Exploring the relationship between anthropomorphism and theory‐of‐mind in brain and behaviour

The process of understanding the minds of other people, such as their emotions and intentions, is mimicked when individuals try to understand an artificial mind. The assumption is that anthropomorphism, attributing human‐like characteristics to non‐human agents and objects, is an analogue to theory‐of‐mind, the ability to infer mental states of other people. Here, we test to what extent these two constructs formally overlap. Specifically, using a multi‐method approach, we test if and how anthropomorphism is related to theory‐of‐mind using brain (Experiment 1) and behavioural (Experiment 2) measures. In a first exploratory experiment, we examine the relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity within the theory‐of‐mind brain network (n = 108). Results from a Bayesian regression analysis showed no consistent relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity in regions of the theory‐of‐mind network. In a follow‐up, pre‐registered experiment, we explored the relationship between theory‐of‐mind and situational and dispositional anthropomorphism in more depth. Participants (n = 311) watched a short movie while simultaneously completing situational anthropomorphism and theory‐of‐mind ratings, as well as measures of dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory‐of‐mind. Only situational anthropomorphism predicted the ability to understand and predict the behaviour of the film's characters. No relationship between situational or dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory‐of‐mind was observed. Together, these results suggest that while the constructs of anthropomorphism and theory‐of‐mind might overlap in certain situations, they remain separate and possibly unrelated at the personality level. These findings point to a possible dissociation between brain and behavioural measures when considering the relationship between theory‐of‐mind and anthropomorphism.

[1]  Emily S. Cross,et al.  Mind Meets Machine: Towards a Cognitive Science of Human–Machine Interactions , 2020, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[2]  Emily S. Cross,et al.  Social Cognition in the Age of Human–Robot Interaction , 2020, Trends in Neurosciences.

[3]  Pip Adams.  In the Car , 2020 .

[4]  Y. Rossetti,et al.  What Do Theory-of-Mind Tasks Actually Measure? Theory and Practice , 2020, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[5]  Yochanan E. Bigman,et al.  Holding Robots Responsible: The Elements of Machine Morality , 2019, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[6]  Adam Waytz,et al.  Anthropomorphizing without Social Cues Requires the Basolateral Amygdala , 2019, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[7]  J. Gray,et al.  PsychoPy2: Experiments in behavior made easy , 2019, Behavior Research Methods.

[8]  Jaap Ham,et al.  Perceived Human-Likeness of Social Robots: Testing the Rasch Model as a Method for Measuring Anthropomorphism , 2019, International Journal of Social Robotics.

[9]  Jane R. Conway,et al.  Understanding individual differences in theory of mind via representation of minds, not mental states , 2019, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

[10]  Emily S. Cross,et al.  A neurocognitive investigation of the impact of socialising with a robot on empathy for pain , 2018, bioRxiv.

[11]  Marjorie Taylor,et al.  Anthropomorphism, social understanding, and imaginary companions , 2018, The British journal of developmental psychology.

[12]  Natasha Z. Kirkham,et al.  Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder , 2018, Behavior Research Methods.

[13]  Emily S. Cross,et al.  From automata to animate beings: the scope and limits of attributing socialness to artificial agents , 2018, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[14]  J. Kruschke.  Rejecting or Accepting Parameter Values in Bayesian Estimation , 2018 .

[15]  Satrajit S. Ghosh,et al.  FMRIPrep: a robust preprocessing pipeline for functional MRI , 2018, Nature Methods.

[16]  Richard Ramsey,et al.  Functional Specificity and Sex Differences in the Neural Circuits Supporting the Inhibition of Automatic Imitation , 2018, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[17]  Liam B. Cross,et al.  Seeing More Than Human: Autism and Anthropomorphic Theory of Mind , 2018, Front. Psychol..

[18]  R. Saxe,et al.  Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years , 2018, Nature Communications.

[19]  Paul-Christian Bürkner,et al.  brms: An R Package for Bayesian Multilevel Models Using Stan , 2017 .

[20]  Donald R. Williams,et al.  Outgrowing the Procrustean Bed of Normality: The Utility of Bayesian Modeling for Asymmetrical Data Analysis , 2017 .

[21]  Josef Perner,et al.  Specifying the brain anatomy underlying temporo‐parietal junction activations for theory of mind: A review using probabilistic atlases from different imaging modalities , 2017, Human brain mapping.

[22]  Manos Roumeliotis,et al.  Software tools for analysis and visualization of the antikythera mechanism , 2017, 2017 3DTV Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video (3DTV-CON).

[23]  Wenbin Li,et al.  Evaluation of Field Map and Nonlinear Registration Methods for Correction of Susceptibility Artifacts in Diffusion MRI , 2017, Front. Neuroinform..

[24]  E. Broadbent.  Interactions With Robots: The Truths We Reveal About Ourselves , 2017, Annual review of psychology.

[25]  Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski,et al.  MRIQC: Advancing the automatic prediction of image quality in MRI from unseen sites , 2016, bioRxiv.

[26]  A. Dale,et al.  Characterization and Correction of Geometric Distortions in 814 Diffusion Weighted Images , 2016, PloS one.

[27]  Rebecca Saxe,et al.  Localizing Pain Matrix and Theory of Mind networks with both verbal and non-verbal stimuli , 2015, NeuroImage.

[28]  Aki Vehtari,et al.  Practical Bayesian model evaluation using leave-one-out cross-validation and WAIC , 2015, Statistics and Computing.

