Spontaneous Goal Inference (SGI)

Simplifying social learning

Social learning is complex, but people often seem to navigate social environments with ease. This ability creates a puzzle for traditional accounts of reinforcement learning (RL) that assume people negotiate a tradeoff between easy-but-simple behavior (model-free learning) and complex-but-difficult behavior (e.g., model-based learning). We offer a theoretical framework for resolving this puzzle: although social environments are complex, people have social expertise that helps them behave flexibly with low cognitive cost. Specifically, by using familiar concepts instead of focusing on novel details, people can turn hard learning problems into simpler ones. This ability highlights social learning as a prototype for studying cognitive simplicity in the face of environmental complexity and identifies a role for conceptual knowledge in everyday reward learning.

The role of personality beliefs and “small talk” in strategic behaviour

Humans are predisposed to forming “first impressions” about the people we encounter including impressions about their personality traits. While the relationship between personality and strategic decision-making has been widely explored, we examine the role of personality impressions in predicting strategic behaviour and devising behavioural responses. In a laboratory setting, after only 4-minutes of “small talk”, subjects developed a sense of the personality of their partners, particularly extraversion, which consequently changed their behaviour in future interactions. Subjects cooperated more in public goods games when they believed their partner to be extraverted and found it more difficult to out-guess opponents they perceived as similar to themselves in a level-k reasoning task, having engaged in conversation with them. We trace how language can generate these effects using text analysis, showing that talking more makes individuals appear extraverted and pro-social which in turn engenders pro-social behaviour in others.

Psychological Selfishness

Selfishness is central to many theories of human morality, yet its psychological nature remains largely overlooked. Psychologists often draw on classical conceptions of selfishness from evolutionary biology (i.e., selfish gene theory), economics (i.e., rational self-interest), and philosophy (i.e., psychological egoism), but such characterizations offer limited insight into the psychology of selfishness. To address this gap, we propose a novel framework in which selfishness is recast as a psychological construction. From this view, selfishness is perceived in ourselves and others when we detect a situation-specific desire to benefit the self that disregards others' desires and prevailing social expectations for the situation. We argue that detecting and deterring such psychological selfishness in both oneself and others is crucial in social life-facilitating the maintenance of social cohesion and close relationships. In addition, we show how using this psychological framework offers a richer understanding of the nature of human social behavior. Delineating a psychological construct of selfishness can promote coherence in interdisciplinary research on selfishness and provide insights for interventions to prevent or remediate the negative effects of selfishness.

Inferring Goals and Traits From Behaviors: The Role of Culture, Self-Construal, and Thinking Style

People make spontaneous inferences from others' behaviors, such as spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) and spontaneous situation inferences (SSIs). People's behaviors, however, are shaped by their goals as well, which are determined by their internal characteristics (e.g., traits) and by contextual factors (e.g., social roles). In three studies, we examined whether self-construal, culture, and holistic thinking were associated with spontaneous goal inferences (SGIs) and STIs. We found that the more people defined themselves interdependently and viewed the causality of events holistically, the more they made SGIs (Study 1). Moreover, Asian American participants (interdependent) made SGIs but no STIs from people's behaviors, whereas European American participants (independent) made both (Study 2). Finally, participants primed with interdependence made SGIs but no STIs, whereas those primed with independence made both (Study 3). This research is the first to examine SGIs in relation to self-construal, culture, and holistic thinking.

Can the early visual processing of others' actions be related to social power and dominance?

Although goals often drive action understanding, this ability is also prone to important variability among individuals, which may have its origin in individual social characteristics. The present study aimed at evaluating the relationship between the tendency to prioritize goal information over grip information during early visual processing of action and several social dimensions. Visual processing of grip and goal information during action recognition was evaluated in 64 participants using the priming protocol developed by Decroix and Kalénine (Exp Brain Res 236(8):2411-2426, 2018). Object-directed action photographs were primed by photographs sharing the same goal and/or the same grip. The effects of goal and grip priming on action recognition were evaluated for different prime durations. The same participants further fulfilled questionnaires characterizing the way individuals deal with their social environment, namely their sense of social power, dominance, perspective taking, and construal level. At the group level, results confirmed greater goal than grip priming effects on action recognition for the shortest prime duration. Regression analyses between the pattern of response times in the action priming protocol and scores at the questionnaires further showed that the advantage of goal over grip priming was associated with higher sense of social power, and possibly to lower dominance. Overall, data confirm that observers tend to prioritize goal-related information when processing visual actions but further indicate that this tendency is sensitive to individual social characteristics. Results suggest that goal information may not always drive action understanding and point out the connection between low-level processing of observed actions and more general individual characteristics.

Goal commitment is in the eye of the beholder: Causes and consequences of perceiving others' goal commitment

The present work examines how judgments of others' commitment to a goal are influenced by three factors that influence one's own goal commitment (satisfaction, investment, and alternatives). In two studies these three factors were manipulated. The results indicated that people rate another's goal commitment higher when goal satisfaction is high, goal investment is high and goal alternatives are low. It was also found that satisfaction and investments alter perceptions of the other's abilities, and that this relationship is partially mediated by perceived goal commitment. The present studies offer novel findings that highlight the information we use to judge the goal commitment of others and the consequences that are incurred when these judgments are formed.

Easy to Make, Hard to Revise: Updating Spontaneous Trait Inferences in the Presence of Trait-Inconsistent Information

Previous research has shown that perceivers spontaneously form trait inferences from others' behaviors received at a single point in time. The present work examined the persistence of spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) in the presence of trait-inconsistent information about others. We hypothesized that STIs should be resistant to change over time and in the presence of new trait-inconsistent information due to perceivers forming and storing multiple STIs independently in memory. Consistently, Experiments 1a and 1b showed that initial STIs were not affected by new trait-inconsistent information. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that STIs were persistent over 48 hours. Two experiments also tested memory reconsolidation as a possible mechanism of updating first impressions. While STIs were not substantially affected, spontaneous goal inferences (SGIs) were elevated among those with a better explicit memory of behaviors after learning trait-inconsistent information following a memory reactivation procedure. Implications of these findings on impression formation and updating processes are discussed.

Dissecting Dispositionality: Distance Increases Stability of Attribution

Causes of behavior are often classified as either dispositional (e.g., personality) or situational (e.g., circumstances). However, the disposition–situation dichotomy confounds locus (internal vs. external) and stability (unstable vs. stable) of attribution, rendering it unclear whether locus or stability drives changes in dispositionality. In the present research, we examine the dispositional shift—that is, psychologically distant (vs. near) events are attributed to dispositional (vs. situational) causes. Using construal level theory, we hypothesize that the dispositional shift is caused by a change in stability (but not necessarily locus) of attribution. Two experiments support this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, distant (vs. near) future events were attributed to more stable causes. In Experiment 2, actions by a socially distant person (vs. oneself) were also attributed to more stable (but also more internal) causes. Thus, important psychological manipulations, here psychological distance, can influence causal dimensions selectively, supporting the independence of stability and locus of attribution.