Overloading disks onto a mind: quantity effects in the attribution of mental states to technological systems

The study reported here has been structured to assess whether the number of very simple elements - little disks displayed on a screen - may affect the process of attributing mental states to these elements. One hundred and twenty subjects, allotted in three different groups, participated in an experiment in which they had to interact either with two, six, or eighteen disks in a videogame. Subjects had simply to click on the disks in order to gain scores. Results show that the number of disks displayed affects the attribution of some mental states. Specifically, beliefs about the disk having “attention”, “awareness” and “memories” were lowest in the condition with an intermediate (six) number of disks. This seems to suggest that different processes may be at play mediating the way in which mental state attributions are affected by the number of elements in the system. © 2012 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.