The now and future of social robots as depictions.

The authors at times propose that robots are mere depictions of social agents (a philosophical claim) and at other times that people conceive of social robots as depictions (an empirical psychological claim). We evaluate each claim's accuracy both now and in the future and, in doing so, we introduce two dangerous misperceptions people have, or will have, about social robots.

Spontaneous perspective taking toward robots: The unique impact of humanlike appearance.

As robots rapidly enter society, how does human social cognition respond to their novel presence? Focusing on one foundational social-cognitive capacity-visual perspective taking-seven studies reveal that people spontaneously adopt a robot's unique perspective and do so with patterns of variation that mirror perspective taking toward humans. As they do with humans, people take a robot's visual perspective when it displays goal-directed actions. Moreover, perspective taking is absent when the agent lacks human appearance, increases when the agent looks highly humanlike, and persists even when the humanlike agent is perceived as eerie or as obviously lacking a mind. These results suggest that visual perspective taking toward robots is consistent with a "mere appearance hypothesis"-a form of stimulus generalization based on humanlike appearance-rather than following an "uncanny valley" pattern or arising from mind perception. Robots' superficial human resemblance may trigger and modulate social-cognitive responses in human observers originally developed for human interaction.

Moral Judgments.

Research on morality has increased rapidly over the past 10 years. At the center of this research are moral judgments-evaluative judgments that a perceiver makes in response to a moral norm violation. But there is substantial diversity in what has been called moral judgment. This article offers a framework that distinguishes, theoretically and empirically, four classes of moral judgment: evaluations, norm judgments, moral wrongness judgments, and blame judgments. These judgments differ in their typical objects, the information they process, their speed, and their social functions. The framework presented here organizes the extensive literature and provides fresh perspectives on measurement, the nature of moral intuitions, the status of moral dumbfounding, and the prospects of dual-process models of moral judgment. It also identifies omitted questions and sets the stage for a broader theory of moral judgment, which the coming decades may bring forth.

Asymmetric morality: Blame is more differentiated and more extreme than praise.

Despite extensive recent investigations of moral judgments, little is known about how negative judgments like blame might differ from positive judgments like praise. Drawing on theory from both social and moral cognition, the present studies identify and test potential asymmetries in the extremity and differentiatedness of blame as compared to praise. The amplified blame hypothesis predicts that people will assign greater blame for negative behaviors than praise for positive behaviors. The differentiated blame hypothesis predicts that, as compared to praise judgments, blame judgments will more finely differentiate among distinct mental states that precede action, such as thoughts, desires, and intentions. A series of studies-using varied stimulus sets and samples-together provide robust support for the differentiated blame hypothesis and somewhat weaker support for the amplified blame hypotheses. These results illustrate systematic asymmetries between blame and praise, generally revealing that blame is more extreme and differentiated than praise. Together, the findings reflect the social costs and social regulatory function of moral judgments, suggesting that blame and praise are not mirror images and that blame might be more complex.

People systematically update moral judgments of blame.

Six experiments examine people's updating of blame judgments and test predictions developed from a socially regulated blame perspective. According to this perspective, blame emerged in human history as a socially costly tool for regulating other's behavior. Because it is costly for both blamers and violators, blame is typically constrained by requirements for "warrant"-evidence that one's moral judgment is justified. This requirement motivates people to systematically process available causal and mental information surrounding a violation. That is, people are relatively calibrated and evenhanded in utilizing evidence that either amplifies or mitigates blame. Such systematic processing should be particularly visible when people update their moral judgments. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we test 2 sets of predictions derived from the socially regulated blame perspective and compare them with predictions from a motivated-blame perspective. Studies 1-4 demonstrate (across student, Internet, and community samples) that moral perceivers systematically grade updated blame judgments in response to the strength of new causal and mental information, without anchoring on initial evaluations. Further, these studies reveal that perceivers update blame judgments symmetrically in response to exacerbating and mitigating information, inconsistent with motivated-blame predictions. Study 5 shows that graded and symmetric blame updating is robust under cognitive load. Lastly, Study 6 demonstrates that biases can emerge once the social requirement for warrant is relaxed-as in the case of judging outgroup members. We conclude that social constraints on blame judgments render the normal process of blame well calibrated to causal and mental information, and biases may appear when such constraints are absent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Information-Acquisition Processes in Moral Judgments of Blame.

When people make moral judgments, what information do they look for? Despite its theoretical and practical implications, this question has largely been neglected by prior literature. The recent Path Model of Blame predicts a canonical order in which people acquire information when judging blame. Upon discovering a negative event, perceivers consider information about causality, then intentionality, then (if the event is intentional) reasons or (if the event is unintentional) preventability. Three studies, using two novel paradigms, assessed and found support for these predictions: In constrained (Study 1) and open-ended (Study 2) information-acquisition contexts, participants were most likely, and fastest, to seek information in the canonical order, even when under time pressure (Study 3). These findings indicate that blame relies on a set of information components that are processed in a systematic order. Implications for moral judgment models are discussed, as are potential roles of emotion and motivated reasoning in information acquisition.

The relationship between joint attention and theory of mind in neurotypical adults.

Joint attention (JA) is hypothesized to have a close relationship with developing theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. We tested the co-occurrence of ToM and JA in social interactions between adults with no reported history of psychiatric illness or neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants engaged in an experimental task that encouraged nonverbal communication, including JA, and also ToM activity. We adapted an in-lab variant of experience sampling methods (Bryant et al., 2013) to measure ToM during JA based on participants' subjective reports of their thoughts while performing the task. This experiment successfully elicited instances of JA in 17/20 dyads. We compared participants' thought contents during episodes of JA and non-JA. Our results suggest that, in adults, JA and ToM may occur independently.

Two paths to blame: Intentionality directs moral information processing along two distinct tracks.

There is broad consensus that features such as causality, mental states, and preventability are key inputs to moral judgments of blame. What is not clear is exactly how people process these inputs to arrive at such judgments. Three studies provide evidence that early judgments of whether or not a norm violation is intentional direct information processing along 1 of 2 tracks: if the violation is deemed intentional, blame processing relies on information about the agent's reasons for committing the violation; if the violation is deemed unintentional, blame processing relies on information about how preventable the violation was. Owing to these processing commitments, when new information requires perceivers to switch tracks, they must reconfigure their judgments, which results in measurable processing costs indicated by reaction time (RT) delays. These findings offer support for a new theory of moral judgment (the Path Model of Blame) and advance the study of moral cognition as hierarchical information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Grasping for Traits or Reasons? How People Grapple With Puzzling Social Behaviors.

Within social psychology, it is well accepted that trait inference is the dominant tool for understanding others' behavior. Outside of social psychology, a different consensus has emerged, namely, that people predominantly explain behavior in terms of mental states. Both positions are based on limited evidence. The trait literature focuses on trait ascriptions to persons, not explanations of behavior. The mental state literature focuses on explanations of ordinary behaviors (for which social scripts provide mental states), not of expectancy-violating behaviors. We examined the critical test case for the two opposing positions: explanations of expectancy-violating behaviors. Participants provided open-ended explanations of puzzling actions, which were content-analyzed for use of mental states, traits, and other causal background factors. Across four studies, three stimulus sets, and two subpopulations, people overwhelmingly offered mental states when explaining puzzling actions (compared with ordinary actions), while they struggled to generate traits and other background factors.

Two dimensions of subjective uncertainty: Clues from natural language.

We argue that people intuitively distinguish epistemic (knowable) uncertainty from aleatory (random) uncertainty and show that the relative salience of these dimensions is reflected in natural language use. We hypothesize that confidence statements (e.g., "I am fairly confident," "I am 90% sure," "I am reasonably certain") communicate a subjective assessment of primarily epistemic uncertainty, whereas likelihood statements (e.g., "I believe it is fairly likely," "I'd say there is a 90% chance," "I think there is a high probability") communicate a subjective assessment of primarily aleatory uncertainty. First, we show that speakers tend to use confidence statements to express epistemic uncertainty and they tend to use likelihood statements to express aleatory uncertainty; we observe this in a 2-year sample of New York Times articles (Study 1), and in participants' explicit choices of which statements more naturally express different uncertain events (Studies 2A and 2B). Second, we show that when speakers apply confidence versus likelihood statements to the same events, listeners infer different reasoning (Study 3): confidence statements suggest epistemic rationale (singular reasoning, feeling of knowing, internal control), whereas likelihood statements suggest aleatory rationale (distributional reasoning, relative frequency information, external control). Third, we show that confidence versus likelihood statements can differentially prompt epistemic versus aleatory thoughts, respectively, as observed when participants complete sentences that begin with confidence versus likelihood statements (Study 4) and when they quantify these statements based on feeling-of-knowing (epistemic) and frequency (aleatory) information (Study 5).

Attention to the mouth and gaze following in infancy predict language development.

We investigated longitudinal relations among gaze following and face scanning in infancy and later language development. At 12 months, infants watched videos of a woman describing an object while their passive viewing was measured with an eye-tracker. We examined the relation between infants' face scanning behavior and their tendency to follow the speaker's attentional shift to the object she was describing. We also collected language outcome measures on the same infants at 18 and 24 months. Attention to the mouth and gaze following at 12 months both predicted later productive vocabulary. The results are discussed in terms of social engagement, which may account for both attentional distribution and language onset. We argue that an infant's inherent interest in engaging with others (in addition to creating more opportunities for communication) leads infants to attend to the most relevant information in a social scene and that this information facilitates language learning.

The social life of cognition.

We begin by illustrating that long before the cognitive revolution, social psychology focused on topics pertaining to what is now known as social cognition: people's subjective interpretations of social situations and the concepts and cognitive processes underlying these interpretations. We then examine two questions: whether social cognition entails characteristic concepts and cognitive processes, and how social processes might themselves shape and constrain cognition. We suggest that social cognition relies heavily on generic cognition but also on unique concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and unique processes (e.g., projection, imitation, joint attention). We further suggest that social processes play a prominent role in the development and unfolding of several generic cognitive processes, including learning, attention, and memory. Finally, we comment on the prospects of a recently developing approach to the study of social cognition (social neuroscience) and two potential future directions (computational social cognition and social-cognitive robotics).

Bringing free will down to Earth: people's psychological concept of free will and its role in moral judgment.

Belief in free will is widespread, and this belief is supposed to undergird moral and legal judgment. Despite the importance of the free will concept, however, there remains widespread confusion regarding its definition and its connection to blame. We address this confusion by testing two prominent models of the folk concept of free will-a metaphysical model, in which free will involves a soul as an uncaused "first mover," and a psychological model, in which free will involves choice, alignment with desires, and lack of constraints. We test the predictions of these two models by creating agents that vary in their capacity for choice and the presence of a soul. In two studies, people's judgments of free will and blame for these agents show little to no basis in ascriptions of a soul but are powerfully predicted by ascriptions of choice capacity. These results support a psychological model of the folk concept of free will.

Increased focus on the mouth among infants in the first year of life: A longitudinal eye-tracking study.

The present study examines face-scanning behaviors of infants at 6, 9, and 12 months as they watched videos of a woman describing an object in front of her. The videos were created to vary information in the mouth (speaking vs. smiling) and the eyes (gazing into the camera vs. cueing the infant with head turn or gaze direction to an object being described). Infants tended to divide their attention between the eyes and the mouth, looking less at the eyes with age and more at the mouth than the eyes at 9 and 12 months. Attention to the mouth was greater on speaking trials than on smiling trials at all three ages, and this difference increased between 6 and 9 months. Despite consistent results within subjects, there was considerable variation between subjects. This raises the question of whether a developmental "norm" of face scanning in infancy ought to be pursued. Rather, these data add to emerging evidence suggesting that individual differences in face scanning might reliably predict aspects of later development.

