Coordinating perspectives: De se and taste attitudes in communication

The received picture of linguistic communication understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. This picture is in conflict with the attractive Lewisian view of belief as self-location, which is motivated by de se attitudes – first-personal attitudes about oneself – as well as attitudes about subjective matters such as personal taste. In this paper, I provide a solution to the conflict that reconciles these views. I argue for an account of mental attitudes and communication on which mental content and speech act content is understood as sets of multicentered worlds – roughly, possible worlds ‘centered’ on a sequence of individuals at a time. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on multicentered worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. The resulting picture is one on which the point of conversation is the coordination of individual perspectives.     

Social self-discrepancies from own and other standpoints and collective self-esteem

On the basis of an extension of Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT) to the social aspect of the self (A. Bizman, Y. Yinon, & S. Krotman, 2001), the authors examined the relationships between social self-discrepancies from own and other standpoints and collective self-esteem. The authors assessed perceptions of actual, ideal, and ought attributes of Israelis from own and other standpoints; perceived importance of others' evaluation of Israel; and the Collective Self-Esteem Scale (CSES) among 114 Israelis. The results revealed that the association of the discrepancy between actual Israelis and ideal Israelis from the other standpoint with the public Collective Self-Esteem (CSE) subscale was negative among participants with high perceived importance and positive among those with low perceived importance. In addition, the discrepancy between actual and ideal Israelis from the own standpoint was related to the private, public, and membership CSE subscales. Overall, the findings suggest that the SDT distinction between the own and other standpoints on the self is applicable to the social self.     

Differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of own and other races

Past research has demonstrated differential recognition of emotion on faces of different races. This paper reports the first study to explore differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of different races. Chinese and Caucasian adults viewed a series of Chinese and Caucasian neutral faces and judged their outward facial expression: neutral, positive, or negative. The results showed that both Chinese and Caucasian viewers perceived more Chinese faces than Caucasian faces as neutral. Nevertheless, Chinese viewers attributed positive emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces, whereas Caucasian viewers attributed negative emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces. Moreover, Chinese viewers attributed negative and neutral emotion to the faces of both races without significant difference in frequency, whereas Caucasian viewers mostly attributed neutral emotion to the faces. These differences between Chinese and Caucasian viewers may be due to differential visual experience, culture, racial stereotype, or expectation of the experiment. We also used eye tracking among the Chinese participants to explore the relationship between face-processing strategy and emotion attribution to neutral faces. The results showed that the interaction between emotion attribution and face race was significant on face-processing strategy, such as fixation proportion on eyes and saccade amplitude. Additionally, pupil size during processing Caucasian faces was larger than during processing Chinese faces.     

Interpersonal communication and personality: Self and other perspectives

This study was designed to examine the links between the personality of group members and their styles of communication in task groups meeting over a three-month period. Comprehensive measures of personality and of communication styles were taken from the perspectives both of the actor (the self) at the beginning of the group's life and his or her fellow group members (the others) at the end of the group's life. Even after extensive group interaction, these two sets of ratings converged only when observable characteristics were being measured (e.g., extraversion in personality or precision in communication). Self-rated personality across eight dimensions predicted two of the three self-rated dimensions of communication style (Verbal Engagement and Attentiveness to the Other) at only moderate levels; the actor's personality rated on the same eight dimensions by others predicted the actor's communication style as rated by these same others on all three dimensions (Verbal Engagement, Attentiveness to the Other, and Feelings versus Silence), and at much stronger levels than did self-ratings of personality. Both personality and communication styles as rated by others were able to predict the key social outcomes of the actor's likability and task contribution, whereas self-ratings were not. Ratings derived from the self and those derived from others about the self thus appear to develop from different sources of information and relate to different outcomes. The links between personality and communication style are largely confined to the perspective (self versus other) from which they were measured.     

Intentionality as a constituting condition for the own self--and other selves

Introspectively, the awareness of actions includes the awareness of the intentions accompanying them. Therefore, the awareness of self-generated actions might be expected to differ from the awareness of other-generated actions to the extent that access to one's own and to other's intentions differs. However, we recently showed that the perceived onset times of self- vs. other-generated actions are similar, yet both are different from comparable events that are conceived as being generated by a machine. This similarity raises two interesting possibilities. First we could infer the intentions of others from their actions. Second and more radically, we could equally infer our own intentions from the actions we perform rather than sense them. We present two new experiments which investigate the role of action effects in the awareness of self- and other-generated actions by means of measuring the estimated onset time. The results show that the presence of action effects is necessary for the similarity of awareness of self- and other-generated actions.     

The unfolding argument: Why IIT and other causal structure theories cannot explain consciousness

How can we explain consciousness? This question has become a vibrant topic of neuroscience research in recent decades. A large body of empirical results has been accumulated, and many theories have been proposed. Certain theories suggest that consciousness should be explained in terms of brain functions, such as accessing information in a global workspace, applying higher order to lower order representations, or predictive coding. These functions could be realized by a variety of patterns of brain connectivity. Other theories, such as Information Integration Theory (IIT) and Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), identify causal structure with consciousness. For example, according to these theories, feedforward systems are never conscious, and feedback systems always are. Here, using theorems from the theory of computation, we show that causal structure theories are either false or outside the realm of science.     

