Distinguishing Underlying, Inferred, and Expressed Preferences, Attitudes, and Beliefs: An Absence of (Mental) Flatness?

IF 2.9 2区 心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL Topics in Cognitive Science Pub Date : 2025-02-04 DOI:10.1111/tops.12787
Gordon D A Brown, Lukasz Walasek
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

People's choices of food and drink, the attitudes they express, and the beliefs that they state are influenced by their political and other identities. At the same time, people's everyday choices depend on the context of available options in ways that are difficult to explain in terms of the choosers' preferences and beliefs. Such phenomena provoke various questions. Do partisans or conspiracy theorists really believe what they are saying? Given the systematic inconsistency of their choices, in what sense do consumers prefer the items they purchase? More generally, how "flat" is the mind-do we come to decision-making and choice with pre-existing preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, or are our explanations for our behavior mere post-hoc narratives? Here, we argue that several apparently disparate difficulties are rooted in a failure to separate psychologically different types of preferences, attitudes, and beliefs. We distinguish between underlying, inferred, and expressed preferences. These preferences may be expressed in different coordinate spaces and hence support different types of explanatory generalizations. Choices that appear inconsistent according to one type of preference can appear consistent according to another, and whether we can say that a person "really" prefers something depends on which type of preference we mean. We extend the tripartite classification to the case of attitudes and beliefs, and suggest that attributions of attitudes and beliefs may also be ambiguous. We conclude that not all of the mental states and representations that govern our behavior are context-dependent and constructed, although many are.

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来源期刊
Topics in Cognitive Science
Topics in Cognitive Science PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL-
CiteScore
8.50
自引率
10.00%
发文量
52
期刊介绍: Topics in Cognitive Science (topiCS) is an innovative new journal that covers all areas of cognitive science including cognitive modeling, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, and cognitive science and philosophy. topiCS aims to provide a forum for: -New communities of researchers- New controversies in established areas- Debates and commentaries- Reflections and integration The publication features multiple scholarly papers dedicated to a single topic. Some of these topics will appear together in one issue, but others may appear across several issues or develop into a regular feature. Controversies or debates started in one issue may be followed up by commentaries in a later issue, etc. However, the format and origin of the topics will vary greatly.
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