(1) When you see your best friend crying, what emotion are they feeling?
(2) When you give someone you love a red heart-shaped box, what types of things would they expect to find inside?
(3) When Shaquille O'Neal stands at the free throw line with a basketball in his hands, what does he intend to do?
These are not trick questions! Your gut response to each one was right.
For the first one, perhaps you said that your crying friend was sad. Or, if you have a friend who cries often -as I myself am prone to do- then maybe he was experiencing something sublime.
For the second question, someone you love would most likely think that there were chocolate candies inside the heart shaped box.
And, for the third question, we would guess that Shaquille intended to shoot the ball into the hoop so that he could get a point for his team.
When we think about other people's feelings (Question #1), we use our ToM. When we think about other people's beliefs (Q #2), we use ToM. And, you guessed it, when we predict the next thing someone is going to do (Q #3), we use ToM!
We use ToM all the time, but we barely notice that we're doing it. We don't notice it because our brains were designed to detect minds with ease in the same way that our brains were designed to easily detect the difference between blue and green.
See that little circled part? That's called the Temporal-Parietal Junction, and it is the part of the brain that 'turns on' when we think about other people's mental states.*
In the next installment, I will explain how Mother Nature endowed us with this mind-reading ability. Down the road, I hope to address a wicked big question using Theory of Mind.
The wicked big question is this: how do we think about what God is thinking about?
*It's more like a network of neurons that 'fire' in a specific, globalized pattern; but to keep the explanation simple, I refer to the TPj as a 'part' rather than a complex neural network.
This definitely sounds like a cool idea, seeing how our thoughts are impacted by religious belief. I am a Catholic, went to church and CCD almost every week, but I don't really consider myself a good Catholic. I doubt theories after learning scientific fact and I don't go to church anymore, yet I still find myself following certain traditions, like right now, during the season of Lent, giving up something and not eating meats on Fridays...oops...even though I no longer really consider myself a Catholic. I'm not sure if those are the kinds of things you are referring to, but maybe its a heading you might have.
ReplyDeleteYes! Sarah, this is exactly the stuff I'm interested in. Because how we think about god changes the way we behave and think and act morally in the world. It also influences the traditions we take part in, like LENT! I find it fascinating how, even if we fall out of faith, or are less faithful than we once were, we still continue doing certain religious traditions. Like you with lent, and like me with Christmas!
ReplyDelete