Knowledge that Transforms

Construal-level theory proposes that increasing the reported spatial distance of events leads individuals to represent the events by their central, abstract, global features (high-level construal) rather than by their peripheral, concrete, local features (low-level construal). Results of two experiments indicated that participants preferred to identify actions as ends rather than as means to a greater extent when these actions occurred at a spatially distant, as opposed to near, location (Study 1), and that they used more abstract language to recall spatially distant events, compared with near events (Study 2). These findings suggest that spatially distant events are associated with high-level construals, and that spatial distance can be conceptualized as a dimension of psychological distance.

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where theory of mind and moral judgment meet. Preschool children's judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side effect is brought about "on purpose" when the side effect itself is morally bad, but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of whether something was done on purpose (as opposed to judgments of purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentionality are usually assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative-even in preschoolers-challenges current understanding. Young children's judgments regarding foreseen side effects depend on whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the theory-of-mind concept "not care that P," children show the side-effect effect.

The voluntary task-switching paradigm requires subjects to select randomly between tasks and promises to provide a window into executive task selection independent of exogenous influences present in standard task-switching situations. We show here that the degree to which subjects perseverate on tasks across trials captures unique individual differences variance, but also that the switch rate is under strong stimulus-driven control: "Voluntary" switches are much more frequent when the stimulus changes than when it repeats. Most important, we show that individuals whose no-switch trials are selectively slowed exhibit less perseveration and stimulus-driven effects (and thus more voluntary selection) than individuals whose no-switch trials do not show this slowing. We suggest that selective slowing indicates a strategy of treating trials as discrete events--possibly through inhibition of the preceding task set. These results not only demonstrate massive nonvoluntary influences on voluntary selection that are largely untapped by standard task-switching measures, but also show how such influences can be counteracted through strategic adaptations.

People tend to prefer highly prototypical stimuli--a phenomenon referred to as the beauty-in-averageness effect. A common explanation of this effect proposes that prototypicality signals mate value. Here we present three experiments testing whether prototypicality preference results from more general mechanisms-fluent processing of prototypes and preference for fluently processed stimuli. In two experiments, participants categorized and rated the attractiveness of random-dot patterns (Experiment 1) or common geometric patterns (Experiment 2) that varied in levels of prototypicality. In both experiments, prototypicality was a predictor of both fluency (categorization speed) and attractiveness. Critically, fluency mediated the effect of prototypicality on attractiveness, although some effect of prototypicality remained when fluency was controlled. The findings were the same whether or not participants explicitly considered the pattern's categorical membership, and whether or not categorization fluency was salient when they rated attractiveness. Experiment 3, using the psychophysiological technique of facial electromyography, confirmed that viewing abstract prototypes elicits quick positive affective reactions.

Understanding the operating characteristics of theory of mind is essential for understanding how beliefs, desires, and other mental states are inferred, and for understanding the role such inferences could play in other cognitive processes. We present the first investigation of the automaticity of belief reasoning. In an incidental false-belief task, adult subjects responded more slowly to unexpected questions concerning another person's belief about an object's location than to questions concerning the object's real location. Results in other conditions showed that responses to belief questions were not necessarily slower than responses to reality questions, as subjects showed no difference in response times to belief and reality questions when they were instructed to track the person's beliefs about the object's location. The results suggest that adults do not ascribe beliefs to agents automatically.