{"pk":25530,"title":"So good it has to be true: Wishful thinking in theory of mind","subtitle":null,"abstract":"In standard decision theory, rational agents are objective,\nkeeping their beliefs independent from their desires (Berger,\n1985). Such agents are the basis for current computational\nmodels of Theory of Mind (ToM), but this fundamental as-\nsumption of the theory remains untested. Do people think that\nothers’ beliefs are objective, or do they think that others’ de-\nsires color their beliefs? We describe a Bayesian framework\nfor exploring this relationship and its implications. Motivated\nby this analysis, we conducted two experiments testing the a\npriori independence of beliefs and desires in people’s ToM\nand find that, contrary to fully-normative accounts, people\nthink that others engage in wishful thinking. In the first ex-\nperiment, we found that people think others believe both that\ndesirable events are more likely to happen, and that undesir-\nable ones are less likely to happen. In the second experiment,\nwe found that social learning leverages this intuitive under-\nstanding of wishful thinking: participants learned more from\nthe beliefs of an informant whose desires were contrary to his\nbeliefs. People’s ToM therefore appears to be more nuanced\nthan the current rational accounts, but consistent with a model\nin which desire directly affects the subjective probability of\nan event.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Wishful Thinking; Computational Social Cogni-\ntion; Theory of Mind; Desirability Bias"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8bq9d0nh","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Daniel","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hawthorne-Madell","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford","department":""},{"first_name":"Noah","middle_name":"D","last_name":"Goodman","name_suffix":"","institution":"Stanford","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25530/galley/15154/download/"}]}