How People Explain Behavior: A New Theoretical Framework

By Bertram F. Malle. 1999

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

Explanation in Human-AI Systems: A Literature Meta-Review, Synopsis of Key Ideas and Publications, and Bibliography for Explainable AI (2019, neutral): “…2006, 2009a, 2011, 2016; Lombrozo and Carey, 2006; Lombrozo and Gwynne, 2014a; Lombrozo, Sloman, Strevens, Trout, and Skolnick Weisberg, 2008; Malle, 1999,2004, 2011; Manicas and Secord, 1983; McClure, 2002; McClure and Hilton, 1997, 1998; McClure, Sutton, and Hilton, 2003; Malle, 1999,…”
Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences (2017, background): “Malle and Pearce [118] break the actions that people will explain into two dimensions: (1) intentional vs. unintentional ; and (2) observable vs. unobservable; thus creating four different classifications (see Figure 6).”
Theory of Mind: A Neural Prediction Problem (2013, neutral): “Under the assumption that people usually act in accordance with their beliefs (Malle, 1999), the prediction is that the perpetrator intended the harm; most assaults and murders are not accidental.”
The role of emotion in self-explanations by cognitive agents (2017, background): “Malle [24, 25] calls fully intentional concepts reasons, and identifies a third type of reasons (besides beliefs and desires), which he calls valuings.”
When Mental States Matter, When They Don't, and What That Means for Morality (2013, background): “We focus instead on transient mental states, such as beliefs (which are internal) about the situation (which is external; Malle, 1999, 2004; Malle et al., 2000; Young & Saxe, 2010).”
Theory-based bias correction in dispositional inference: The fundamental attribution error is dead, long live the correspondence bias (2004, background): “Most importantly, emotional states are commonly attributed to situations rather than to dispositions (e.g., Brown & Fish, 1983; Malle, 1999; Semin & Fiedler, 1988).”
Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis (2009, background): “A related perspective is that we first identify the intentions, desires, or motives of an actor spontaneously [Fein, 1996; Hassin et al., 2005; Heider, 1958; Malle, 1999; Read and Miller, 1993] and that this process shapes the trait inferences we subsequently make.”
Do You Get It? User-Evaluated Explainable BDI Agents (2010, background): “These can thus be considered non-intentional, and it is therefore again in line with [16] that also these actions need their enabling condition.”
Shared Reality: Experiencing Commonality with others' Inner States about the World (2009, background): “theories and schemata (e.g., Heider, 1958; Idson & Mischel, 2001; Malle, 1999); or projection of their own inner states (e.”
The relation between language and theory of mind in development and evolution (2002, background): “This simple scheme could be expanded from natural, iconic symbols to increasingly arbitrary symbols; and it can include a variety of referent mental states, such as bodily states, feelings, desires, plans, perceptions and perhaps even beliefs.”
Suspending judgment to create value: Suspicion and trust in negotiation (2010, methodology): “Yet, people also attribute motives to others, such as purposes and needs (Ames, Flynn, & Weber, 2004; Malle, 1999; Malle et al., 2000; Reeder, 2009; Reeder, Vonk, Ronk, Ham, & Lawrence, 2004; Struthers, Eaton, Santelli, Uchiyama, & Shirvani, 2008).”
How People Explain Action (and Autonomous Intelligent Systems Should Too) (2017, background): “These relations are often characterized as “practical reasoning arguments” (Walton 2015) and as conforming to a rationality principle (Malle 1999).”
Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. (2003, background): “The reference group information might provide anchors for the generous and stringent endpoints of the welfare benefit scale—what Ostrom and Upshaw (1968) call “perspective.”
Social class, sense of control, and social explanation. (2009, background): “Explanations of social events can refer to causes external to the individual (contextual explanations) or within the individual (dispositional explanations; Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Malle, 1999; Morris & Peng, 1994).”
Attention to behavioral events during interaction: two actor-observer gaps and three attempts to close them. (2001, background): “Thus, classic formulations of the attentionattribution link have confounded the behavioral events attended to with the causes used to explain them (Malle, 1999).”