One
of the ways we assess other people is by watching other people and attributing
intent to them. This can help us what to do or say next. It can also go
seriously wrong.
We all try to read the minds of
other people, developing a 'theory of mind' around their motivation
and thoughts. We become quite skilled at this, certainly enough to interact,
persuade and display sympathy. Reading body language and the nuances of how
people speak especially allows us to understand moods, emotions and general
intentions.
Really? What could go wrong?
Problems can arise when we become over-confident in our mind-reading
ability, especially when we try determine the exact detail of thoughts.
Effectively what happens is that we first guess their general thoughts, then we
put words to these thoughts.
The more concrete the imagined
thoughts become, the more confident we become that this is an accurate
assessment. This then become a confirmation spiral as our need to be right
drives us to imagine and seek further evidence to support our assessment.
Quite naturally, we are each in the
middle of our own universe which, modesty aside, makes us pretty important. We
think about ourselves quite often, and not just in glowing positive terms.
A common trap based on this
self-importance is that we often tend to think they are thinking about us when in
fact they are thinking about other things (quite possibly themselves). This can
lead to significant mind-reading errors and consequent social confusion that
can make us appear overly self-focused (which of course we are, even though we
seldom admit it).
We all are affected by bias in our
thinking, which can be positive, negative or harmless. This is shaped by many
factors, for example where a risk-averse person
sees risks as bad or where greed gives a strong money focus.
Personal bias is quite natural and
can even be helpful, for example where risk aversion keeps us out of harm's
way. Problems can occur when we do not realize our biases and see our views as
unbiased and normal. This blindness often leads to the assumption that others
see things the same way as us. While we may share many biases with friends they
also have their own distortions, which serve only to make our mind-reading more
wrong (and with strangers this can be much worse).
People have two ways of thinking and
acting. Sometimes we think carefully and make conscious choice. But we are
constrained by time and so have to make many choices quickly, so we use habit, heuristics and
other short-cuts. This is mostly done by our unconscious minds.
When read the minds of others we
often assume their decisions were carefully considered. Hence when they say or
do things that hurt us or of which we disapprove, we assume a negative intent,
that they deliberately set out to upset us.
Watch your own mind-reading and
catch these errors before they lead you to do something that you may later
regret.
Also watch others as they read your
mind. Many strange ways of behaving can be explained by people attributing
thoughts to you that you have not had.
TJ
