Selfhood-attribution in a social context: Further evidence for a Pars Pro Toto account

Humans show a consistent tendency to anthropomorphize or attribute aspects of selfhood to nonhuman agents. In a previous study, we found that people (over-)generalize from the presence of a single behavioral selfhood cue (like equifinality or efficiency) to the presence of other (actually absent) cues, suggesting that a small aspect of selfhood suffices to activate the entire selfhood concept with all its other implications (Pars-Pro-Toto). As our previous study was exclusively manipulating non-social aspects of selfhood, we tested whether these findings can also be demonstrated for social aspects. Specifically, we manipulated the presence or absence of cues indicating social sensitivity, attention sharing, or helping behavior in a non-humanoid robot, and tested which cues would elicit attributions of various aspects of selfhood. The results replicated our previous finding that the presence of a single cue is sufficient to (over-)generalize to other, non-manipulated cues, extended our previous observations to social conditions and provided further support for our Pars-Pro-Toto account. Interestingly, however, the over-generalization of self-related cues was stronger within the social domain, while the presence of other agents reduced the attribution of agency.