New York psychologist Lawrence Hirschfeld argues that while mentalizing through a theory of mind might be one way of predicting and interpreting someone’s behaviour, a better strategy, which is more accurate and efficient, is to make certain assumptions about the situation. In many of our interactions with others, we do not try to infer what is on their mind at all. Holding doors open for others, for example, is a mindless act, as are many of our social interactions.62 This is because humans may not be that good at attributing the correct mental state to others in the first place but they are better at reading what is normal behaviour in different contexts. Rather, we learn to apply a theory of society interpretation to the motivation of individuals – what people typically do in a particular situation. This would be based on learning about different members of the group as defined by the different categories they occupy, such as age and gender.
We operate with stereotypes, which lead us to assume that people will behave in certain predictable ways based on past experiences. This may actually be the default strategy for reasoning about other minds. In other words, it is when people do something we regard as unusual that triggers our mentalizing, as in, ‘What the hell were they thinking?’ This is when our false-belief reasoning is switched on, in an attempt to rationalize another’s actions. The idea that children learn about such exceptions to normality is supported by studies that show they are more likely to seek an explanation when they encounter variability in another’s behaviour.63 They are also more interested in inconsistent outcomes – like detectives trying to solve puzzling behaviour.64 They seem driven to try to understand the social world around them by making sense of people as predictable agents. Children need to learn what is typical for certain individuals as opposed to what is typical for most people.
How we make up our minds
Babies are clearly not just little adults, so what sort of creature are they? They are not blank slates: they are born with a brain that is already prepared for learning about the world. They have an instinct to learn. The development of the mind through learning must be the interaction between brain and the environment, shaped by mechanisms that have evolved to make sense of the world. But how much is built in by evolution and how much of it comes from experience?
As complicated animals, we engage in complex levels of analysis of the world. We have raw sensations streaming in through the senses that have to be organized into meaningful patterns that reflect information and structure in the environment. It would be a blooming buzzing confusion if it were not for the fact that we have some rules about how to make sense of our senses. These are the perceptual processes in the brain that detect and generate patterns. However, perceptions are only of use if they can be stored and recruited for future reference in order to plan behaviours. This is the job of cognition or thought. We can think about what we have learned and apply that knowledge to predict what to do next in a situation.
For young children, much of that world is a social one because they are so reliant on others for their survival. In the same way that we are adapted to understand some features of the physical environment, we also seem to be adapted to learning about others. Rudimentary social systems need to be fine-tuned or switched on by experience so that we can begin to understand people.
Some animals can also read other’s behaviours, but only when it is in their interest to benefit. Most animals are selfish, with little concern for others. In contrast, during the first year, a human baby’s social interactions with adults are rich and numerous but it is not clear that infants fully understand that the adult has a mind of their own yet. Without language, it is not clear that we could ever know what a baby is thinking about others. Maybe they are just like meerkats who automatically follow another’s direction of attention. However, as they grow, babies become more interactive with the world around them and seek out the attention of others. They may not have language by their first birthday but they are already communicating and reading non-verbal signals. They have gestures, squeal, blow raspberries, pull faces, protest, throw toys, point out things of interest, show fear or happiness and, of course, cry. Not only can they signal to adults what’s on their mind or at least when they are happy or unhappy, but they are beginning to understand that adults have minds too. When we can understand the minds of others, we can predict what they will do in the future. That is an enormous advantage when making sense of those around us.
Knowing what someone will do by reading their mind is one of the most powerful things our brains can do. When you know what someone else is thinking, you can manipulate and out-manoeuvre them for strategic advantage, just like Machiavelli. Even when you are not in competition with others, you still need the ability to know what they are thinking. Before language evolved, it would have been critical to understand what was on someone else’s mind so that you both could share the same perspective. You have to be able to put yourself in someone else’s situation in order to understand their intentions.
From sensation to culture, social mechanisms form a multi-layered system that is embedded in the newborn brain through natural selection but ultimately shaped and operated within a cultural environment. They are the tools that bind us together in a shared world. But there are other mechanisms that bind us together – we do more than share attention and interests, we also share emotions. From the very beginning, we are immersed in an emotional world where others make us feel happy or make us feel sad. The drive to have children may come from our selfish genes, but these genes also build the mechanisms that fuel our behaviour by providing feelings. Who we become is largely shaped by the emotions that motivate us, but these drives can be shaped by early experiences that leave a surprising legacy.
There was a time when it was acceptable to stare at individuals who, through the misfortune of the lottery of life, had been dealt a bum hand of cards when it came to their genes. Regarded as ‘freaks of Nature’, they came in all sorts of shapes and sizes – the victims of genetic abnormalities. These included dwarves and giants, people without limbs, bearded women, albinos and, most famously of all, the severely deformed Joseph Merrick, also known as The Elephant Man because of the massive tumours that disfigured his face and body.1 Although Merrick went on to lead a celebrity life, most of these people ended up in travelling circuses or freak shows where the public would pay to simply gawk at them.
In an attempt to understand such unfortunates, a widely held view at the time was that the birth defect was caused by some frightful event that traumatized the mother when she was pregnant. This idea, known as maternal impression, is thousands of years old and reflected a common belief that there was a correspondence between the nature of the birth defect and the supposed shock. A mother being accidentally burned during pregnancy may cause a patch of discoloured skin on the baby. Cleft palates or harelips occurred because a leaping hare had surprised the mother. Or, more commonly, the pregnant woman was so frightened by the sight of some deformity on another person that her unborn baby would be afflicted by the same defect. In the case of Joseph Merrick, it was claimed that a rogue fairground elephant startled his pregnant mother.2 These ludicrous ideas are consistent with magical thinking – the idea that there is a causal link between two events that are similar in appearance rather than an unrelated coincidence.