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Beattie P, Beattie M. Political polarization: a curse of knowledge? Front Psychol 2023; 14:1200627. [PMID: 37502753 PMCID: PMC10368969 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1200627] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2023] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Purpose Could the curse of knowledge influence how antagonized we are towards political outgroups? Do we assume others know what we know but still disagree with us? This research investigates how the curse of knowledge may affect us politically, i.e., be a cause of political polarization. Background Research on the curse of knowledge has shown that even when people are incentivized to act as if others do not know what they know, they are still influenced by the knowledge they have. Methods This study consists of five studies consisting of both experimental and non-experimental and within- and between-subjects survey designs. Each study collected samples of 152-1,048. Results Partisans on both sides overestimate the extent to which stories from their news sources were familiar to contrapartisans. Introducing novel, unknown facts to support their political opinion made participants rate political outgroup members more negatively. In an experimental design, there was no difference in judging an opponent who did not know the same issue-relevant facts and someone who did know the same facts. However, when asked to compare those who know to those who do not, participants judged those who do not know more favorably, and their ratings of all issue-opponents were closer to those issue-opponents who shared the same knowledge. In a debiasing experiment, those who received an epistemological treatment judged someone who disagreed more favorably. Conclusion This research provides evidence that the curse of knowledge may be a contributing cause of affective political polarization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter Beattie
- MGPE Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Marguerite Beattie
- Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
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Royka A, Santos LR. Theory of Mind in the wild. Curr Opin Behav Sci 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2022.101137] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Ignorance matters. Behav Brain Sci 2021; 44:e167. [PMID: 34796822 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x20001636] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
The ability to reason about ignorance is an important and often overlooked representational capacity. Phillips and colleagues assume that knowledge representations are inevitably accompanied by ignorance representations. We argue that this is not necessarily the case, as agents who can reason about knowledge often fail on ignorance tasks, suggesting that ignorance should be studied as a separate representational capacity.
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Gweon H. Inferential social learning: cognitive foundations of human social learning and teaching. Trends Cogn Sci 2021; 25:896-910. [PMID: 34417094 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.07.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2020] [Revised: 07/17/2021] [Accepted: 07/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Social learning is often portrayed as a passive process of copying and trusting others. This view, however, does not fully capture what makes human social learning so powerful: social information is often 'curated' by helpful teachers. I argue that both learning from others (social learning) and helping others learn (teaching) can be characterized as probabilistic inferences guided by an intuitive understanding of how people think, plan, and act. Consistent with this idea, even young children draw rich inferences from evidence provided by others and generate informative evidence that helps others learn. By studying social learning and teaching through a common theoretical lens, inferential social learning provides an integrated account of how human cognition supports acquisition and communication of abstract knowledge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hyowon Gweon
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
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Hayashi T, Akikawa R, Kawasaki K, Egawa J, Minamimoto T, Kobayashi K, Kato S, Hori Y, Nagai Y, Iijima A, Someya T, Hasegawa I. Macaques Exhibit Implicit Gaze Bias Anticipating Others' False-Belief-Driven Actions via Medial Prefrontal Cortex. Cell Rep 2021; 30:4433-4444.e5. [PMID: 32234478 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.03.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2019] [Revised: 12/23/2019] [Accepted: 03/05/2020] [Indexed: 02/08/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to infer others' mental states is essential to social interactions. This ability, critically evaluated by testing whether one attributes false beliefs (FBs) to others, has been considered to be uniquely hominid and to accompany the activation of a distributed brain network. We challenge the taxon specificity of this ability and identify the causal brain locus by introducing an anticipatory-looking FB paradigm combined with chemogenetic neuronal manipulation in macaque monkeys. We find spontaneous gaze bias of macaques implicitly anticipating others' FB-driven actions. Silencing of the medial prefrontal neuronal activity with inhibitory designer receptor exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) specifically eliminates the implicit gaze bias while leaving the animals' visually guided and memory-guided tracking abilities intact. Thus, neuronal activity in the medial prefrontal cortex could have a causal role in FB-attribution-like behaviors in the primate lineage, emphasizing the importance of probing the neuronal mechanisms underlying theory of mind with relevant macaque animal models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taketsugu Hayashi
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan; Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan
| | - Ryota Akikawa
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan; Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan
| | - Keisuke Kawasaki
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan
| | - Jun Egawa
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan
| | - Takafumi Minamimoto
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Kazuto Kobayashi
- Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan
| | - Shigeki Kato
- Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan
| | - Yukiko Hori
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Yuji Nagai
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Atsuhiko Iijima
- Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan; School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan; Interdisciplinary Program of Biomedical Engineering, Assistive Technology, and Art and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University. Niigata, Japan
| | - Toshiyuki Someya
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan.
| | - Isao Hasegawa
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan.
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Horschler DJ, Santos LR, MacLean EL. How do non-human primates represent others' awareness of where objects are hidden? Cognition 2021; 212:104658. [PMID: 33773422 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104658] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2020] [Revised: 03/02/2021] [Accepted: 03/03/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Although non-human primates (NHPs) generally appear to predict how knowledgeable agents use knowledge to guide their behavior, the cognitive mechanisms that enable this remain poorly understood. We assessed the conditions under which NHPs' representations of an agent's awareness break down. Free-ranging rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) watched as an agent observed a target object being hidden in one of two boxes. While the agent could no longer see the boxes, the box containing the object flipped open and the object either changed in size/shape (Experiment 1) or color (Experiment 2). Monkeys looked longer when the agent searched for the object incorrectly rather than correctly following the color change (a non-geometric manipulation), but not the size/shape change (a geometric manipulation). Even though the agent maintained knowledge of the object's location in both cases, monkeys no longer expected the agent to search correctly after it had been geometrically (but not non-geometrically) manipulated. Experiment 3 confirmed that monkeys were sensitive to the color manipulation used in Experiment 2, making it unlikely that a failure to perceive the color manipulation accounted for our findings. Our results show that NHPs do not always expect that knowledgeable agents will act on their knowledge to obtain their goals, consistent with heuristic-based accounts of how NHPs represent others' mental states. These findings also suggest that geometric changes that occur outside the agent's perceptual access may disrupt attribution of awareness more so than non-geometric changes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Horschler
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
| | - Laurie R Santos
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
| | - Evan L MacLean
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
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Macaque species with varying social tolerance show no differences in understanding what other agents perceive. Anim Cogn 2021; 24:877-888. [PMID: 33590410 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-021-01485-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2020] [Revised: 01/21/2021] [Accepted: 02/01/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of work demonstrates that a species' socioecology can impact its cognitive abilities. Indeed, even closely related species with different socioecological pressures often show different patterns of cognitive performance on the same task. Here, we explore whether major differences in social tolerance in two closely related macaque species can impact a core sociocognitive ability, the capacity to recognize what others see. Specifically, we compared the performance of Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus, n = 80) and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta, n = 62) on a standard test of visual perspective understanding. In contrast to the difference in performance, one might expect from these species' divergent socioecologies that our results show similar performance across Barbary and rhesus macaques, with both species forming expectations about how another agent will act based on that agent's visual perspective. These results suggest that differences in socioecology may not play as big of a role in the evolution of some theory of mind capacities as they do in other decision-making or foraging contexts.
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Arre AM, Clark CS, Santos LR. Do young rhesus macaques know what others see?: A comparative developmental perspective. Am J Primatol 2020; 82:e23054. [PMID: 31566777 PMCID: PMC7103490 DOI: 10.1002/ajp.23054] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/04/2019] [Revised: 08/01/2019] [Accepted: 09/08/2019] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Humans undergo robust ontogenetic shifts in the theory of mind capabilities. Are these developmental changes unique to human development or are they shared with other closely related non-human species? To explore this issue, we tested the development of the theory of mind capacities in a population of 236 infant and juvenile rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Using a looking-time method, we examined what developing monkeys know about others' perceptions. Specifically, we tested whether younger monkeys predict that a person will reach for an object where she last saw it. Overall, we found a significant interaction between a monkey's age and performance on this task (p = .014). Juvenile monkeys (between two and 5 years of age) show a nonsignificant trend towards human infant-like patterns of performance, looking longer during the unexpected condition as compared to the expected condition, though this difference is nonsignificant (p = .09). However, contrary to findings in human infants, infant rhesus macaques show a different trend. Infant monkeys on average look slightly longer on average during the expected condition than the unexpected condition, though this pattern was not significant (p = .06). Our developmental results in monkeys provide some hints about the development of the theory of mind capacities in non-humans. First, young rhesus macaques appear to show some interest in the perception of other agents. Second, young rhesus seems able to make predictions based on the visual perspective of another agent, though the developmental pattern of this ability is not as clear nor as robust as in humans. As such, though an understanding of others' perceptions is early-emerging in human infants, it may require more experience interacting with other social agents in our non-human relatives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alyssa M. Arre
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511
| | - Chelsey S. Clark
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544
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Abstract
Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations of beliefs, which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations of knowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one doesn't even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that non-human primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibit a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind-one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it.
