Rethinking people’s conceptions of mental life

Weisman, Kara; Dweck, Carol S.; Markman, Ellen M.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1704347114

Cited by 182Social and Intergroup PsychologyPsychology of Moral and Emotional JudgmentChild and Animal Learning Development

Rethinking people’s conceptions of mental life

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Weisman, Kara, Dweck, Carol S., Markman, Ellen M.·2017·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI 10.1073/pnas.1704347114PMC PMC5664492

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Abstract

Significance: How do ordinary people make sense of mental life? Pioneering work on the dimensions of mind perception has been widely interpreted as evidence that lay people perceive two fundamental components of mental life: experience and agency. However, using a method better suited to addressing this question, we discovered a very different conceptual structure. Our four studies consistently revealed three components of mental life—suites of capacities related to the body, the heart, and the mind—with each component encompassing related aspects of both experience and agency. This body–heart–mind framework distinguishes itself from the experience–agency framework by its clear and importantly different implications for dehumanization, moral reasoning, and other important social phenomena.

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The correspondence between the Experience/Agency dimensions and phenomenality is not clear, and more recent work has found evidence for alternative structures that cut across this distinction.
“However, the correspondence between these dimensions and phenomenality is not clear (Sytsma 2014) and more recent work has found evidence for alternative structures that cut across this distinction (e.g. Weisman et al. 2017, Malle 2019).”
From Folk psychological attributions of consciousness to large language models (2024) · cites this paper as Weisman et al. 2017

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“If experience and agency are understood to be the two components of mental life, as has been widely assumed, it is logical to suppose that there may be two corresponding forms of dehumanization: the denial of experience, and the denial of agency (17).”
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Authors: Weisman, K., Dweck, C. S., & Markman, E. M.
Affiliations: Stanford University (US)
ORCID: Weisman, Kara
Dweck, Carol S.
Markman, Ellen M.
Venue: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
Published: 2017-10-11
Volume: 114
Issue: 43
Pages: 11374-11379
ISSN: 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
1091-6490
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704347114
PMC: PMC5664492
OpenAlex: W2764192991
Cited by: 182
References: 20
Citations by year: 2026: 17 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 6
FWCI: 22.41
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: bronze
doi.org
Locations: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
PubMed (publishedVersion)
OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
Funders: National Science Foundation
Topics: Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
Keywords: human uniqueness, dehumanization, moral reasoning, decision-making capacity, human-animal differences
MeSH terms: Adult, Aged, Cognition, Emotions, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Processes, Middle Aged, Morals, Social Perception, Nontherapeutic Human Experimentation

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