Recursive mentalizing and public salience in the perception of common knowledge
De Freitas first author. Two studies asked people to attribute embedded beliefs to characters in vignettes and animations, with information asymmetrical, reciprocal or public, and confidence rated at up to eighteen levels of embedding. Ratings declined as embeddings grew, there was modest over-attribution in the non-public conditions, attribution was far higher when the event was public, and people judged arbitrarily deep beliefs justified. No sample sizes are given.
De Freitas first author. Two studies asked people to attribute embedded beliefs to characters in vignettes and animations, with information asymmetrical, reciprocal or public, and confidence rated at up to eighteen levels of embedding. Ratings declined as embeddings grew, there was modest over-attribution in the non-public conditions, attribution was far higher when the event was public, and people judged arbitrarily deep beliefs justified. No sample sizes are given.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-18.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
De Freitas, J., Huang, Y., & Pinker, S. (2026). Recursive mentalizing and public salience in the perception of common knowledge. PNAS, 123(33), e2536294123. doi:10.1073/pnas.2536294123.