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The most dominant theory of human social cognition, the theory of mind hypothesis, emphasizes our ability to infer the mental states of others. After having represented the mental states of another person, however, we can also have an idea of how well our thinking aligns with theirs, and our sensitivity to this alignment may guide the flow of our social interactions. Here, we focus on the distinction between "mindreading" (inferring another's mental representation) and detecting the extent to which a represented mental state of another person is matching or mismatching with our own (mental conflict monitoring). We propose a reframing for mentalizing data of the past 40 years in terms of mental conflict monitoring rather than mental representation. Via a systematic review of 51 false belief neuroimaging studies, we argue that key brain regions implicated in false belief designs (namely, temporoparietal junction areas) may methodologically be tied to mental conflict rather than to mental representation. Patterns of false belief data suggests that autism may be tied to a subtle issue with monitoring mental conflict combined with intact mental representation, rather than to lacking mental representation abilities or "mindblindness" altogether. The consequences of this view for the larger social-cognitive domain are explored, including for perspective taking, moral judgments, and understanding irony and humor. This provides a potential shift in perspective for psychological science, its neuroscientific bases, and related disciplines: Throughout life, an adequate sensitivity to how others think differently (relational mentalizing) may be more fundamental to navigating the social world than inferring which thoughts others have (representational mentalizing). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from mating market and parasite stress perspectives, in a large cross-cultural sample. We also test hypotheses drawn from other influential and non-mutually exclusive theoretical frameworks, from biosocial role theory to a cultural media perspective. Survey data from 93,158 human participants across 93 countries provide evidence that behaviors such as applying makeup or using other cosmetics, hair grooming, clothing style, caring for body hygiene, and exercising or following a specific diet for the specific purpose of improving ones physical attractiveness, are universal. Indeed, 99% of participants reported spending >10 min a day performing beauty-enhancing behaviors. The results largely support evolutionary hypotheses: more time was spent enhancing beauty by women (almost 4 h a day, on average) than by men (3.6 h a day), by the youngest participants (and contrary to predictions, also the oldest), by those with a relatively more severe history of infectious diseases, and by participants currently dating compared to those in established relationships. The strongest predictor of attractiveness-enhancing behaviors was social media usage. Other predictors, in order of effect size, included adhering to traditional gender roles, residing in countries with less gender equality, considering oneself as highly attractive or, conversely, highly unattractive, TV watching time, higher socioeconomic status, right-wing political beliefs, a lower level of education, and personal individualistic attitudes. This study provides novel insight into universal beauty-enhancing behaviors by unifying evolutionary theory with several other complementary perspectives., National Science Center, Poland [2019/33/N/HS6/00054]; Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University); Basic Research Program at HSE University, RF; FCT [UID/PSI/03125/2021, SFRH/BD/126304/2016]; UTAR Research Centre Excellence Award; Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman [2019 -CAP (6401/0019)], This work is the result of the research project funded by the National Science Center, Poland (2019/33/N/HS6/00054). Dmitry Grigoryev was supported by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).; Dmitrii Dubrov was supported by the Basic Research Program at HSE University, RF.; Patricia Arriaga was supported by the FCT through funds from the research center UID/PSI/03125/2021. Anabela C. Santos was supported by the FCT through funds from a PhD grant SFRH/BD/126304/2016. Kavitha Nalla Muthu and Chee-Seng Tan were supported by the UTAR Research Centre Excellence Award 2019 -CAP (6401/0019) from the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.

We examined perceived self-other differences (self-uniqueness) in appraisals of one’s risk of an infectious disease (COVID-19), one’s adherence to behavioural precautionary measures against the disease, and the impact of these measures on one’s life. We also examined the relationship of self-uniqueness with information seeking and trust in sources of information about the disease. We administered an online survey to a community sample (N = 8696) of Dutch-speaking individuals, mainly in Belgium and The Netherlands, during the first lockdown (late April-Mid June 2020). As a group, participants reported that they were less likely to get infected or infect others or to suffer severe outcomes than average (unrealistic optimism) and that they adhered better than average to behavioural precautionary measures (illusory superiority). Except for participants below 25, who reported that they were affected more than average by these measures (egocentric impact bias), participants also generally reported that they were less affected than average (allocentric impact bias). Individual differences in self-uniqueness were associated with differences in the number of information sources being used and trust on these sources. Higher comparative optimism for infection, self-superiority, and allocentric impact perception were associated with information being sought from fewer sources; higher self-superiority and egocentric impact perception were associated with lower trust. We discuss implications for health communication. ispartof: Psychologica Belgica vol:62 issue:1 pages:152-167 status: published