[29]  Robert P. Spunt,et al.  Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[30]  Robert P. Spunt,et al.  Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind , 2015, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[31]  Timothy R. Brick,et al.  Is This Car Looking at You? How Anthropomorphism Predicts Fusiform Face Area Activation when Seeing Cars , 2014, PloS one.

[32]  L. Young,et al.  Two motivations for two dimensions of mind , 2014 .

[33]  Daniel S. Margulies,et al.  NeuroVault.org: a web-based repository for collecting and sharing unthresholded statistical maps of the human brain , 2014, bioRxiv.

[34]  B. Bahrami,et al.  Individual differences in anthropomorphic attributions and human brain structure. , 2014, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[35]  Julia M. Huntenburg,et al.  Evaluating nonlinear coregistration of BOLD EPI and T1 images , 2014 .

[36]  J. Perner,et al.  Fractionating theory of mind: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies , 2014, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[37]  Michael Eickenberg,et al.  Machine learning for neuroimaging with scikit-learn , 2014, Front. Neuroinform..

[38]  N. Haslam,et al.  Dehumanization and infrahumanization. , 2014, Annual review of psychology.

[39]  Timothy O. Laumann,et al.  Methods to detect, characterize, and remove motion artifact in resting state fMRI , 2014, NeuroImage.

[40]  Felix D. Schönbrodt,et al.  At what sample size do correlations stabilize , 2013 .

[41]  Mark Jenkinson,et al.  The minimal preprocessing pipelines for the Human Connectome Project , 2013, NeuroImage.

[42]  R. Saxe,et al.  Theory of Mind: A Neural Prediction Problem , 2013, Neuron.

[43]  Raphael T. Gerraty,et al.  An improved framework for confound regression and filtering for control of motion artifact in the preprocessing of resting-state functional connectivity data , 2013, NeuroImage.

[44]  Emily S. Cross,et al.  Robotic movement preferentially engages the action observation network , 2012, Human brain mapping.

[45]  S. Huettel,et al.  A Distinct Role of the Temporal-Parietal Junction in Predicting Socially Guided Decisions , 2012, Science.

[46]  Kurt Gray,et al.  Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality , 2012, Psychological inquiry.

[47]  Satrajit S. Ghosh,et al.  Nipype: A Flexible, Lightweight and Extensible Neuroimaging Data Processing Framework in Python , 2011, Front. Neuroinform..

[48]  A. Woodward,et al.  The accidental transgressor: Morally-relevant theory of mind , 2011, Cognition.

[49]  Rebecca Saxe,et al.  fMRI item analysis in a theory of mind task , 2011, NeuroImage.

[50]  Bruce Fischl,et al.  Highly accurate inverse consistent registration: A robust approach , 2010, NeuroImage.

[51]  D. Wegner,et al.  Causes and consequences of mind perception , 2010, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[52]  Dennis A. Nowak,et al.  Dissociating cognitive from affective theory of mind: A TMS study , 2010, Cortex.

[53]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Who Sees Human? , 2010, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[54]  Bruce Fischl,et al.  Accurate and robust brain image alignment using boundary-based registration , 2009, NeuroImage.

[55]  A. Bailey,et al.  Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature , 2009, Human brain mapping.

[56]  C. Almli,et al.  Unbiased nonlinear average age-appropriate brain templates from birth to adulthood , 2009, NeuroImage.

[57]  M. G. Pittau,et al.  A weakly informative default prior distribution for logistic and other regression models , 2008, 0901.4011.

[58]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later , 2008, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[59]  C. Frith.  Social cognition , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[60]  Brian B. Avants,et al.  Symmetric diffeomorphic image registration with cross-correlation: Evaluating automated labeling of elderly and neurodegenerative brain , 2008, Medical Image Anal..

[61]  J. Hodgins,et al.  Anthropomorphism influences perception of computer-animated characters' actions. , 2007, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[62]  Thomas T. Liu,et al.  A component based noise correction method (CompCor) for BOLD and perfusion based fMRI , 2007, NeuroImage.

[63]  D. Wegner,et al.  Dimensions of Mind Perception , 2007, Science.

[64]  S. Baron-Cohen,et al.  The Empathy Quotient: An Investigation of Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and Normal Sex Differences , 2004, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[65]  C. Frith,et al.  Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. , 2003, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[66]  Michael Brady,et al.  Improved Optimization for the Robust and Accurate Linear Registration and Motion Correction of Brain Images , 2002, NeuroImage.

[67]  Amy J. C. Cuddy,et al.  A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[68]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  A global optimisation method for robust affine registration of brain images , 2001, Medical Image Anal..

[69]  Marjorie Taylor,et al.  The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind. , 1997, Child development.

[70]  UNDERSTANDING THE INDIVIDUAL , 1977, The Lancet.

[71]  R. W. White.  Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. , 1959, Psychological review.

[72]  Adam See,et al.  Does the Chimpanzee Have Theory of Mind? , 2021, Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science.

[73]  Jean-Luc Anton,et al.  Region of interest analysis using an SPM toolbox , 2010 .

[74]  Carey K. Morewedge,et al.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Making Sense by Making Sentient : Effectance Motivation Increases , 2010 .

[75]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  Segmentation of brain MR images through a hidden Markov random field model and the expectation-maximization algorithm , 2001, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[76]  C. Lanczos,et al.  A Precision Approximation of the Gamma Function , 1964 .

[77]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .