Seeing Minds, Matter, and Meaning: The CEEing Model of Pre-Reflective Subjective Construal

Abstract

Although subjective construal (i.e. our personal understanding of situations and the people and objects within them) has been an enduring topic in social psychology, its underlying mechanisms have never been fully explored. This review presents a model of subjective construals as a kind of seeing (i.e. pre-reflective processes associated with effortless meaning making). Three distinct forms of ‘seeing’ (visual, semantic, and psychological) are discussed to highlight the breadth of these construals. The CEEing Model characterizes these distinct domains of pre-reflective construals as all being Coherent Effortless Experiences. Neural evidence is then reviewed suggesting that a variety of processes that possess the core CEEing characteristics across visual, semantic, and psychological domains can be localized to lateral posterior parietal cortex, lateral posterior temporal cortex, and ventral temporal cortex in an area dubbed gestalt cortex. The link between subjective construals and gestalt cortex is further strengthened by evidence showing that when people have similar subjective construals (i.e. they see things similarly) they show greater neural synchrony (i.e. correlated neural fluctuations over time) with each other in gestalt cortex. The fact that the act of CEEing tends to inhibit alternative construals is discussed as one of multiple reasons for why we fail to appreciate the idiosyncratic nature of our pre-reflective construals, leading to naïve realism and other conflict-inducing outcomes.

What is social psychology? The construal principle.

“…There are many related terms, including “interpretations,” “mindsets,” “appraisals,” “attributions,” “narratives,” “stories,” and “meaning making.” The social psychologist Lee Ross proposed the term construal (Griffin et al, 1990; Griffin & Ross, 1991; Ross & Nisbett, 1991), because it captures both the more passive process of interpretation and the active process of construction (Ross, personal communication, August 10, 2020). It has since become the canonical term in the field (e.g., Lieberman, in press). Construal is a specific kind of cognitive process in which people interpret the world according to their prior experience, needs, and wishes.…”

“…Social neuroscience is a relatively young field, and as it matures, it will undoubtedly make more contributions to understanding social psychological processes, including the fundamental process of construal (Lieberman, in press). In this sense, it should be viewed as a methodology, not a theoretical approach of its own.…”