The neural bases of directed and spontaneous mental state attributions to group agents.

ABSTRACT: In daily life, perceivers often need to predict and interpret the behavior of group agents, such as corporations and governments. Although research has investigated how perceivers reason about individual members of particular groups, less is known about how perceivers reason about group agents themselves. The present studies investigate how perceivers understand group agents by investigating the extent to which understanding the 'mind' of the group as a whole shares important properties and processes with understanding the minds of individuals. Experiment 1 demonstrates that perceivers are sometimes willing to attribute a mental state to a group as a whole even when they are not willing to attribute that mental state to any of the individual members of the group, suggesting that perceivers

SUBMITTER: Jenkins AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4139375 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature