What do you think?

In our everyday lives, we often explain other people's actions by attributing thoughts, intentions and beliefs to them. This is called "mentalizing". For example, we can explain that a person opens their umbrella when it starts to rain by intending to stay dry and believing that the umbrella protects against the rain. Here we attribute intentions and beliefs with a certain content to the person. But why do we choose this content and not another? In this project, we investigate specific hypotheses about how mentalizing occurs, which have been developed from cognitive and social psychological research. Outcomes from the project have the potential to contribute to an increased understanding of social interaction and may ultimately shed light on the background to clinical conditions characterized by deficiencies in mentalizing.