Manipulable objects have the potential to evoke mental representations of hand actions. Behavioural evidence favouring the view that this process happens automatically while passively viewing objects is critically examined. A case is made for the alternative proposal that objects may evoke action representations when observers concurrently operate with an intention to engage in a reach-and-grasp action. In addition, the nature of hand action representations was examined by considering two components of actions, hand selection and wrist orientation, and it is shown that the relationship between these dimensions is modulated by task context. When an action representation is evoked by a task-irrelevant object, these two dimensions are to a large extent independent of one another, but when an observer prepares an action for immediate production, these two action features are hierarchically integrated, with hand selection dominating the hierarchy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).