Beyond evidence accumulation: shared-goal belief guides action generalization in social groups.

ABSTRACT: People tend to generalize the actions of known group members to new ones when they are both members of the same group. This study was conducted to investigate how the prevalence of specific actions among multiple individuals determines action generalization within social groups. We propose that people rely on the belief that group members work toward a shared goal (i.e., shared-goal belief) to guide action generalization. Consequently, the extent of action generalization may not consistently increase with the sampled prevalence of group members performing the same goal-directed action, resulting in a deviation from graded action generalization (i.e., nongraded action generalization). Experiment 1 revealed that the more participants believed that group members pursued a shared goal, the gre

SUBMITTER: Duan J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12380659 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature