theory-of-mind

On cutting “empty brain calories” by reading a book instead of social media

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Stop doom­scrolling on social media and read a book (For­tune):

2020 is the year I decid­ed to cut back on emp­ty brain calo­ries. That’s right, I swore off the mind­less junk from social media. Because we are all like­ly to con­duct more and more doom­scrolling as the elec­tion nears and 2020 con­tin­ues its infamy, I urge you to stop ingest­ing dig­i­tal junk, and start read­ing a book. [Read more…] about On cut­ting “emp­ty brain calo­ries” by read­ing a book instead of social media

Study finds the limits of putting oneself in another’s shoes (instead, ask and listen)

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I still remem­ber the time I tried to com­fort one of my best friends when her father died. Because I’d lost my own par­ents years before, I thought I under­stood her pain. But, when I offered sym­pa­thy, she balked. Her father’s death had been tran­scen­dent, filled with love and fam­i­ly con­nec­tion. She didn’t feel pain; she felt at peace. [Read more…] about Study finds the lim­its of putting one­self in another’s shoes (instead, ask and listen)

Study identifies brain circuits enabling four-year-olds to “put themselves in other people’s shoes”

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Thanks to a crit­i­cal fibre con­nec­tion in the brain (green), four-year-old kids can start to under­stand what oth­er peo­ple think. Cour­tesy of Max Planck Institute.

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A remark­able mile­stone occurs in chil­dren around their fourth birth­days: They learn that oth­er peo­ple can have dif­fer­ent thoughts than they do. A recent study is the first to exam­ine the spe­cif­ic brain changes asso­ci­at­ed with this devel­op­men­tal break­through. [Read more…] about Study iden­ti­fies brain cir­cuits enabling four-year-olds to “put them­selves in oth­er people’s shoes”

Brain Training and Schizophrenia: How to Boost Social Cognitive Skills

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Indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing from schiz­o­phre­nia show social cog­ni­tive deficits, that is dif­fi­cul­ties in per­ceiv­ing and under­stand­ing the social world. Research shows that schiz­o­phre­nia is accom­pa­nied by social cog­ni­tion prob­lems such as prob­lems iden­ti­fy­ing facial expres­sions, under­stand­ing and respond­ing to social cues (e.g., body lan­guage), under­stand­ing that oth­ers have dif­fer­ent men­tal states and thoughts than one­self (also called The­o­ry of mind). These deficits are usu­al­ly per­sis­tent over time and resist phar­ma­co­log­i­cal treat­ment. Inter­est­ing­ly, social cog­ni­tion may be train­able. This recent arti­cle reviews the research and shows that social cog­ni­tive train­ing programs :

Changing our Minds…by Reading Fiction

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(Edi­tor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

Chang­ing our Minds

By imag­in­ing many pos­si­ble worlds, argues nov­el­ist and psy­chol­o­gist Kei­th Oat­ley, fic­tion helps us under­stand our­selves and others.

-By Kei­th Oatley

For more than two thou­sand years peo­ple have insist­ed that read­ing fic­tion is good for bookyou. Aris­to­tle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschy­lus, Sopho­cles, and Euripi­des, which we would now call fiction—is a more seri­ous busi­ness than his­to­ry. His­to­ry, he argued, tells us only what has hap­pened, where­as fic­tion tells us what can hap­pen, which can stretch our moral imag­i­na­tions and give us insights into our­selves and oth­er peo­ple. This is a strong argu­ment for schools to con­tin­ue to focus on the lit­er­ary arts, not just his­to­ry, sci­ence, and social studies.

But is the idea of fic­tion being good for you mere­ly wish­ful think­ing? The mem­bers of a small research group in Toronto—Maja Dji­kic, Ray­mond Mar, and I—have been work­ing on the prob­lem. We have turned the idea into ques­tions. In what ways might read­ing fic­tion be good for you? If it is good for you, why would this be? And what is the psy­cho­log­i­cal func­tion of art generally?

Through a series of stud­ies, we have dis­cov­ered that fic­tion at its best isn’t just enjoy­able. It mea­sur­ably enhances our abil­i­ties to empathize with oth­er peo­ple and con­nect with some­thing larg­er than ourselves.

Pos­si­ble selves, pos­si­ble worlds

Peo­ple often think that a fic­tion is some­thing untrue, but this is wrong. The word derives from the Latin fin­gere, to make. As some­thing made, fic­tion is dif­fer­ent from some­thing dis­cov­ered, as in physics, or from some­thing that hap­pened, as in the news. But this does not mean it is false. Fic­tion is about pos­si­ble selves in pos­si­ble worlds.

In terms of 21st-cen­tu­ry psy­chol­o­gy, we might best see fic­tion as a kind of sim­u­la­tion: one that runs not on com­put­ers, but on minds. Such men­tal sim­u­la­tion unfolds on two levels.

The first lev­el involves sim­u­lat­ing the minds of oth­er peo­ple: imag­in­ing what they are think­ing and feel­ing, which devel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gists call “the­o­ry of mind.” The the­o­ry-of-mind sim­u­la­tion is like a watch, which is a small mod­el that sim­u­lates [Read more…] about Chang­ing our Minds…by Read­ing Fiction