Even though the scientific question whether the concept of a “Self” is necessary to explain human behaviour is still open, it is obvious that the concept does play a role in everyday behaviour. Laypeople attribute a self to other humans, but also to non-human animals or technical systems, and they treat them accordingly. For instance, agents that are perceived as having a self are treated more carefully and politely, and they receive more empathy. But what are the criteria for attributing a self to another agent? In this question we do not presume the existence or nonexistence of the self. Uncoupled from the actual self we are interested only in the core characteristics that determine whether we attribute a self to other agents.
Identifying those characteristics is the scope of the first phase of the project which consist of a series of experiments exploring the effect of nine perceived characteristics on mind attribution. We will investigate the characteristics causality, speed, equifinality, behavioural efficiency, learning and context sensitivity, additionally social sensitivity, attention sharing and helping. We manipulate the behaviour of small robots to either suggest the presence or absence of these characteristics and are then interested in the mind attribution ratings of our participants.
PIs: Bernhard Hommel, Arvid Kappas
Co-PI: Francesco Maurelli
PhD Students: Kristina Nikolovska, Jan Pohl
DFG SPP "The Active Self" 