Is there a hierarchy of social inferences? The likelihood and speed of inferring intentionality, mind, and personality.

People interpret behavior by making inferences about agents' intentionality, mind, and personality. Past research studied such inferences 1 at a time; in real life, people make these inferences simultaneously. The present studies therefore examined whether 4 major inferences (intentionality, desire, belief, and personality), elicited simultaneously in response to an observed behavior, might be ordered in a hierarchy of likelihood and speed. To achieve generalizability, the studies included a wide range of stimulus behaviors, presented them verbally and as dynamic videos, and assessed inferences both in a retrieval paradigm (measuring the likelihood and speed of accessing inferences immediately after they were made) and in an online processing paradigm (measuring the speed of forming inferences during behavior observation). Five studies provide evidence for a hierarchy of social inferences-from intentionality and desire to belief to personality-that is stable across verbal and visual presentations and that parallels the order found in developmental and primate research.

Friendship trumps ethnicity (but not sexual orientation): comfort and discomfort in inter-group interactions.

An experience sampling study tested the degree to which interactions with out-group members evoked negative affect and behavioural inhibition after controlling for level of friendship between partners. When friendship level was statistically controlled, neither White nor Black participants reported feeling more discomfort interacting with ethnic out-group members compared to ethnic in-group members. When partners differed in sexual orientation, friendship level had a less palliating effect. Controlling for friendship, both gay and straight men - but not women - felt more behaviourally inhibited when interacting with someone who differed in sexual orientation, and heterosexual participants of both genders continued to report more negative affect with gay and lesbian interaction partners. However, gay and lesbian participants reported similar levels of negative affect interacting with in-group (homosexual) and out-group (heterosexual) members after friendship level was controlled. Results suggest that much of the discomfort observed in inter-ethnic interactions may be attributable to lower levels of friendship with out-group partners. The discomfort generated by differences in sexual orientation, however, remains a more stubborn barrier to comfortable inter-group interactions.

The effect of feeling stereotyped on social power and inhibition.

An experience sampling study examined the degree to which feeling stereotyped predicts feelings of low power and inhibition among stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals. For 7 days, participants with a concealable (gay and lesbian), a visible (African American), or no identifiable stigma recorded feelings of being stereotyped, of powerlessness, and of inhibition immediately following social interactions. For members of all three groups, feeling stereotyped was associated with more inhibition, and this relation was partially mediated by feeling low in power. Although stigmatized participants reported feeling stereotyped more often than nonstigmatized participants, they reacted less strongly to the experience, consistent with the presence of buffering mechanisms developed by those living with stigma. African Americans appeared to buffer the impact of feeling stereotyped more effectively than gay and lesbian participants, an effect that was partly attributable to African Americans' higher identity centrality.

Can unintended side effects be intentional? Resolving a controversy over intentionality and morality.

Can an event's blameworthiness distort whether people see it as intentional? In controversial recent studies, people judged a behavior's negative side effect intentional even though the agent allegedly had no desire for it to occur. Such a judgment contradicts the standard assumption that desire is a necessary condition of intentionality, and it raises concerns about assessments of intentionality in legal settings. Six studies examined whether blameworthy events distort intentionality judgments. Studies 1 through 4 show that, counter to recent claims, intentionality judgments are systematically guided by variations in the agent's desire, for moral and nonmoral actions alike. Studies 5 and 6 show that a behavior's negative side effects are rarely seen as intentional once people are allowed to choose from multiple descriptions of the behavior. Specifically, people distinguish between "knowingly" and "intentionally" bringing about a side effect, even for immoral actions. These studies suggest that intentionality judgments are unaffected by a behavior's blameworthiness.