| Folk Theory of Mind and Behavior | Intentionality | Explanations of Behavior | Representations of Self and Personality | Representations of Mind and Behavior | Coding Schemes |
Moral sentiments. In the past few years I have become interested in the interplay between the folk theory of mind and behavior and moral sentiments, such as blame, guilt, or shame. An honors thesis by Brad Lytle examined whether guilt states (induced by writing a narrative) have an impact on empathic accuracy (the results suggested they did not). Gale Pearce, Ph.D. (2003), explored in her dissertation which emotions are associated with judgments of blame, under what conditions people actually express their feelings of blame, and what social functions they might serve. Casey Campbell, a Master's student, is currently completing a project on the differentiation between shame a guilt in terms of their conceptual components and social functions.
Prediction. In collaboration with Chuck Tate, I have begun to explore the cognitive processes that underly prediction (e.g., representativeness, cognitive simulation, and systematic knowledge recruitment). Besides investigating which cognitive strategies people use to form predictions, we are also examining how predictions are related to explanations and whether there are social and domain-specific variations of prediction processes.
Values. One mental construct that has received virtually no attention in the fields of theory of mind and social cognition is that of values. Values encompass concepts such as freedom, equality, honesty, loyalty, justice, and the like. These constructs have often been defined as kinds of beliefs or goals in the psychological literature. However, with undergraduate student Eric Edmondson I examined what people's folk conception of values is and what kinds of things they group under the values label. We found that values are clearly distinct from goals and other standards and can be characterized by two major features (wide semantic scope, prosocial content) and a number of additional attributes (affective attachment, moral dimension, life perspective). With Stephan Dickert, I am now examining the social and cognitive implications of this preliminary model of values.
Malle, B. F., & Edmondson, E. (2004). What are values? A folk-conceptual investigation. Technical Reports of the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, No. 04-1, Eugene, Oregon. Available electronically.