Perceptions of Intentionality for Goal-Related Action: Behavioral Description Matters

Perceptions of intentionality critically guide everyday social interactions, though the literature provides diverging portraits of how such judgments are made. One view suggests that people have an "intentionality bias," predisposing them toward labeling behaviors as intentional. A second view focuses on a more complex pattern of reasoning whereby judgments of intentionality are shaped by information about social context and mental states. Drawing on the theory of action-identification, we attempt to integrate these two perspectives. We propose that people parse intentionality into two categories: judgments about concrete, low-level behaviors and judgments about relatively more abstract, high-level behaviors. Evidence from five studies supports this distinction. Low-level behaviors were perceived as intentional regardless of mental state information, supporting the “intentionality bias” view. In contrast, judgments about the intentionality of high-level behaviors varied depending on social context and mental states, supporting the systematic view of intentionality.