Mindwise

by Nicholas Epley

Others’ minds are not open books, but this doesn’t deter us from trying to read them anyway. The tools at our intuitive disposal–our own mind, stereotypes about the minds of others, and others’ observed actions–are simplifying heuristics that give imperfect insight into the minds of others.

From Our Perspective

We see the world from our own perspective, not as it actually is.

A man on one side of a river shouts to a man standing on the other side, “Hey, how do I get to the other side of the river?” The other man responds, “You are on the other side of the river.”

Not just our experiences

We evaluate other people’s mindstate using the same tools we use to evaluate our own mind, a.k.a mindreading or mindsense. Asking for someone’s perspective is more effective than taking it because we make inferences first based on our own experience, then account for others’. Often people are unwilling to give their perspective, because people don’t have access to their true motivations or because they are not in an environment where they feel comfortable being open.

This is also called the Lens Problem - i.e. the fact that we assume that everyone sees the world through the same lens as us, even when this is clearly not the case.

The most natural consequence of the lens problem is assuming that others will interpret the world as you do, because you can’t identify exactly how your own interpretation is being influenced by the lens you view it through. You can observe this consequence by simply asking people to report what other people believe, think, feel, or know, on topics ranging from the trivial to the critical.

Recognising the limits of you sixth sense suggests a different approach to understanding the minds of others: trying harder to get another person’s perspective instead of trying to take it.

Knowing the shortcomings of your own social sense should push you to be more open to sharing what’s in your own mind with others, but also more open to listening to others.

Others, of course, know much less about you and therefore cannot notice all of your fine-grained details. They look at you with the broader lens of a novice, evaluating you in general and in comparison to other people.

Psychological Distance

Mindsense is engaged by proximity - either physical or psychological (connection to your in-group). Failure to engage often leads to seeing people as mindless (i.e. inhuman). We are primed to detect “minds” - the behaviours of self-propelled agents can be easily explained by the presence of a “mind”, even when this is clearly not the case. Applying the mindsense module is anthropomorphisation. Similarly dehumanisation occurs as psychological distance increases.

Much of the killing by U.S. soldiers now comes through the hands of drone pilots watching a screen from a trailer in Nevada, with their sixth sense almost completely disengaged.

Nobody waves, but almost everybody waves back.

This means that that attributing a mind to a nonhuman agent is the inverse process of failing to attribute a mind to another person. Anthropormorphization and dehumanization are opposite sides of the same coin.

More than meets the eye

Correspondence Bias - we assume that the actions we see are fully representative of the intentions of the actor. People from individualistic cultures (e.g. the USA, Australia) are particularly susceptible to missing the broader cultural and environmental context for actions.

Correspondence bias can be mitigated by a broader understanding of the context in which the actions are taking place. For compliance professionals, understanding this context helps in providing the right incentives.

Only a fool would infer that a person who slips on an icy sidewalk wanted to fall, but the contextual forces that contribute to our successes and stumbles are routinely less obvious than ice on a sidewalk.

You can hear this thinking rolling right out of Michael Brown’s mouth when explaining how to avoid repeating the disaster following Hurricane Katrina: “We’ve got to figure out a way to convince people that whenever warnings go out, it’s for their own good.” The main problem in Brown’s mind was that people didn’t want to leave, and so the solution is to persuade people more effectively the next time. This solution may create a great warning system that leaves just as many people stranded the next time. Many who stayed wanted desperately to leave but couldn’t. They didn’t need convincing, they needed a bus.