Practical reasoning (PR), which is concerned with the generic question of whatto do, is generally seen as a two steps process: (1) deliberation, in which an agentdecides what state of affairs it wants to reach –that is, its desires; and (2) means-ends reasoning, in which the agent looks for plans for achieving these desires.The agent’s intentions are a consistent set of desi...

We present a computational framework for understanding Theory of Mind (ToM): the human capacity for reasoning about agents’ mental states such as beliefs and desires. Our Bayesian model of ToM (or BToM) expresses the predictive model of beliefand desire-dependent action at the heart of ToM as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), and reconstructs an agent’s joint belief state ...

Identity is, among other things, a means to adapt to the others around whom one must fit. Psychoanalytic theory has highlighted ways in which the child fits in by emulating important others, especially through identification. Alternately, the child may fit into the family and around important others through differentiation, an unconscious process that involves developing or accentuating qualiti...

Using a random sample of 243 Muslims in Lebanon and Syria, we examined whether support for Hezbollah or for Al Qaeda is predicted by functionallyrelevant emotional responses to specific threats perceived to be posed by Americans. In line with the sociofunctional approach, perceived resource domination threat from Americans elicited anger, and perceived value contamination threat elicited disgus...

As access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) increases in sub-Saharan Africa, fertility and contraception patterns are likely to change. Two hundred HIV-positive women at an ART roll-out site in Zimbabwe responded to a questionnaire on fertility desires and condom use. Ten women (5%) reported planning a pregnancy in the next year, comprising 0% of women not yet eligible for ART, 8.22% of women on...

Practical reasoning (PR), which is concerned with the generic question of what to do, is generally seen as a two steps process: (1) deliberation, in which an agent decides what state of affairs it wants to reach –that is, its desires; and (2) means-ends reasoning, in which the agent looks for plans for achieving these desires. A desire is justified if it holds in the current state of the world,...

People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that de...

The rapid growth of e-commerce increases the need for larger warehouses and their automation, thus using robots as assistants to human workers becomes a priority. In order to operate efficiently and safely, robot assistants or the supervising system should recognize human intentions. Theory of mind (ToM) is an intuitive conception of other agents’ mental state, i.e., beliefs and desires, and ho...

Theory of mind requires belief- and desire-understanding. Event-related brain potential (ERP) research on belief- and desire-reasoning in adults found mid-frontal activations for both desires and beliefs, and selective right-posterior activations only for beliefs. Developmentally, children understand desires before beliefs; thus, a critical question concerns whether neural specialization for be...

How long do people want to live, and how does scientific research on aging affect such desires? A dual-source information model proposes that aging expectations and desires are informed differently by two sources: personal experiences on the one hand, and scientific and societal influences on the other. Two studies with independent German national samples explored desires regarding length of li...