Marcel Brass

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Berlin School of Mind and Brain/Department of Psychology

Humans are inclined to preferentially process self-related content, referred to as the ‘self-bias’. Different paradigms have been used to study this effect. However, not all paradigms included a familiar other condition (but rather an unfamiliar other condition), needed to differentiate self-specific effects from the impact of familiarity. The prim...

A growing number of studies demonstrate that belief in free will (FWB) is dynamic, and can be reduced experimentally. Most of these studies assume that doing so has beneficial effects on behavior, as FWBs are thought to subdue unwanted automatic processes (e.g. racial stereotypes). However, relying on automatic processes can sometimes be advantageo...

Research in social psychology and experimental philosophy has investigated lay people’s free will beliefs (FWB). Using different approaches (i.e. experimental manipulations and vignette studies), they investigated how FWB relate to other concepts, and whether changing FWB has an impact on downstream processes such as social behavior. However, both...

A growing number of studies demonstrate that belief in free will (FWB) is dynamic, and can be reduced experimentally. Most of these studies assume that doing so has beneficial effects on behavior, as FWBs are thought to subdue unwanted automatic processes (e.g. racial stereotypes). However, relying on automatic processes can sometimes be advantageo...

Social group influence plays an important role in societally relevant phenomena such as rioting and mass panic. One way through which groups influence individuals is by directing their gaze. Evidence that gaze following increases with group size has typically been explained in terms of strategic processes. Here, we tested the role of reflexive proc...

Implementing novel instructions is a complex and uniquely human cognitive ability, which requires the rapid and flexible conversion of symbolic content into a format that enables the execution of the instructed behavior. Preparing to implement novel instructions, as opposed to their mere maintenance, involves the activation of the instructed motor...

To explain the social difficulties in autism, a large amount of research has been conducted on the neural correlates of social perception. However, this research has mostly used basic social stimuli (e.g. eyes, faces, hands, single agent), not resembling the complexity of what we encounter in our daily social lives, and as such, the situations peop...

Previous research suggests that belief in free will correlates with intentionality attribution. However, whether belief in free will is also related to more basic social processes is unknown. Based on evidence that biological motion contains intentionality cues that observers spontaneously extract, we investigate whether people who believe more in...

Although incompatible with modern scientific thinking, dualistic beliefs are still widespread in society. Previous studies suggest that such beliefs are associated with social behavior and health-related attitudes. More recently, studies have also shown that belief in dualism is related to more basic social cognitive processes, such as detecting bi...

Ever since some scientists and popular media put forward the idea that free will is an illusion, the question has risen what would happen if people stopped believing in free will. Psychological research has investigated this question by testing the consequences of experimentally weakening people’s free will beliefs. The results of these investigati...

Previous event-related potential (ERP) research showed reduced self-referential processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As different self-related stimuli were studied in isolation, it is unclear whether findings can be ascribed to a common underlying mechanism. Further, it is unknown whether altered self-referential processing is also evident...

Previous neuroscience studies have provided important insights into the neural processing of third-party social interaction recognition. Unfortunately, however, the methods they used are limited by a high susceptibility to noise. EEG frequency tagging is a promising technique to overcome this limitation, as it is known for its high signal to noise...

Fear learning allows us to identify and anticipate aversive events, and adapt our behavior accordingly. This is often thought to rely on associative learning mechanisms where an initially neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is repeatedly paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), eventually leading to the CS also being perceived as aversive...

Recent theories of autism propose that a core deficit in autism would be a less context-sensitive weighting of prediction errors. There is also first support for this hypothesis on an early sensory level. However, an open question is whether this decreased context sensitivity is caused by faster updating of one???s model of the world (i.e., higher...

Implementing novel instructions is a complex and uniquely human cognitive ability, that requires the rapid and flexible conversion of symbolic content into a format that enables the execution of the instructed behavior. Preparing to implement novel instructions, as opposed to their mere maintenance, involves the activation of the instructed motor p...

