Two motivations for two dimensions of mind

• Four studies examine how different motivations affect focus on outgroups' minds. • Affiliation versus effectance drives focus on agency versus experience. • These motivations also drive attribution of moral rights and responsibilities. • These motivations drive preferential focus on trustworthiness versus dominance. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Effective social interaction requires people to consider the minds of others. The present research suggests that different motivations systematically elicit attention to different components of mind. Four experiments manipulate either motivation for action prediction (effectance motivation) or motivation for affiliation and ask participants to evaluate the minds of outgroups. Experiments 1–2 feature hypothetical outgroups, while Experiment 3 targets Americans' relationship with China and also demonstrates consequences for moral judgment. Experiment 4 targets Americans' relationship with Iran and demonstrates consequences for moral and dispositional at-tribution toward groups. The findings reveal that effectance motivation relative to affiliation motivation triggers preferential focus toward agency (i.e., capacities for planning, thinking, intending), relative to experience (i.e., capacities for emotion and feeling). These results show that group mind judgments are determined not just by the features of the group but also by the motivations of the perceiver. Introduction As social animals, humans constantly must determine whether potential interaction partners are friendly or threatening (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). We seek affiliation with friends, whereas we monitor and anticipate the actions of our enemies. The motivation for affiliation and the motivation for action prediction and understanding (i.e. states preferentially to ingroup members versus outgroup members (Harris & Fiske, 2006; Leyens et al., 2000). Likewise, effectance motivation also requires a robust understanding of minds. Numerous studies have demonstrated that motivation to attain mastery increases mind attribution—when people are motivated to gain control and predictability, they often do so by anthropomorphiz-ing God or seeing human agents as especially mentalistic Although affiliation and effectance alike have been established as major determinants of mind attribution, the present research examines whether these motivations differentially affect people's preferential focus on different dimensions or mind. Prior work shows that people represent mind in terms of both agency (i. We examine people's preferential focus on these dimensions (i.e., their prioritization of these dimensions) rather than their attribution of mind for two primary reasons. The first is simply that existing work has not examined preferential focus, creating a gap in the literature we wish …