Mind Reading
Every day, whether we're pusing for a raise, wrestling with the kids over homework, or judging whether a friend really likes our redecorating, we're reading each other's minds. Drawing on our observations, our databank of memories, our powers of reason or our wellspring of emotion, we constantly make educated guesses about what someone is thinking and feeling. Throughout the most light-hearted chat or the most heated argument, we, intently, collect clues to what's on the other's mind, at the moment.
Daniel Siegel, psychiatrist and author of The Mindful Brain calls it 'mindsight' that allows you to create a map of another's internal state.
Mind reading, not to be confused with the infallible telepathic superhero- is a critical human skill. It's the way we make sense of other's behavior and decide on our next moves. Mind reading allows us to negotiate, compete, cooperate and achieve emotional closeness. It let's us figure out when we're being manipulated or seduced. It's how we know someone finds our jokes hilarious or are humouring us, polite, but simulacratic.
Mind reading ability is, perhaps, the most urgent element of social intelligence. Do it poorly and the consequences are serious. It can lead to conflict born of misunderstanding. It can make us feel lonely within a relationship. It can incite violence. Abusive husbands typically- and inaccurately- attribute critical thoughts to their wives and mistakenly lash out. Difficulty divining other's thoughts and feelings characterizes
mindblindness indicative of autism and is what makes the condition so socially debilitating.
Decades of research on mind reading, or empathetic accuracy reveals it's function divining thought, even when our conversational partner may not know his own mind. Those thoughts and feelings are far from transparent, mind reading becomes our subjective source to the truth, beyond the surface. It's the only way to true intimacy. And the only way to love someone for who they really are.
It's astonishing we peer in each other's minds, at all, but, truthfully, we don't do it all that well.
Our limited ability to mind read has ancient roots. Communcations professor Ross Buck says over thousands of years of development communications have become sophisticated with complex living arrangements. He says mind reading has become a tool to create and maintain social order.
Of course, to advance our own interest we need to conceal our feelings, at times, and to, even lie. Others can get the upper hand knowing our thoughts.
Our adequate mindsight can be thought of as a constant struggle between the need to show and hide our true selves.
This delicate balance has served humans over the years. Siegel worries mind reading is on the decline, today's obsessed with success parents spend so much time stimulating children with structured activities and Baby Einstein DVD's, but not sitting still being 'present ' with their children. As a result children are denied the opportunity to learn how to get in tune with another physically and emotionally, to develop mindsight.
Siegel says a reasonable degree of mindsight is primary in a civil society for adults to be kind to each other.
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