The COVIDiSTRESS global survey collects data on early human responses to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic from 173 429 respondents in 48 countries. The open science study was co-designed by an international consortium of researchers to investigate how psychological responses differ across countries and cultures, and how this has impacted behaviour, coping and trust in government efforts to slow the spread of the virus. Starting in March 2020, COVIDiSTRESS leveraged the convenience of unpaid online recruitment to generate public data. The objective of the present analysis is to understand relationships between psychological responses in the early months of global coronavirus restrictions and help understand how different government measures succeed or fail in changing public behaviour. There were variations between and within countries. Although Western Europeans registered as more concerned over COVID-19, more stressed, and having slightly more trust in the governments' efforts, there was no clear geographical pattern in compliance with behavioural measures. Detailed plots illustrating between-countries differences are provided. Using both traditional and Bayesian analyses, we found that individuals who worried about getting sick worked harder to protect themselves and others. However, concern about the coronavirus itself did not account for all of the variances in experienced stress during the early months of COVID-19 restrictions. More alarmingly, such stress was associated with less compliance. Further, those most concerned over the coronavirus trusted in government measures primarily where policies were strict. While concern over a disease is a source of mental distress, other factors including strictness of protective measures, social support and personal lockdown conditions must also be taken into consideration to fully appreciate the psychological impact of COVID-19 and to understand why some people fail to follow behavioural guidelines intended to protect themselves and others from infection. The Stage 1 manuscript associated with this submission received in-principle acceptance (IPA) on 18 May 2020. Following IPA, the accepted Stage 1 version of the manuscript was preregistered on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ytbcs. This preregistration was performed prior to data analysis. Fil: Lieberoth, Andreas. University Aarhus; Dinamarca Fil: Lin, Shiang Yi. University of Hong Kong; China Fil: Stöckli, Sabrina. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Han, Hyemin. University of Alabama at Birmingahm; Estados Unidos Fil: Kowal, Marta. Wroclaw University; Polonia Fil: Gelpi, Rebekah. University of Toronto; Canadá Fil: Chrona, Stavroula. King's College London; Reino Unido Fil: Tran, Thao Phuong. State University of Colorado at Boulder; Estados Unidos Fil: Jeftić, Alma. International Christian University; Japón Fil: Rasmussen, Jesper. University Aarhus; Dinamarca Fil: Cakal, Huseyin. Keele University.; Reino Unido Fil: Milfont, Taciano L.. University of Waikato; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Reyna, Cecilia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas; Argentina Fil: The COVIDiSTRESS global survey consortium. No especifíca

Autistic, developmental, and nonhuman primate populations fail tasks that are thought to involve attributing beliefs, but not those thought to reflect the representation of knowledge. Instead of knowledge representations being more basic than belief representations, relational mentalizing may explain these observations: The tasks referred to as reflecting “belief” representation, but not the “knowledge” representation tasks, are social conflict designs. They involve mental conflict monitoring after another's mental state is represented – with effects that need to be accounted for.

Students evaluate male professors higher than female professors. In a study that we presented to participants as a test of a new form for student evaluations of teaching (SETs), we examined if self-affirmation (contemplating elements that positively contribute to one’s self-image) reduced the gender bias. Belgian students (n = 568), who were randomly assigned to self-affirm (through either a value-affirmation task or self-superiority priming) or not, read a vignette prompting them to imagine that they had received a good or a bad grade from a male or a female professor. They evaluated the course, the professor, and the form. Non-self-affirmed participants showed a gender bias after a bad grade, disadvantaging the female professor. Self-affirmation eradicated the gender bias by lowering evaluations for the male professor, suggesting that the gender bias involves overvaluing male rather than derogating female professors. Without self-affirmation, the positivity of the SETs was correlated with participants’ evaluation of the SET form itself. Self-affirmation inflated the correlation for the male professor and eradicated it for the female professor. Having students self-affirm before SETs may be useful when SETs are obligatory only. An even better approach is asking SETs before students learn their grades or simply abolish SETs as a factor in hiring and promotion decisions. ispartof: Sex Roles vol:84 issue:1-2 pages:34-48 status: published

BackgroundRecent theories of autism propose that a core deficit in autism would be a less context-sensitive weighting of prediction errors. There is also first support for this hypothesis on an early sensory level. However, an open question is whether this decreased context-sensitivity is caused by faster updating of one’s model of the world (i.e. higher weighting of new information), proposed by predictive coding theories, or slower model updating. Here, we differentiated between these two hypotheses by investigating how first impressions shape the mismatch negativity (MMN), reflecting early sensory prediction error processing.MethodsAn autism and matched control group (both n=27) were compared on the multi-timescale MMN paradigm, in which tones were presented that were either standard (frequently occurring) or deviant (rare), and these roles reversed every block. A well-replicated observation is that the initial model (i.e. the standard and deviant sound in the first block) influences MMN amplitudes in later blocks. If autism is characterized by faster model updating, we hypothesized that their MMN amplitudes would be less influenced by the initial context.ResultsWe found that MMN responses in the autism group did not differ between the initial deviant and initial standard sounds as they did in the control group.ConclusionsThese results show that individuals with autism are less influenced by initial contexts, confirming that autism is characterized by faster updating of sensory models, as proposed by predictive coding accounts of autism.

Background Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people’s health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Objectives Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people’s thoughts and psychosocial behaviours relating to COVID‐19. This paper reports UK data on comparative optimism. In particular, we examine the belief that negative events surrounding risk and recovery from COVID‐19 are perceived as more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself. Methods Using online snowball sampling through social media, anonymous UK survey data were collected from N = 645 adults during weeks 5‐8 of the UK COVID‐19 lockdown. The sample was normally distributed in terms of age and reflected the UK ethnic and disability profile. Findings Respondents demonstrated comparative optimism where they believed that as compared to others of the same age and gender, they were unlikely to experience a range of controllable (eg accidentally infect/ be infected) and uncontrollable (eg need hospitalization/ intensive care treatment if infected) COVID‐19‐related risks in the short term (P

Background Associations and regularities in our environment can foster expectations and thereby help create a perceptually predictable world (e.g., a knife next to a plate predicts with high certainty a fork on the other side). Based on several observations, it has been suggested that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have an above average tendency to prefer well-organized information or structured environments. Surprisingly, however, this tendency has not yet been tested under controlled experimental conditions. Method A recent study suggested that neurotypical adults prefer associative information, regardless of their semantic content. Therefore, in this study, we examined the relation of this preference bias to the scores of 123 neurotypical adults on questionnaires that measure autistic traits, known to co-vary with typical autism spectrum characteristics. Participants were presented with different configurations of meaningless abstract shapes. Some shapes were always presented in the exact same fixed configuration, and other shapes were always presented in different random configurations. In an unannounced subsequent evaluation task, participants were required to indicate which shapes they preferred. Results We replicate the observation that people exhibit a general preference for shapes that were presented in fixed configurations. However, there were no correlations between autistic traits and this general preference. Conclusions Our findings suggest the preference for associative information in ASD might be less general than first thought, or restricted to more complex (social) situations or other levels of information processing. We outline specific guidelines for future systematic investigations into the hypothesized increased preference for associative information in ASD.

Automatic imitation is the finding that movement execution is facilitated by compatible and impeded by incompatible observed movements. In the past 15 years, automatic imitation has been studied to understand the relation between perception and action in social interaction. Although research on this topic started in cognitive science, interest quickly spread to related disciplines such as social psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience. However, important theoretical questions have remained unanswered. Therefore, in the present meta-analysis, we evaluated seven key questions on automatic imitation. The results, based on 161 studies containing 226 experiments, revealed an overall effect size of gz = 0.95, 95% CI [0.88, 1.02]. Moderator analyses identified automatic imitation as a flexible, largely automatic process that is driven by movement and effector compatibility, but is also influenced by spatial compatibility. Automatic imitation was found to be stronger for forced choice tasks than for simple response tasks, for human agents than for nonhuman agents, and for goalless actions than for goal-directed actions. However, it was not modulated by more subtle factors such as animacy beliefs, motion profiles, or visual perspective. Finally, there was no evidence for a relation between automatic imitation and either empathy or autism. Among other things, these findings point toward actor-imitator similarity as a crucial modulator of automatic imitation and challenge the view that imitative tendencies are an indicator of social functioning. The current meta-analysis has important theoretical implications and sheds light on longstanding controversies in the literature on automatic imitation and related domains. (PsycINFO Database Record

Background Recent predictive coding accounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) suggest that a key deficit in ASD concerns the inflexibility in modulating local prediction errors as a function of global top-down expectations. As a direct test of this central hypothesis, we used electroencephalography to investigate whether local prediction error processing was less modulated by global context (i.e., global stimulus frequency) in ASD. Methods A group of 18 adults with ASD was compared with a group of 24 typically developed adults on a well-validated hierarchical auditory oddball task in which participants listened to short sequences of either five identical sounds (local standard) or four identical sounds and a fifth deviant sound (local deviant). The latter condition is known to generate the mismatch negativity (MMN) component, believed to reflect early sensory prediction error processing. Crucially, previous studies have shown that in blocks with a higher frequency of local deviant sequences, top-down expectations seem to attenuate the MMN. We predicted that this modulation by global context would be less pronounced in the ASD group. Results Both groups showed an MMN that was modulated by global context. However, this effect was smaller in the ASD group as compared with the typically developed group. In contrast, the P3b, as an electroencephalographic marker of conscious expectation processes, did not differ across groups. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that people with ASD are less flexible in modulating their local predictions (reflected in MMN), thereby confirming the central hypothesis of contemporary predictive coding accounts of ASD.

Theory of mind (ToM) research has shown that adults with high functioning autism (HFA) demonstrate typical performance on tasks that require explicit belief reasoning, despite clear social difficulties in everyday life situations. In the current study, we used implicit belief manipulations that are task-irrelevant and therefore less susceptible to strategies. In a ball-detection task, it was shown that neurotypical individuals detect a ball faster if an agent believed the ball was present. We predicted that adults with high functioning autism (HFA) would not show this effect. While we found a numerical difference in the hypothesized direction, we did not find a reliable group effect. Interestingly, the implicit ToM-index showed a strong negative correlation with both self-reported and observational measures of social difficulties in the HFA group. This suggests that the relationship between implicit ToM reasoning and the symptomatology of HFA might be subtler than assumed.

Action observation leads to a representation of both the motor aspect of an observed action (motor simulation) and its somatosensory consequences (action-based somatosensory simulation) in the observer's brain. In the current electroencephalography-study, we investigated the neuronal interplay of action-based somatosensory simulation and felt touch. We presented index or middle finger tapping movements of a human or a wooden hand, while simultaneously presenting 'tap-like' tactile sensations to either the corresponding or non-corresponding fingertip of the participant. We focused on an early stage of somatosensory processing [P50, N100 and N140 sensory evoked potentials (SEPs)] and on a later stage of higher-order processing (P3-complex). The results revealed an interaction effect of animacy and congruency in the early P50 SEP and an animacy effect in the N100/N140 SEPs. In the P3-complex, we found an interaction effect indicating that the influence of congruency was larger in the human than in the wooden hand. We argue that the P3-complex may reflect higher-order self-other distinction by signaling simulated action-based touch that does not match own tactile information. As such, the action-based somatosensory congruency paradigm might help understand higher-order social processes from a somatosensory point of view.

International audience; Temporal binding is understood as an effect in which a temporal interval between a voluntary action and its consequent effect is perceived as compressed. It denotes an implicit measure of a sense of agency. When people observe someone else performing an action that generates an effect, temporal binding also takes place. We aimed to test whether the interaction between observed actions and tactile sensation influences temporal binding. Participants observed finger tapping movements (of a human or wooden hand), in parallel to receiving tactile stimulations on their fingertip. These stimulations were either congruent or incongruent with the tactile consequences of the observed movement. The finger tapping movement was followed by a tone. Participants estimated the intervals between the observed action and the tone. We found that temporal binding for observed actions depends on the congruency between the perceived touch and tactile consequences of observed actions restricted to intentional actors.

We tested the prediction, derived from the hubris hypothesis, that bragging might serve as a verbal provocation and thus enhance aggression. Experiments 1 and 2 were vignette studies where participants could express hypothetical aggression; Experiment 3 was an actual decision task where participants could make aggressive and/or prosocial choices. Observers disliked an explicit braggart (who claimed to be “better than others”) or a competence braggart as compared with an implicit braggart (who claimed to be “good”) or a warmth braggart, respectively. Showing that explicit and competence bragging function as verbal provocations, observers responded more aggressively to the explicit and competence braggart than to the implicit and warmth braggart, respectively. They did so because they inferred that an explicit and a competence braggart viewed other people and them negatively, and therefore disliked the braggart. Rather than praising the self, braggarts are sometimes viewed as insulting others.

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is associated with problems in empathy. Recent research suggests that impaired control over self–other overlap based on motor representations in individuals with autism spectrum disorder might underlie these difficulties. In order to investigate the relationship of self–other distinction and empathy for pain in high-functioning autism and matched controls, we manipulated self–other distinction by using a paradigm in which participants are either imitated or not by a hand on a computer screen. A strong pain stimulus is then inflicted on the observed hand. Behavioral and physiological results in this study showed that overall affective responses while watching pain movies were the same in adults with high-functioning autism as in controls. Furthermore, controls showed higher affective responding after being imitated during the whole experiment, replicating previous studies. Adults with high-functioning autism, however, showed increased empathic responses over time after being imitated. Further exploratory analyses suggested that while affective responding was initially lower after being imitated compared to not being imitated, affective responding in the latter part of the experiment was higher after being imitated. These results shed new light on empathic abilities in high-functioning autism and on the role of control over self–other representational sharing.

For more than 15 years, motor interference paradigms have been used to investigate the influence of action observation on action execution. Most research on so-called automatic imitation has focused on variables that play a modulating role or investigated potential confounding factors. Interestingly, furthermore, a number of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have tried to shed light on the functional mechanisms and neural correlates involved in imitation inhibition. However, these fMRI studies, presumably due to poor temporal resolution, have primarily focused on high-level processes and have neglected the potential role of low-level motor and perceptual processes. In the current EEG study, we therefore aimed to disentangle the influence of low-level perceptual and motoric mechanisms from high-level cognitive mechanisms. We focused on potential congruency differences in the visual N190 - a component related to the processing of biological motion, the Readiness Potential - a component related to motor preparation, and the high-level P3 component. Interestingly, we detected congruency effects in each of these components, suggesting that the interference effect in an automatic imitation paradigm is not only related to high-level processes such as self-other distinction but also to more low-level influences of perception on action and action on perception. Moreover, we documented relationships of the neural effects with (autistic) behavior.

The role of imitation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is controversial. Researchers have argued that deficient control of self- and other-related motor representations (self-other distinction) might explain imitation difficulties. In a recent EEG study, we showed that control of imitation relies on high-level as well as on low-level cognitive processes. Here, we aimed to further our insights into control of imitation deficits in ASD. We focused on congruency effects in the P3 (high-level), the N190 and the readiness potential (RP; low-level). We predicted smaller congruency effects within the P3 in the ASD group. However, we found differences in the RP and not in the P3-component. Thus, high-level self-other distinction centred on motor actions may be preserved in ASD, while impairments are reflected during motor preparation.

Recently, it has been shown that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is involved in error execution as well as error observation. Based on this finding, it has been argued that recognizing each other’s mistakes might rely on motor simulation. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we directly tested this hypothesis by investigating whether medial prefrontal activity in error observation is restricted to situations that enable simulation. To this aim, we compared brain activity related to the observation of errors that can be simulated (human errors) with brain activity related to errors that cannot be simulated (machine errors). We show that medial prefrontal activity is not only restricted to the observation of human errors but also occurs when observing errors of a machine. In addition, our data indicate that the MPFC reflects a domain general mechanism of monitoring violations of expectancies.

Recent theories of autism propose that a core deficit in autism would be a less context-sensitive weighting of prediction errors. There is also first support for this hypothesis on an early sensory level. However, an open question is whether this decreased context sensitivity is caused by faster updating of one's model of the world (i.e., higher weighting of new information), proposed by predictive coding theories, or slower model updating. Here, we differentiated between these two hypotheses by investigating how first impressions shape the mismatch negativity (MMN), reflecting early sensory prediction error processing. An autism and matched control group of human adults (bothn= 27, 8 female) were compared on the multi-timescale MMN paradigm, in which tones were presented that were either standard (frequently occurring) or deviant (rare), and these roles reversed every block. A well-replicated observation is that the initial model (i.e., the standard and deviant sound in the first block) influences MMN amplitudes in later blocks. If autism is characterized by faster model updating, and thus a smaller primacy bias, we hypothesized (and demonstrate using a simple reinforcement learning model) that their MMN amplitudes should be less influenced by the initial context. In line with this hypothesis, we found that MMN responses in the autism group did not differ between the initial deviant and initial standard sounds as they did in the control group. These findings are consistent with the idea that autism is characterized by faster model updating during early sensory processing, as proposed by predictive coding accounts of autism.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTRecent theories of autism propose that a core deficit in autism is that they are faster to update their models of the world based on new sensory information. Here, we tested this hypothesis by investigating how first impressions shape brain responses during early sensory processing, and hypothesized that individuals with autism would be less influenced by these first impressions. In line with earlier studies, our results show that early sensory processing was influenced by first impressions in a control group. However, this was not the case in an autism group. This suggests that individuals with autism are faster to abandon their initial model, and is consistent with the proposal that they are faster to update their models of the world.