Taking others for granted: Balancing personal and presentational goals in action selection

This study investigates how individuals balance personal and presentational goals - how they want to be perceived by others - in social interactions where those are conflicting. We develop a computational model that construes presentational goals as minimising the divergence between the perceived and desired belief state of their partner. Based on the divergence between how much a person's partner trusts them versus how much they want to be trusted, we predict complex decision-making patterns that cannot arise from solely focusing on maximising a partner's utility. In accordance with our model, participants tended to forego signalling good intentions and prioritised their own goals when they perceived their partner to trust them. Participants were also less concerned about how they were perceived and acted more often in their own interest when their partner was unlikely to change their mind. We show that people are sensitive to the specific belief state of others and can dynamically adjust their decision strategy to trade off presentational and material gains.