Most people believe in free will, which is foundational for our sense of agency and responsibility. Past research demonstrated that such beliefs are dynamic, and can be manipulated experimentally. Much less is known about free will attitudes (FWAs; do you value free will?), whether they are equally dynamic, and about their relation to free will bel...

Social group influence plays an important role in societally relevant phenomena such as rioting and mass panic. One way through which groups influence individuals is by directing their gaze. Evidence that gaze following increases with group size has typically been explained in terms of strategic processes. Here, we instead tested the role of sensor...

Our ability to generate efficient behavior from novel instructions is critical for our adaptation to changing environments. Despite the absence of previous experience, novel instructed content is quickly encoded into an action-based or procedural format, facilitating automatic task processing. In the current work, we investigated the link between p...

Background: The ‘self-bias’ – i.e., the human proneness to preferentially process self-relevant stimuli – is thought to be important for both self-related and social processing. Previous research operationalized the self-bias using different paradigms, assessing the size of the self-bias within a single cognitive domain. Recent studies suggested a...

Rules form an important part of our everyday lives. Here we explore the role of social influence in rule-breaking. In particular, we identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying rule-breaking and propose approaches for how they can be scaled up to the level of groups or crowds to better understand the emergence of collective rule-breaking....

The question whether and how we are able to monitor our own cognitive states (metacognition) has been a matter of debate for decades. Do we have direct access to our cognitive processes, or can we only infer them indirectly based on their consequences? In the current study, we wanted to investigate the brain circuits that underlie the metacognitive...

A key prediction of ideomotor theories is that action perception relies on the same mechanisms as action planning. While this prediction has received support from studies investigating action perception in one-on-one interactions, situations with multiple actors pose a challenge because in order to corepresent multiple observed actions, observers h...

Research has shown that people automatically imitate others and that this tendency is stronger when the other person is a human compared with a non-human agent. However, a controversial question is whether automatic imitation is also modulated by whether people believe the other person is a human. Although early research supported this hypothesis,...

Recent research suggests that we can simultaneously represent the actions of multiple agents in our motor system. However, it is currently unclear exactly how we represent their actions. Here, we tested two competing hypotheses. According to the independence hypothesis, we represent concurrently observed actions as independent, competing actions. A...

Often we have a feeling that we can control effects in the external world through our actions. The role of action processing associated with this implicit form of agency is still not clear. In this study, we used automatic imitation and electroencephalography to investigate neural oscillations associated with action processing and its possible cont...

Background: The ‘self-bias’ – i.e., the human proneness to preferentially process self-relevant stimuli – is thought to be important for both self-related and social processing. Previous research operationalized the self-bias using different paradigms, assessing the size of the self-bias within a single cognitive domain. Recent studies suggested a...

Whether free will exists is a longstanding philosophical debate. Cognitive neuroscience and popular media have been putting forward the idea that free will is an illusion, raising the question of what would happen if people stopped believing in free will altogether. Psychological research has investigated this question by testing the consequences o...

Lay abstract: Recent theories propose that autism is characterized by an impairment in determining when to learn and when not. Here, we investigated this hypothesis by estimating learning rates (i.e. the speed with which one learns) in three different environments that differed in rule stability and uncertainty. We found that neurotypical particip...

Humans are capable of flexibly converting symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous evidence and theoretical models suggest that the implementation of a novel instruction requires the reformatting of its declarative content into an action-oriented code optimized for the execution of the instructed behavior. While neuroimaging research fo...

A key prediction of motivational theories of automatic imitation is that people imitate in-group over out-group members. However, research on this topic has provided mixed results. Here, we investigate the possibility that social group modulations emerge only when people can directly compare in- and out-group. To this end, we conducted three experi...

A key aspect of human cognitive flexibility concerns the ability to convert complex symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous research proposes that this transformation is supported by two neurocognitive states: an initial declarative maintenance of task knowledge, and an implementation state necessary for optimal task execution. Further...

Action preparation is associated with a transient decrease of corticospinal excitability just before target onset. We have previously shown that the prospect of reward modulates preparatory corticospinal excitability in a Simon task. While conflict in the Simon task strongly implicates the motor system, it is unknown whether reward prospect modulat...