Intentionality as a constituting condition for the own self—and other selves

Introspectively, the awareness of actions includes the awareness of the intentions accompanying them. Therefore, the awareness of self-generated actions might be expected to differ from the awareness of other-generated actions to the extent that access to one’s own and to other’s intentions differs. However, we recently showed that the perceived onset times of self- vs. other-generated actions are similar, yet both are different from comparable events that are conceived as being generated by a machine. This similarity raises two interesting possibilities. First we could infer the intentions of others from their actions. Second and more radically, we could equally infer our own intentions from the actions we perform rather than sense them. We present two new experiments which investigate the role of action effects in the awareness of self- and other-generated actions by means of measuring the estimated onset time. The results show that the presence of action effects is necessary for the similarity of awareness of self- and other-generated actions.     

The relative intelligibility threshold for one's own name compared with other names

Two recent experiments (Moray, 1959; Oswald, Taylor and Treisman, 1960) have shown that in dichotic listening, and in sleep one's own name seems to be responded to selectively. We have shown for 10 subjects, each listening binaurally to the same recording of a list of their names repeated at random 10 times, and masked by noise, that the subject's own name had a significantly lower threshold than other names. The effect we found was not significantly different from the one found by Oswald et al. during sleep and by Moray for the dichotic situation.

These three experiments taken together suggest that the same pattern-analysing mechanism is involved in normal listening, dichotic listening to the rejected message, and in discrimination during sleep.     

Recognition and context memory for faces from own and other ethnic groups: A remember-know investigation

People are more accurate at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group than at recognizing faces from other ethnic groups. This other-ethnicity effect (OEE) in recognition may be produced by a deficit in recollective memory for other-ethnicity faces. In a single study, White and Black participants saw White and Black faces presented within several different visual contexts. The participants were then given an old/new recognition task. Old responses were followed by remember-know-guess judgments and context judgments. Own-ethnicity faces were recognized more accurately, were given more remember responses, and produced more accurate context judgments than did other-ethnicity faces. These results are discussed in a dual-process framework, and implications for eyewitness memory are considered.     

Visual attention to members of own and other groups: Preferences,determinants, and consequences

Many current and past theories of social categorization acknowledge and even underline the critical role that visual processing plays in intergroup misperceptions and biases, yet research that directly measures or manipulates these processes is limited. In the present paper, we reviewed the current literature on visual attention to own and other group faces. First, we explored the development of preferential attention in face processing. Next, we examined these processes in adults and show different patterns of attention for own and other group faces. Although we briefly consider cross‐cultural variations, the focus of this review is on within‐culture differences in visual attention. In particular, we explore preferential attention to specific features on own versus other group faces and to their overall faces. We also discuss potential determinants for differential attention such as experience, threat, individuation and a desire to know in‐groups, and liking. Finally, we explore the implications of differential attention to own and other groups. These consequences range from reduced recognition of other group faces, to impaired identification of emotional expressions, to impeded interaction intentions, and to increased discrimination. Together our analyses provide strong evidence for differences in attention to the faces and eyes of own versus other group members and their role in intergroup biases.     

Metacognition in argument generation: the misperceived relationship between emotional investment and argument quality

Overestimation of one’s ability to argue their position on socio-political issues may partially underlie the current climate of political extremism in the U.S. Yet very little is known about what factors influence overestimation in argumentation of socio-political issues. Across three experiments, emotional investment substantially increased participants’ overestimation. Potential confounding factors like topic complexity and familiarity were ruled out as alternative explanations (Experiments 1–3). Belief-based cues were established as a mechanism underlying the relationship between emotional investment and overestimation in a measurement-of-mediation (Experiment 2) and manipulation-of-mediator (Experiment 3) design. Representing a new bias blind spot, participants believed emotional investment helps them argue better than it helps others (Experiments 2 and 3); where in reality emotional investment harmed or had no effect on argument quality. These studies highlight misguided beliefs about emotional investment as a factor underlying metacognitive miscalibration in the context of socio-political issues.     

Mental simulation and argument

When a quantified premise such as: Everyone loves anyone who loves someone, occurs with a premise such as: Anne loves Beth, it follows immediately that everyone loves Anne. It also follows that Carol loves Diane, where these two individuals are in the domain of discourse. According to the theory of mental models, this inference requires the quantified premise to be used again to update a model of specific individuals. The paper reports four experiments examining such iterative inferences. Experiment 1 confirmed that they are harder than immediate inferences. Experiment 2 extended the finding to negative inferences, i.e., granted that Anne does not love Beth, it follows from the quantified premise that Carol does not love Diane. Experiment 3 established that intermediate steps referring to specific individuals are accepted more readily than intermediate steps referring to quantified variables. Experiment 4 showed that the participants' written justifications corroborated the model theory.