Recursive mentalizing and public salience in the perception of common knowledge

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Common knowledge is crucial for social coordination but poses a cognitive challenge due to infinite recursion.
• Finite minds struggle to represent deeply embedded beliefs, impacting coordination.
• Existing theories lack a clear explanation for how humans achieve common knowledge from limited information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how people attribute common knowledge in social contexts.
• To explore the interplay between recursive mentalizing and public salience in forming common knowledge.
• To identify the cognitive mechanisms and limitations underlying common knowledge attribution.

Main Methods:

• Two studies were conducted using fictitious vignettes and animated videos to present different information conditions (private, reciprocal, public).
• Participants rated their confidence in characters' recursively embedded beliefs across varying embedding depths (0 to 18).
• Behavioral data analyzed to assess attribution patterns and cognitive load effects.

Main Results:

• Belief attribution declined with increasing embedding depth, indicating cognitive load.
• People overattributed embedded beliefs in non-public conditions but significantly more in public conditions.
• Participants inferred common knowledge from public salience, even with complex or absent publicness.

Conclusions:

• Common knowledge attribution relies on a combination of limited recursive mentalizing and public salience.
• Publicly salient events license inferences of common knowledge, facilitating coordination.
• Cognitive limitations can lead to recursion collapse and heuristic extrapolation, causing miscoordination.