Brain regions related with theoryofmindMPFC, TPJ, and precuneuswhen participants evaluated the
Brain regions associated with theoryofmindMPFC, TPJ, and precuneuswhen participants evaluated the applicability of particular preferences each to individual persons and to collections of individuals, when compared with a nonmental control situation [48]. Taken with each other, these behavioral and neuroimaging studies offer assistance for the view that people can 3PO ascribe psychological attributes not merely to person human beings but also to collections of human beings, and that they may use comparable processes to accomplish so (even though the outcomes of these processes could at times differ [47,49]). Yet studies like these nonetheless leave open the query of how men and women understand groups in the second sensei.e how they understand group agents. As we saw above, people can ascribe a nonmental property to all the members of a group agent without the need of ascribing that property towards the group agent itself (“All of your personnel and stockholders are in debt”). Similarly, perhaps people can ascribe a mental property (i.e a mental state) to all the members of a group without having in any way ascribing these states for the group agent itself (“The staff and stockholders all enjoy Jeopardy!”). We have also observed that people can ascribe a nonmental property to a group without the need of ascribing that property towards the individual members (“Acme Corp. is in debt.”). Similarly, perhaps people today can ascribe mental states to a group agent without the need of ascribing that state to any in the members. Certainly, current study suggests that the additional individuals perceive a `group mind’, the significantly less they tend to perceive the minds in the members of that group [8,50]. With this in mind, the current research investigate how perceivers comprehend group agents by examining the extent to which understanding group agents shares essential properties and processes with understanding folks. Experiment examines behaviorally the extent to which folks ascribe mental states to group agents more than and above attributions of mental states to their person members. Experiment two makes use of fMRI to investigate the extent to which understanding and predicting the behavior of group agents recruits brain regions associated with understanding and predicting the behavior of individualsi.e brain regions associated with theory of thoughts.Experiment : Ascriptions to group agents vs. ascriptions to group membersWhen men and women use sentences that seem to ascribe mental states to a group agent, are they really ascribing a thing towards the group agent, or are they merely attributing anything towards the group’s members As an example, take into consideration the sentence, “United Food Corp. believes that the new policy is morally unacceptable.” No less than on the surface, this sentence appears to attribute a mental state (the belief that the policy is morally unacceptable) to a group agent (United Food Corp). Nonetheless, it really is possible that this is just a linguistic shortcut, and that when individuals use or hear sentences likeTheoryOfMind and Group Agentsthis one particular, they are definitely attributing mental states to the members in the group, not to the group itself. Existing analysis demonstrates that people in some cases do use sentences that seem to attribute a home to a group when referring to its members, specifically when the members with the group have the specific home in their roles as group members [39]. By way of example, if every member in the Sigma Chi fraternity gets drunk, and if each of PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24126911 them does so in his part as a Sigma Chi member, folks have a tendency to agree with the sentence, “The Si.