities as also lacking mental abilities. The long-term goal is to find ways to reduce the dehumanization of people who have mobility challenges. A new model of dehumanization proposes that we often fail to carefully consider others' minds, especially when those others do not appear able to influence our own lives. According to this model, people who lack physical mobility (such as the elderly, obese individuals, physically disabled persons) often fail to claim our attention. By failing to think about them, we then fail to consider their minds as being sophisticated and capable. A deeper understanding of this process will support the development of interventions aimed at reducing the discrimination so often experienced by those who have physical disabilities.Sixteen behavioral experiments examine the link between how others are perceived and the triggering of dehumanizing responses. It is expected that perceiving others as personally relevant will trigger the perception of more sophisticated minds, and that believing a target is not personally relevant will trigger dehumanizing responses. The first line of work will establish that simple cues to self-relevance (such as an impending interaction or direct eye gaze) will trigger the perception that others' have more sophisticated minds. The second and third lines of work will extend these findings to physical mobility cues, demonstrating that individuals who have lesser physical mobility will be seen as less capable of acting on the self, and therefore will be ascribed less sophisticated physical capacities. This project will also extend to interventions to reduce the dehumanization of those with physical disabilities. It is expected that individuals who are seen as more physically capable (because of effective prostheses) will no longer be dehumanized. Taken together, this research bridges the interface between person perception, the perception of others' bodies, and mind perception. It also addresses questions about the causes of dehumanizing stigma and how such stigma may be reduced.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.