Work

Situation and person attributions under spontaneous and intentional instructions: an fMRI study

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research explores how observers make causal beliefs about an event in terms of the person or situation. Thirty-four participants read various short descriptions of social events that implied either the person or the situation as the cause. Half of them were explicitly instructed to judge whether the event was caused by something about the person or the situation (intentional inferences), whereas the other half was instructed simply to read the material carefully (spontaneous inferences). The results showed common activation in areas related to mentalizing, across all types of causes or instructions (posterior superior temporal sulcus, temporo-parietal junction, precuneus). However, the medial prefrontal cortex was activated only under spontaneous instructions, but not under intentional instruction. This suggests a bias toward person attributions (e.g. fundamental attribution bias). Complementary to this, intentional situation attributions activated a stronger and more extended network compared to intentional person attributions, suggesting that situation attributions require more controlled, extended and broader processing of the information.

Source: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

DOI: 10.1093/scan/nss022

Authors: Jenny Kestemont, Marie Vandekerckhove, Ning Ma, Nicole Van Hoeck, Frank Van Overwalle

Institution: Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Language: English

Topic: Action Observation and Synchronization

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,379

Funder: Vrije Universiteit Brussel