Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When we reason about the goals of others, how do we balance the positive outcomes that actions led to, with the potentiallybad ways those actions could have ended? In a four-part experiment, we tested whether and how adults (full study) and6- to 8-year-old children (ongoing study) expect other agents to take account of the ways their goal-directed action couldhave failed. Across 4 different tasks, we found that adults expected others to negatively appraise perilous situations (deeptrenches), to minimize the danger of their actions, and to trade off danger and reward in their action plans. Our preliminarychildrens study shows similar trends. These results suggest that people appeal to peril-how badly things could go if onesactions fail-when explaining and predicting other peoples actions, and also make quantitative inferences that are finelytuned to the degree of peril and reward that others face.