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The Category of the Mind: Folk Psychology of Belief, Desire, and Intention
Author(s) -
Kashima Yoshihisa,
McKintyre Allison,
Clifford Paul
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/1467-839x.00019
Subject(s) - folk psychology , psychology , action (physics) , social psychology , epistemology , cognitive science , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
According to the everyday understanding of the mind (called folk psychology), people’s belief and desire causally combine to determine their intention, which in turn controls their action. However, recent empirical investigations have shown that psychologists’ and laypeople’s intuitions are not always in agreement about this common sense. To shed light, in this study folk psychology of belief, desire, and intention is conceptualized as a category of the mind; that is, a kind of category that embodies people’s causal knowledge about human action. Four experiments explored the implications of this conception for understanding and prediction of social action (Experiments 1 and 2) and for explanation of simple scripted action (Experiments 3 and 4). The results showed that the present conception of folk psychology is useful in guiding empirical investigation. A systematic investigation of folk psychology may revitalize Heider's research program on naive psychology.