Emmanuele Tidoni
(Un)intentionality bias in action observation revisited
Tidoni, Emmanuele; Merritt, Avena; Adeyemi, Elizabeth; Scandola, Michele; Tree, Jeremy; Riggs, Kevin; George, David
Authors
Avena Merritt
Elizabeth Adeyemi
Michele Scandola
Jeremy Tree
Professor Kevin Riggs K.Riggs@hull.ac.uk
Professor of Psychology
Dr David George D.George@hull.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer and Head of Psychology
Abstract
When observing individuals in action, we often infer their goals and intentions. Yet, in situations where actions are ambiguous and could be either intentionally generated or not, there is a tendency to perceive these actions as internally driven. This intentionality bias is influenced by individual differences in schizotypal cognitive style.
In this study, we examined how healthy individuals distinguish between intentional and unintentional actions when perceiving actions of a finger attached to a pulling device. Participants reported to use different strategies to infer intentionality (e.g., action onset, perceived movement speed, hand and finger posture) and tended to attribute more intentionality to actions where the posture of the finger aligned with the final goal of the action (i. e., a bent finger pushing a button was perceived more intentional than a straight finger doing the same action). Moreover, the perceived action intentionality varied depending on the individual schizotypal cognitive style. The tendency to perceive the action as intentional when it was done with a bent finger rather than a straight finger decreased as the participants' schizotypal scores increased.
These findings suggest that intentionality attribution is not based on processes that automatically infer intentions as the primary cause of human actions. Rather than being an intentional bias, we believe that attributing and denying intentions requires the coherent integration of high-and low-level cognitive processes modulated by individual differences.
Citation
Tidoni, E., Merritt, A., Adeyemi, E., Scandola, M., Tree, J., Riggs, K., & George, D. (in press). (Un)intentionality bias in action observation revisited. Cognition, 262, 106191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106191
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | May 14, 2025 |
Online Publication Date | May 20, 2025 |
Deposit Date | May 21, 2025 |
Publicly Available Date | May 21, 2025 |
Print ISSN | 0010-0277 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 262 |
Pages | 106191 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106191 |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/5179884 |
Files
Published paper
(3.8 Mb)
PDF
Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
You might also like
Human but not robotic gaze facilitates action prediction
(2022)
Journal Article
Body Form Modulates the Prediction of Human and Artificial Behaviour from Gaze Observation
(2023)
Journal Article
Simulating the future of actions in the human corticospinal system
(2010)
Journal Article