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False Beliefs

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Counterfactual mental states; False perceptions; Mentalizing; Mindreading; Pretense; Psychological reasoning; Reality-incongruent beliefs; Representational mental states; Theory of mind

Definition

False-belief understanding requires understanding (at least implicitly) that the mind is representational in nature and, as such, can hold beliefs that are inaccurate or that deviate from reality in some way.

Introduction

Adults make sense of others’ actions by inferring the mental states that underlie these actions; this ability is variously referred to as psychological reasoning, mind reading, mentalizing, or exhibiting a theory of mind. Over the past two decades, numerous reports have presented evidence that psychological reasoning emerges early in life: When infants observe an agent act in a simple scene, they infer the agent’s motivational (e.g., goal, attitude) and epistemic (e.g., knowledge, ignorance) states, and they use these mental states to predict and interpret the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, USA

    Lin Bian & Renée Baillargeon

Authors
  1. Lin Bian
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  2. Renée Baillargeon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lin Bian .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland

    Christopher Watkins

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Bian, L., Baillargeon, R. (2017). False Beliefs. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3307-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3307-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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