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Horschler DJ, Santos LR, MacLean EL. Do non-human primates really represent others' ignorance? A test of the awareness relations hypothesis. Cognition 2019; 190:72-80. [PMID: 31026672 PMCID: PMC6570545 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2018] [Revised: 03/10/2019] [Accepted: 04/12/2019] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Non-human primates can often predict how another agent will behave based on that agent's knowledge about the world. But how do non-human primates represent others' knowledge states? Researchers have recently proposed that non-human primates form "awareness relations" to attribute objectively true information to other minds, as opposed to human-like representations that track others' ignorance or false belief states. We present the first explicit test of the awareness relations hypothesis by examining when rhesus macaques' understanding of other agents' knowledge falters. In Experiment 1, monkeys watched an agent observe a piece of fruit (the target object) being hidden in one of two boxes. While the agent's view was occluded, either the fruit moved out of its box and directly back into it, or the box containing the fruit opened and immediately closed. We found that monkeys looked significantly longer when the agent reached incorrectly rather than correctly after the box's movement, but not after the fruit's movement. This result suggests that monkeys did not expect the agent to know the fruit's location when it briefly and arbitrarily moved while the agent could not see it, but did expect the agent to know the fruit's location when only the box moved while the agent could not see it. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended both findings with a larger sample, a different target object, and opposite directions of motion in the test trials. These findings suggest that monkeys reason about others' knowledge of objects by forming awareness relations which are disrupted by arbitrary spatial manipulation of the target object while an agent has no perceptual access to it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Horschler
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
| | - Laurie R Santos
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
| | - Evan L MacLean
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
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Abstract
Humans can use an intuitive sense of statistics to make predictions about uncertain future events, a cognitive skill that underpins logical and mathematical reasoning. Recent research shows that some of these abilities for statistical inferences can emerge in preverbal infants and non-human primates such as apes and capuchins. An important question is therefore whether animals share the full complement of intuitive reasoning abilities demonstrated by humans, as well as what evolutionary contexts promote the emergence of such skills. Here, we examined whether free-ranging rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) can use probability information to infer the most likely outcome of a random lottery, in the first test of whether primates can make such inferences in the absence of direct prior experience. We developed a novel expectancy-violation looking time task, adapted from prior studies of infants, in order to assess the monkeys' expectations. In Study 1, we confirmed that monkeys (n = 20) looked similarly at different sampled items if they had no prior knowledge about the population they were drawn from. In Study 2, monkeys (n = 80) saw a dynamic 'lottery' machine containing a mix of two types of fruit outcomes, and then saw either the more common fruit (expected trial) or the relatively rare fruit (unexpected trial) fall from the machine. We found that monkeys looked longer when they witnessed the unexpected outcome. In Study 3, we confirmed that this effect depended on the causal relationship between the sample and the population, not visual mismatch: monkeys (n = 80) looked equally at both outcomes if the experimenter pulled the sampled item from her pocket. These results reveal that rhesus monkeys spontaneously use information about probability to reason about likely outcomes, and show how comparative studies of nonhumans can disentangle the evolutionary history of logical reasoning capacities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesca De Petrillo
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA.,Institute for Advance Study in Toulouse, Manufacture des Tabacs, 21, Allée de Brienne, 31015 Toulouse, France
| | - Alexandra G Rosati
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA.,Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
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Krupenye C, Call J. Theory of mind in animals: Current and future directions. WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2019; 10:e1503. [DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1503] [Citation(s) in RCA: 61] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2018] [Revised: 04/03/2019] [Accepted: 04/09/2019] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Josep Call
- School of Psychology & Neuroscience University of St Andrews St Andrews UK
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Abstract
We investigate which of the higher cognitive abilities or types of intelligence characteristic of humans are found, even in preliminary form, in non-human animals, predominantly primates, or whether qualitatively different ("unique") human abilities exist. This concerns (1) tool use and fabrication, (2) problem solving, (3) gaze following, (4) mirror self-recognition, (5) imitation, (6) metacognition, (7) theory of mind, (8) consciousness, (9) prosociality, and (10) language. We found that none of these abilities can be regarded as unique to humans without precursors in non-human primates. The observed differences in cognitive functions, underlying brain mechanisms and resulting behaviors correlate best with differences in the information processing capacity as an equivalent of general intelligence based on the number of cortical neurons, packing density and axonal conduction velocity plus long-range cortical fascicles. The biggest quantitative change appears to concern the origin of syntactical language, but this was preceded by an increased mental ability to manipulate sequential events within working memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gerhard Roth
- Faculty of Biology and Chemistry, Brain Research Institute, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
| | - Ursula Dicke
- Faculty of Biology and Chemistry, Brain Research Institute, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
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