Delineation and Operationalisation of the Concept of the Intentional Stance

The concept of the Intentional Stance has been born in the realm of philosophy, and as such, it is quite abstract and theoretical. Therefore, to measure if/to what extent people adopt the Intentional Stance towards a system (another human or a humanoid robot), one first needs to find ways to operationalize such a theoretical concept, so that it can be empirically tangible. This chapter describes a tool that has been designed to measure whether—and to what extent—a person adopts the Intentional Stance towards a humanoid robot. The tool has been used to identify not only behavioural, but also neural markers of the Intentional Stance. Importantly, however, before the tool is introduced, the chapter guides the reader through various concepts that are similar to the concept of the Intentional Stance, namely, anthropomorphism, or the theory of mind; and highlights theoretical or empirical distinctions between those concepts.