Definition
The ability to identify intentional actors in the environment.
Introduction
Agency detection is an evolutionarily based psychological capacity to see an event to be motivated by an action tendency. This perception is universal among humans, and it may be widely shared among nonhuman animals. In the case of humans, however, to the source of this tendency, the agent, various mental states, including beliefs, feelings, and intentions, are readily assigned. These mental states may include dispositions of the agent, such as his or her attitudes and personality traits although cultures may differ widely in the degree to which these dispositions are prioritized. Here, we review evidence for these possibilities and argue that agency detection may be instrumental in promoting norm-abiding behaviors, including prosocial behaviors to ingroup members, and thereby in the formation of both modern...
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Kühnen, U., Kitayama, S. (2020). Agency-Detection. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3011-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3011-1
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