Action observation activates the observer's motor system. These motor resonance responses are automatic and triggered even when the action is only implied in static snapshots. However, it is largely unknown whether an action needs to be consciously perceived to trigger motor resonance. In this study, we used single-pulse TMS to study the facilitation of corticospinal excitability (a measure of motor resonance) during supraliminal and subliminal presentations of implied action images. We used a forward and backward dynamic masking procedure that successfully prevented the conscious perception of prime stimuli depicting a still hand or an implied abduction movement of the index or little finger. The prime was followed by the supraliminal presentation of a still or implied action probe hand. Our results revealed a muscle-specific increase of motor facilitation following observation of the probe hand actions that were consciously perceived as compared with observation of a still hand. Crucially, unconscious perception of prime hand actions presented before probe still hands did not increase motor facilitation as compared with observation of a still hand, suggesting that motor resonance requires perceptual awareness. However, the presentation of a masked prime depicting an action that was incongruent with the probe hand action suppressed motor resonance to the probe action such that comparable motor facilitation was recorded during observation of implied action and still hand probes. This suppression of motor resonance may reflect the processing of action conflicts in areas upstream of the motor cortex and may subserve a basic mechanism for dealing with the multiple and possibly incongruent actions of other individuals.

The research Ethics committee of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (ELTE) granted a central permission (permission nr: 2019/47). Many other labs obtained IRB approval too, which approvals can be found here: https://osf.io/j6kte/ . Participants had to give informed consent before starting the experiment. Only participants recruited through Mturk or Prolific received monetary compensation.Note that full information on the approval of the study protocol must also be provided in the manuscript.

Strategic interactions have been studied extensively in the area of judgment and decision-making. However, so far no specific measure of a decision-maker's ability to be successful in strategic interactions has been proposed and tested. Our contribution is the development of a measure of strategic ability that borrows from both game theory and psychology. Such measure is aimed at providing an estimation of the likelihood of success in many social activities that involve strategic interaction among multiple decision-makers. To construct a reliable measure of strategic ability, that we propose to call “Strategic Quotient” (SQ), we designed a test where each item is a game and where, therefore, the individual obtained score depends on the distribution of choices of other decision-makers taking the test. The test is designed to provide information on the abilities related to two dimensions, mentalization and rationality, that we argue are crucial to strategic success, with each dimension being characterized by two main factors. Principal component analysis on preliminary data shows that indeed four factors (two for rationality, two for mentalization) account for strategic success in most of the strategically simpler games of the test. Moreover, two more strategically sophisticated games are inserted in the test and are used to investigate if and to what extent the four factors obtained by simpler games can predict strategic success in more sophisticated strategic interactions. Overall, the collected empirical evidence points to the possibility of building a SQ measure using only simple games designed to capture information about the four identified factors.

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The aim of this paper is to present a study in which we compare the degree of empathy that a convenience sample of university students expressed with humans, animals, robots and objects. The present study broadens the spectrum of elements eliciting empathy that has been previously explored while at the same time comparing different facets of empathy. Here we used video clips of mistreated humans, animals, robots, and objects to elicit empathic reactions and to measure attributed emotions. The use of such a broad spectrum of elements allowed us to infer the role of different features of the selected elements, specifically experience (how much the element is able to understand the events of the environment) and degree of anthropo-/zoomorphization. The results show that participants expressed empathy differently with the various social actors being mistreated. A comparison between the present results and previous results on vicarious feelings shows that congruence between self and other experience was not always held, and it was modulated by familiarity with robotic artefacts of daily usage.