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The role of intentionality in causal attribution is culturally mediated: evidence from Chinese, Mayan, and Spanish populations

  • Stephanie Evers
  • , Erika Bellingham
  • , Katharine Donelson
  • , Jing Du
  • , José Antonio Jódar Sánchez
  • , Fuyin Li
  • , Jürgen Bohnemeyer
  • SUNY Buffalo
  • Beihang University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Speakers of Mandarin, Spanish, and Yucatec Maya watched videos of two actors involved in a causal chain initiated by one of them. After watching each video, participants divided 10 tokens into piles indicating their assignment of responsibility for the resulting event. There was a significant interaction between intentionality and population: causer and causee intentionality made a significant difference only for the Spanish and Yucatec participants, but not for the Chinese participants. This is in line with previous findings suggesting that internal dispositions play a lesser role in responsibility attribution in societies in which attention to individual agency is far more common than attention to group agency.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationComputational Foundations of Cognition
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages343-348
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196760
StatePublished - 2017
Event39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017 - London, United Kingdom
Duration: 26 Jul 201729 Jul 2017

Publication series

NameCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition

Conference

Conference39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period26/07/1729/07/17

Keywords

  • agency
  • causality
  • cultural mediation
  • intentionality
  • linguistics
  • responsibility
  • social psychology

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