TY - JOUR
T1 - Attributions on the brain
T2 - Neuro-imaging dispositional inferences, beyond theory of mind
AU - Harris, Lasana T.
AU - Todorov, Alexander
AU - Fiske, Susan T.
N1 - Funding Information:
The work was supported by the Princeton Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior. We thank Jonathan Cohen, Ida Gobbini, Joshua Greene, James Haxby, and members of the Princeton Neuroscience and Social Decision-Making seminar for their comments.
Copyright:
Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2005/12
Y1 - 2005/12
N2 - People need to predict what other people will do, and the other person's perceived disposition is the preferred mode of prediction. People less often use, for example, shared social norms to explain another person's behavior. Social psychology's last half-century of research on attribution theory offers precise, validated paradigms for testing how people think about other people's minds. Neuro-imaging data from one classic attribution paradigm shows the unique priority given to inferring chronic, idiosyncratic dispositions (unique attitudes, individual personality, idiosyncratic intent), compared to other kinds of mental contents. Specifically, sentences describing behavior that is low in consensus across actors, low in distinctiveness across entities, and high in consistency over time (compared with the other 7 low-high combinations) uniquely elicits (a) person attributions and (b) activation in the superior temporal sulcus. Ignoring consensus, both low-distinctiveness, high-consistency combinations (compared to 6 remaining combinations) also activate the MPFC, consistent with decades of behavioral data showing that general social cognition neglects consensus information. Thus, activated areas converge with prior neuro-imaging data on theory of mind and social cognition, but more precisely isolate the exact nature of the inferences that activate these areas.
AB - People need to predict what other people will do, and the other person's perceived disposition is the preferred mode of prediction. People less often use, for example, shared social norms to explain another person's behavior. Social psychology's last half-century of research on attribution theory offers precise, validated paradigms for testing how people think about other people's minds. Neuro-imaging data from one classic attribution paradigm shows the unique priority given to inferring chronic, idiosyncratic dispositions (unique attitudes, individual personality, idiosyncratic intent), compared to other kinds of mental contents. Specifically, sentences describing behavior that is low in consensus across actors, low in distinctiveness across entities, and high in consistency over time (compared with the other 7 low-high combinations) uniquely elicits (a) person attributions and (b) activation in the superior temporal sulcus. Ignoring consensus, both low-distinctiveness, high-consistency combinations (compared to 6 remaining combinations) also activate the MPFC, consistent with decades of behavioral data showing that general social cognition neglects consensus information. Thus, activated areas converge with prior neuro-imaging data on theory of mind and social cognition, but more precisely isolate the exact nature of the inferences that activate these areas.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=28244486056&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=28244486056&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.021
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.021
M3 - Article
C2 - 16046148
AN - SCOPUS:28244486056
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 28
SP - 763
EP - 769
JO - Neuroimage
JF - Neuroimage
IS - 4
ER -