Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive models of inverse planning typically treat a planner's utilities as functions of physical properties. However, many everyday actions are also shaped by utilities that are based on sociological properties, like social relationships. In this research, we extend inverse planning models to include social relationships as entities that change the utilities of actions. Using food sharing as a case study, we show that models require this sociological structure to capture human observers' judgments about actions, desires, and relationships. This work situates inverse planning models within everyday social interactions, where ongoing relationships constrain how people plan and interpret actions.