Inferring agency across cultures 1 Grounding principles for inferring agency : Two cultural perspectives

The present research investigates cultural variation in grounding principles for inferring agency. Our motivating question is whether cultural diversity in agency concepts reflects an animistic overextension of a single (universal) folkpsychology, as argued by many researchers, or an alternative folktheory of communication based on relational principles. In two experiments, a mind-perception measure was adapted for interviews with indigenous Ngöbe adults in Panama and US college students, with a focus on beliefs concerning non-animal kinds (plants, abiotic kinds, complex artifacts). Agency attributions varied systematically, with Ngöbe ascribing greater agency to non-animal natural kinds and US participants ascribing greater agency to complex artifacts. To assess principles for inferring agency, we used several converging measures. (1) Coding analysis of explanations revealed divergent interpretations of agency as a prototypically human capacity requiring consciousness (US), or as a relational capacity expressed in directed interactions (Ngöbe). (2) Experimentally introducing a relational framing of agency probes facilitated Ngöbe but not US agency attributions. (3) Three key dimensions of agency concepts (experience, cognition, animacy) are organized differently across cultures. (4) A Bayesian inferential approach to cultural consensus modeling confirmed the presence of two distinct consensus models and revealed several forms of withinand cross-group variability. Together, these findings indicate that conceptual frameworks for agency differ across Ngöbe and Western communities. We conclude that Ngöbe concepts of ecocentric agency derive from a distinct theory of folkcommunication rather than overextensions of Western folkpsychology, with significant implications for domain-specificity theory and our understanding of cognitive diversity.