Signaling benefits of partner choice decisions.

When deciding whom to choose for a cooperative interaction, two features of prospective partners are especially relevant: ability to provide benefits, and willingness to provide those benefits. Often, these traits are correlated. But, when ability and willingness are in conflict, people often indicate that they value willingness over ability, even when doing so results in immediate losses. Why would such behavior be favored by natural selection acting at the level of the individual? Across nine experimental studies (seven preregistered) and a mathematical model we explore one way of explaining this costly choice, demonstrating that choosing a willing over an able partner affords one a moral reputation and makes one more likely to be chosen as a cooperation partner. In fact, even people who choose an able over a willing partner for themselves prefer others who choose a willing over an able partner. Crucial to our model, we find that valuing willingness over ability is an honest signal of both higher levels of generosity in an economic game and lower levels of trait Machiavellianism. These findings provide the first extensive exploration of the signaling benefits of partner choice decisions. Furthermore, this work provides one explanation for why we choose those who are willing over those who are able, even at a cost to ourselves: By doing so, we in turn look like good potential partners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Acquisition of Person Knowledge.

How do we learn what we know about others? Answering this question requires understanding the perceptual mechanisms with which we recognize individuals and their actions, and the processes by which the resulting perceptual representations lead to inferences about people's mental states and traits. This review discusses recent behavioral, neural, and computational studies that have contributed to this broad research program, encompassing both social perception and social cognition.

Neural substrates for moral judgments of psychological versus physical harm.

While we may think about harm as primarily being about physical injury, harm can also take the form of negative psychological impact. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the extent to which moral judgments of physical and psychological harms are processed similarly, focusing on brain regions implicated in mental state reasoning or theory of mind, a key cognitive process for moral judgment. First, univariate analyses reveal item-specific features that lead to greater recruitment of theory of mind regions for psychological harm versus physical harm. Second, multivariate pattern analyses reveal sensitivity to the psychological/physical distinction in two regions implicated in theory of mind: the right temporoparietal junction and the precuneus. Third, we find no reliable differences between neurotypical adults and adults with autism spectrum disorder with regard to neural activity related to theory of mind during moral evaluations of psychological and physical harm. Altogether, these results reveal neural sensitivity to the distinction between psychological harm and physical harm.

My mind, your mind, and God's mind: How children and adults conceive of different agents' moral beliefs.

Extending prior research on belief attributions, we investigated the extent to which 5- to 8-year-olds and adults distinguish their beliefs and other humans' beliefs from God's beliefs. In Study 1, children reported that all agents held the same beliefs, whereas adults drew greater distinctions among agents. For example, adults reported that God was less likely than humans to view behaviors as morally acceptable. Study 2 additionally investigated attributions of beliefs about controversial behaviours (e.g., telling prosocial lies) and belief stability. These data replicated the main results from Study 1 and additionally revealed that adults (but not children) reported that God was less likely than any other agent to think that controversial behaviours were morally acceptable. Furthermore, across ages, participants reported that another person's beliefs were more likely to change than either God's beliefs or their own beliefs. We discuss implications for theories regarding belief attributions and for religious and moral cognition. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject Preschoolers can attribute different beliefs to different humans Children and adults attribute greater cognitive capacities to God than to humans What the present study adds Children attribute the same moral beliefs to God and humans Adults distinguish among different agents' minds when attributing moral beliefs Developmental differences are less pronounced in judgements of belief stability.

The perceived stability and biological basis of religious beliefs, factual beliefs, and opinions.

