Cognitive science: Representation Psychology Essay

Running head: PEOPLE AS MENTAL STATES1
People As Mental States: A Representation Issue
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PEOPLE AS MENTAL STATES

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People As Mental States: A Representation Issue


The process of perception is performed by a complex set of neural activities not yet fully understood. The process of perceiving people as of different personality qualities is a case in point. Traditionally, Whole Trait Theory represents an established conceptualization of personality in psychology community. That different people exhibit different personality qualities, or traits, over short and long ranges is, indeed, established by rigorous psychological research for decades. There is, however, emerging evidence showing short range representations of people in mind, or so called “mental states,” as more powerful predictors of future social actions and personal behaviors. Specifically, Thornton,Weaverdyck and Tamir (2019) show – using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), behavior, and text analysis methods – in a study involving participants exposed to images and written content of celebrities that people, celebrities in current study, are perceived as sums of states shown by such celebrities over short and long runs. In contrast to trait-based conceptualization of personality and predictable personal behavior, argue Thornton,Weaverdyck and Tamir, mental states are shown to be more powerful predictors of human behavior – despite of, or perhaps because of, shortness of exposure to certain situation whereby perceivers elicit and predict present and future behaviors of certain people. Moreover, Thornton,Weaverdyck and Tamir show that a given person's trait, once fixed and unchanged, is, using a mental state representation, not just as fixed and, more interestingly, is a function of of repeated mental state self-reports as opposed to a single set of trait self-reports.
This new finding subverts, in fact, decades-long understanding of personality and behavior. In contrast to a more conventional (and stable) understanding of personality as a whole