The implicit processing of beliefs: Toward an understanding of its triggering conditions

This study investigated the processing of beliefs, i.e. the computation we do to represent what someone else knows about one aspect of the reality. We tested whether adults “compute” the belief of a social agent even when this processing is irrelevant for their current task and when their attention is not focused toward this person. Participants were shown animated videos in which an avatar threw a ball toward one location, the ball moved, and the avatar went out of the room after or before the ball had reached its final location. Accordingly, the avatar’s belief about the ball location was respectively true or false. The participants were required to track the ball location. The results showed that they responded to the ball location slower in the false than in the true belief condition. This suggests that they “computed” the avatar‘s belief, at least, at an implicit level, and that this representation of the belief interfered with the judgment about the ball location when the belief was false. This study has shown that the processing of beliefs occurs during an active monitoring of the reality and that the relevance of the agent for ongoing cognitive goals is not necessary.