Shaheed Azaad

Abstract Research on joint action planning has demonstrated that, when acting with others, individuals will choose more effortful actions if it improves co-efficiency by reducing the overall effort exerted by the group. However, because these studies use actions for which time and effort costs are confounded, it is unclear which costs participants sought to minimise and what processes underlie decision-making about individual contributions to joint actions.

Abstract Contextual cues have been shown to inform our understanding and predictions of others’ actions. In this study, we tested whether observers’ predictions about unfolding actions depend upon the social context in which they occur. Across five experiments, we showed participants videos of an actor walking toward a piece of furniture either with (joint context) or without (solo context) a partner standing by it.