Abstract

In the course of everyday life, perceivers make sense of one another with speed and confidence, judging intentions, forming impressions, predicting a person's next move. But what is the nature of such social inferences and how do they unfold? Building on the work of philosophers and developmental psychologists, I argue that, at its core, person perception is bound up with the so-called problem of other minds: the inference of other people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires. While this folk psychological approach resonates with earlier social psychological work, it stands in contrast with contemporary scholarship that stresses the role of behaviors in social judgment and affords almost no place to mental state inferences. ;A model of mental state inferences is developed to describe impression formation. Perceivers are portrayed as using three inferential strategies: evidence use, implicit theory use, and social projection. Five studies reveal empirical support for this approach. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, university students judged scenarios of ambiguous behaviors. Impressions of targets were closely related to inferences about beliefs, desires, and feelings; these judgments fully mediated the connection between behaviors and impressions in a variety of cases. In Study 4, judgments of scenario actor mental states showed the predicted effects of implicit theory use and social projection. In Study 5, unacquainted participants were randomly paired with one another for conversation and a variety of tasks. Subsequent responses showed the predicted mental state inference mediation pattern: the effect of behaviors on global impressions of the partner was fully mediated by judgments about the partner's mental states. ;While these findings build on earlier approaches, they are the first direct evidence of mental state inference mediation in person perception. The results hold implications for various traditions. Notably, process models of dispositional inference, which describe links between behaviors and trait judgments, are challenged to accommodate mental state inferences. More broadly, scholars of social judgment are encouraged to consider the role of mental state inference. Reframing various phenomena of social sensemaking as issues of judgments about other minds holds the potential for novel insights and greater theoretical integration