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Presented by Mihael Jeklic
About
Mentalizing underpins all human social interaction. In this webinar we will explore its role in decision-making in situations involving strategic interdependence, that is, in situations where the outcome depends on actions of all interacting agents, and rational decision making presupposes thinking about others’ preferences and action choices. Our focus will be on mentalizing in negotiation.
To what extent does the ability to imagine one’s own and others’ mental states assist in strategic decisions and bargaining? The idea we are advancing is that because the decision-maker’s (negotiator’s) outcome depends on contingent actions of others, and these actions are based on others’ mental states, mentalizing ought to be a critical capacity ensuring effective cooperation and/or competition.
This is consistent with accounts suggesting that mentalizing provided an evolutionary advantage because it provided individuals both competitive (outsmarting opponents) and collaborative (living in progressively larger groups) edge over their conspecifics. Other studies show that interpersonal capacities associated with mentalizing (e.g., perspective-taking and empathy) differentially assist in strategic settings. We will present a theoretical conceptualization of mentalizing in strategic settings (negotiation) and selected empirical results that were part of a recent PhD thesis.