In this pre-registered study, we tried to replicate the study by Rigoni et al. 2013 Cognition 127, 264-269. In the original study, the authors manipulated the participants' belief in free will in a between-subject design and subsequently measured post-error slowing (i.e. slower responses after an incorrect trial compared with a correct trial) as a...

A key prediction of ideomotor theories is that action perception relies on the same mechanisms as action planning. While this prediction has received support from studies investigating action perception in one-on-one situations, situations with multiple actors pose a challenge because in order to co-represent multiple observed actions, observers ha...

Background Recent theories of autism propose that a core deficit in autism would be a less context-sensitive weighting of prediction errors. There is also first support for this hypothesis on an early sensory level. However, an open question is whether this decreased context-sensitivity is caused by faster updating of one’s model of the world (i.e....

This chapter focuses on the relationship between control beliefs and self-control. After providing an overview of the research showing how control beliefs affect self-control performance, the authors present a novel experimental procedure based on a placebo brain stimulation that aims at altering people’s belief about their own self-control. They t...

Theory of Mind (ToM) or mentalizing refers to the ability to attribute mental states (such as desires, beliefs or intentions) to oneself or others. ToM has been argued to operate in an explicit and an implicit or a spontaneous way. In their influential paper, Kovács et al. (Science 330:1830–1834, 2010) introduced an adapted false belief task—a ball...

Working memory (WM) allows for the maintenance and manipulation of information when carrying out ongoing tasks. Recent models propose that representations in WM can be either in a declarative format (as content of thought) or in a procedural format (in an action-oriented state that drives the cognitive operation to be performed). Current views on t...

Can effects of social influence be elicited in virtual contexts, and if so, under which conditions can they be observed? Answering these questions has theoretical merit, as the answers can help broaden our understanding of the interaction mechanisms described by social psychology. The increasing popularity of immersive media in training application...

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency tow...

Unlike other species, humans are capable of rapidly learning new behavior from a single instruction. While previous research focused on the cognitive processes underlying the rapid, automatic implementation of instructions, the fundamentally social nature of instruction following has remained largely unexplored. Here, we investigated whether instru...

Previous behavioral studies using stimulus-response compatibility tasks have shown that people are faster to carry out instructed approach/avoidance responses to positive/negative stimuli. This result has been taken as evidence that positive/negative stimulus valence directly activates a tendency to approach/avoid, which in turn, facilitates execut...

A key prediction of motivational theories of automatic imitation is that people imitate in-group over out-group members. However, research on this topic has provided mixed results. Here, we investigate the possibility that social group modulations emerge only when people can directly compare in- and out-group. To this end, we conducted three experi...

Background Depressive symptoms are associated with impaired social functioning, arguably because of reduced mentalizing abilities. However, findings in persons with depressive symptoms and/or major depressive disorder (MDD) are presently mixed, finding evidence both for and against the hypothesis of reduced mentalizing abilities. Aims This study i...

Dual-process models with a default-interventionist architecture explain early emotional action tendencies by a stimulus-driven process and they allow goal-directed processes to intervene only in a later stage. An alternative dual-process model with a parallel-competitive architecture developed by Moors, Boddez, and De Houwer (2017), in contrast, ex...

Experience of interpersonal trauma and violence alters self-other distinction and mentalising abilities (also known as theory of mind, or ToM), yet little is known about their neural correlates. This fMRI study assessed temporoparietal junction (TPJ) activation, an area strongly implicated in interpersonal processing, during spontaneous mentalising...

A classic example of discriminatory behavior is keeping spatial distance from an out-group member. To explain this social behavior, the literature offers two alternative theoretical options that we label as the “threat hypothesis” and the “shared-experience hypothesis”. The former relies on studies showing that out-group members create a sense of a...

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency tow...

Little is known about how price evaluation processes unfold. In the current study we explored if reaction times (RTs) can be used to study price evaluations. Additionally, we explored to what extent drift diffusion models (DDMs) are suitable to decompose the different aspects that underlay this decision processes. In a behavioral experiment, partic...

The present study employed an explicit reaction time task but measured several underlying cognitive processes in an attempt to provide implicit estimates of consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP). Participants were asked to evaluate product-price combinations as cheap or expensive. The prices of the products ranged from very cheap to very expensive. C...

Experience of childhood abuse (CA) impairs complex social functioning in children; however, much less is known about its effects on basic sociocognitive processes and even fewer studies have investigated these in adult survivors. Using two behavioral tasks, this study investigated spontaneous theory of mind (ToM) and imitative behavior in 41 women...

The fluency with which we plan and execute actions has been demonstrated to increase our sense of agency (SoA). However, the exact mechanisms how fluency influences SoA are still poorly understood. It is an open question whether this effect is primarily driven by fluency of stimulus processing, response preparation or by processes following respons...

Humans are capable of flexibly converting symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous evidence and theoretical models suggest that the implementation of a novel instruction requires the reformatting of its declarative content into an action-oriented code optimized for the execution of the instructed behavior. While neuroimaging research fo...

Previous behavioral studies using stimulus-response compatibility tasks have shown that people are faster to carry out instructed approach/avoidance responses to positive/negative stimuli. This result has been taken as evidence that positive/negative stimulus valence directly activates a tendency to approach/avoid, which in turn, facilitates execut...

Unlike other species, humans are capable of rapidly learning new behavior from a single instruction. While previous research focused on the cognitive processes underlying the rapid, automatic implementation of instructions, the fundamentally social nature of instruc-tion following has remained largely unexplored. Here, we investigated whether instr...

Background: Response inhibition can be classified into stimulus-driven inhibition and intentional inhibition based on the degree of endogenous volition involved. In the past decades, abundant research efforts to study the effects of alcohol on inhibition have focused exclusively on stimulus-driven inhibition. The novel Chasing Memo task measures s...

The self-sufficiency hypothesis suggests that priming individuals with money makes them focus more strongly on themselves than on others. However, recently, research supporting this claim has been heavily criticized and some attempts to replicate have failed. A reason for the inconsistent findings in the field may lay in the common use of explicit...

Value-based decision-making is ubiquitous in every-day life, and critically depends on the contingency between choices and their outcomes. Only if outcomes are contingent on our choices can we make meaningful value-based decisions. Here, we investigate the effect of outcome contingency on the neural coding of rewards and tasks. Participants perform...

A common idea about individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is that they have an above average preference for predictability and sameness. However, surprisingly little research has gone towards this core symptom, and some studies suggest the preference for predictability in ASD might be less general than commonly assumed. Here, we investiga...

Recent predictive coding theories propose that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by an impairment in determining when to learn and when not. Here, we investigated this hypothesis by estimating learning rate in three different environments that differed in volatility and uncertainty. Specifically, using a dimensional approach, we corre...

A key aspect of human cognitive flexibility concerns the ability to rapidly convert complex symbolic instructions into novel behaviors. Previous research proposes that this fast configuration is supported by two differentiated neurocognitive states, namely, an initial declarative maintenance of task knowledge, and a progressive transformation into...

Being able to discriminate between what originates from ourselves and what originates from others is critical for efficient interactions with our social environment. However, it remains an open question whether self-other distinction is a domain-general mechanism that is involved in various social-cognitive functions or whether specific ‘self-other...

The self-sufficiency hypothesis suggests that priming individuals with money makes them focus more strongly on themselves than on others. However, recently, research supporting this claim has been heavily criticized and some attempts to replicate have failed. A reason for the inconsistent findings in the field may lay in the common use of explicit...

Being able to discriminate between what originates from ourselves and what originates from others is critical for efficient interactions with our social environment. However, it remains an open question whether self-other distinction is a domain-general mechanism that is involved in various social-cognitive functions or whether specific ‘self-other...

Theory of Mind research has shown that we spontaneously take into account other's beliefs. In the current study we investigate, with a spontaneous Theory of Mind (ToM) task, if this belief representation also applies to nonhuman-like agents. In a series of 3 experiments, we show here that we do not spontaneously take into account beliefs of nonhuma...