Bertram Malle, PhD
Current Projects

Folk Theory of Mind and Behavior Intentionality Explanations of Behavior Representations of Self and Personality Representations of Mind and Behavior Coding Schemes

Folk Theory of Mind and Behavior

The overarching theme of my research revolves around people's attempts to make sense of themselves and others and the tools people use to achieve this goal. One of the central tools is the folk theory of mind and behavior, a conceptual framework that helps people bring order to perceptions, interpretations, explanations, and evaluations of human behavior and experience (Malle, 1997, 1998, in press). My work focuses on the empirical study of the adult theory of mind and behavior, but it is informed by Heider's groundbreaking thinking on "naive psychology" (Malle & Ickes, 2000), developmental work on the emerging theory in children, and philosophical work on the conceptual puzzles associated with such a theory. Recently, I have also speculated about the possible evolutionary origins of theory of mind and languge (Malle, 2002).

References

Malle, B.F. (1997). People's folk theory of behavior. In M.G. Shafto, & P. Langley (Eds.), Proceedings of the nineteenth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 478-483). Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum.

Malle, B.F. (1998). Whose psychological concepts? A review of J. Smedslund's 'The structure of psychological common sense.' Contemporary Psychology, 43, 671-672.

Malle, B. F., & Ickes, W. (2000). Fritz Heider: Philosopher and psychologist. In G. A. Kimble & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 193-214). Washington, DC and Mahwah, NJ: American Psychological Association and Erlbaum.

Malle, B. F. (2002) The relation between language and theory of mind in development and evolution. In T. Givon & B. F. Malle (Eds.), The evolution of language out of pre-language (pp. 265-284). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Malle, B. F. (in press). The folk theory of mind and behavior: Conceptual foundations for social cognition. In R. Hassin, J. Uleman, & J. Bargh, The new unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.

Malle, B. F. (2004). Foundation: The folk theory of mind and behavior. Chapter 2 in B. F. Malle, How the mind explains behavior: Folk explanations, meaning, and social interaction (pp. 29-62). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Social Interaction Page

Last updated September 2004

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