Previous work shows that children view group membership and psychological traits in essentialist terms, perceiving them to be both biologically determined and stable across time. To what extent might individuals view mental states such as beliefs similarly? Given that beliefs are often based on experience and can change across time, one hypothesis is that beliefs on the whole do not elicit essentialism. An alternative hypothesis, however, is that some beliefs may be perceived as inherited and stable over time-characteristics associated with essentialism. In three studies, we examined two aspects of psychological essentialism regarding three different types of beliefs (religious beliefs, factual beliefs, and opinions) in 8- to 10-year-old children and adults, asking whether beliefs are seen as (a) biologically based and/or (b) stable across time. Both children and adults distinguished among belief types when considering biology; opinions were perceived to be more rooted in biology than were other beliefs. By contrast, fewer consistent differences emerged when children and adults considered stability. For example, both children and adults perceived opinions and factual beliefs to be equally changeable. Finally, although children typically perceived beliefs to be more rooted in biology than adults, more specific patterns across belief types (e.g., perceiving opinions to be more rooted in biology than religious beliefs) remained relatively stable across age groups. Thus, development and social learning may play a larger role in perceptions of the biological component of essentialism than in judgments of particular beliefs. We discuss implications for literatures on essentialism, religious cognition, and social cognitive development.

The Role of Moral Beliefs, Memories, and Preferences in Representations of Identity.

People perceive that if their memories and moral beliefs changed, they would change. We investigated why individuals respond this way. In Study 1, participants judged that identity would change more after changes to memories and widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., about murder) versus preferences and controversial moral beliefs (e.g., about abortion). The extent to which participants judged that changes would affect their relationships predicted identity change (Study 2) and mediated the relationship between type of moral belief and perceived identity change (Study 3). We discuss the role that social relationships play in judgments of identity and highlight implications for psychology and philosophy.

Can only one person be right? The development of objectivism and social preferences regarding widely shared and controversial moral beliefs.

Prior work has established that children and adults distinguish moral norms (e.g., hitting is wrong) from conventional norms (e.g., wearing pajamas to school is wrong). Specifically, moral norms are generally perceived as universal across time and space, similar to objective facts. We examined preschoolers' and adults' perceptions of moral beliefs alongside facts and opinions by asking whether only one person could be right in the case of disagreements. We also compared perceptions of widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., whether it is better to pull someone's hair or share with someone) and controversial moral beliefs (e.g., whether it is better to help someone with a project or make cookies for someone). In Studies 1 and 2, preschoolers and adults were more likely to judge that only one person could be right in the case of widely shared versus controversial moral beliefs, treating the former as more objective or fact-like. Children were also more likely than adults to say that only one person could be right in a moral disagreement. Study 2 additionally revealed that adults were more likely than children to report preferring individuals who shared their controversial moral beliefs. Study 3 replicated these patterns using a different sample of widely shared beliefs (e.g., whether it is okay to mock a poor classmate) and controversial moral beliefs (e.g., whether it is okay to tell small, prosocial lies). While some aspects of moral cognition may depend on abundant social learning and cognitive development, the perception that disagreements about widely shared moral beliefs have only one right answer while disagreements about controversial moral beliefs do not emerges relatively early. We discuss implications for moral learning and social preferences.

How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind.

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub-disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit responses, revealing anthropomorphic notions of God's mind. Together, data from children and adults suggest the intuitive nature of perceiving God's mind as human-like. We then propose three complementary explanations for why anthropomorphism persists in adulthood, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be (a) an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic; (b) a reflection of early testimony; and/or (c) an evolutionary byproduct.

In the name of God: How children and adults judge agents who act for religious versus secular reasons.

Many people are guided by religious beliefs, but judgments of religiously and secularly motivated individuals remain unclear. We investigated reasoning about religiously versus secularly motivated characters among 5- to 10-year-olds and adults. In Study 1, theist and non-theist children reported similar attitudes toward theists; however, large differences emerged between theist and non-theist adults. Study 2 obtained similar results using a continuous, rather than forced choice, measure of preference. Additionally, Studies 2-3 tested two explanations for the stronger influence of religious background on adults' versus children's responses. Study 2 did not find strong evidence for the theistic majority account, which posits that the greater perceived prevalence of theists as compared with non-theists influenced children's responses more than adults' responses. The results of Study 3 were consistent with the intuition account, which argues that non-theist adults had effortfully overridden the teleological intuitions that may have influenced children's responses in Studies 1-2 and potentially led children to prefer characters whose beliefs were in line with children's own intuitions. The degree to which teleological intuitions persisted implicitly among adults predicted those adults' pro-theist preferences. These findings offer connections between religious judgments and other areas of social cognition, such as social preferences and teleology.

Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict.

Five studies across cultures involving 661 American Democrats and Republicans, 995 Israelis, and 1,266 Palestinians provide previously unidentified evidence of a fundamental bias, what we term the "motive attribution asymmetry," driving seemingly intractable human conflict. These studies show that in political and ethnoreligious intergroup conflict, adversaries tend to attribute their own group's aggression to ingroup love more than outgroup hate and to attribute their outgroup's aggression to outgroup hate more than ingroup love. Study 1 demonstrates that American Democrats and Republicans attribute their own party's involvement in conflict to ingroup love more than outgroup hate but attribute the opposing party's involvement to outgroup hate more than ingroup love. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate this biased attributional pattern for Israelis and Palestinians evaluating their own group and the opposing group's involvement in the current regional conflict. Study 4 demonstrates in an Israeli population that this bias increases beliefs and intentions associated with conflict intractability toward Palestinians. Finally, study 5 demonstrates, in the context of American political conflict, that offering Democrats and Republicans financial incentives for accuracy in evaluating the opposing party can mitigate this bias and its consequences. Although people find it difficult to explain their adversaries' actions in terms of love and affiliation, we suggest that recognizing this attributional bias and how to reduce it can contribute to reducing human conflict on a global scale.

Decoding moral judgments from neural representations of intentions.

Intentional harms are typically judged to be morally worse than accidental harms. Distinguishing between intentional harms and accidents depends on the capacity for mental state reasoning (i.e., reasoning about beliefs and intentions), which is supported by a group of brain regions including the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). Prior research has found that interfering with activity in RTPJ can impair mental state reasoning for moral judgment and that high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders make moral judgments based less on intent information than neurotypical participants. Three experiments, using multivoxel pattern analysis, find that (i) in neurotypical adults, the RTPJ shows reliable and distinct spatial patterns of responses across voxels for intentional vs. accidental harms, and (ii) individual differences in this neural pattern predict differences in participants' moral judgments. These effects are specific to RTPJ. By contrast, (iii) this distinction was absent in adults with autism spectrum disorders. We conclude that multivoxel pattern analysis can detect features of mental state representations (e.g., intent), and that the corresponding neural patterns are behaviorally and clinically relevant.

Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning autism.

High-functioning autism (ASD) is characterized by real-life difficulties in social interaction; however, these individuals often succeed on laboratory tests that require an understanding of another person's beliefs and intentions. This paradox suggests a theory of mind (ToM) deficit in adults with ASD that has yet to be demonstrated in an experimental task eliciting ToM judgments. We tested whether ASD adults would show atypical moral judgments when they need to consider both the intentions (based on ToM) and outcomes of a person's actions. In experiment 1, ASD and neurotypical (NT) participants performed a ToM task designed to test false belief understanding. In experiment 2, the same ASD participants and a new group of NT participants judged the moral permissibility of actions, in a 2 (intention: neutral/negative) × 2 (outcome: neutral/negative) design. Though there was no difference between groups on the false belief task, there was a selective difference in the moral judgment task for judgments of accidental harms, but not neutral acts, attempted harms, or intentional harms. Unlike the NT group, which judged accidental harms less morally wrong than attempted harms, the ASD group did not reliably judge accidental and attempted harms as morally different. In judging accidental harms, ASD participants appeared to show an underreliance on information about a person's innocent intention and, as a direct result, an overreliance on the action's negative outcome. These findings reveal impairments in integrating mental state information (e.g., beliefs, intentions) for moral judgment.