What is theory of mind?

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From what I read in Autism for dummies it's the ability to understand the perspective of others without necessarily having experienced the same thing. It always fascinated me how people could read each other, and I had to experience something before I could relate. So what does it really mean? Or what does it mean to you?

Theory of mind is basically how you conceptualise the nature information processing generally. Within your head it just happen but to read someone else you take the information someone is supposed to have and then decide how they would process it and react to it. The idea is that autistic people don't have a theory of mind, so they can't read people, hence the lack of empathy.

From my experience a lot of NT's don't understand the perspectives of people who's experience is too far from their own either. I don't see how this trait is completely unique to autism.

ToM really just comes down to mirror neurons which allow people to mimic each other's body language and create a kind of crude proto-simulation of the other person by projecting their own emotions onto someone else. It creates an illusion of a real inter-subjective experience. I think people with high functioning Autism or AS do have this ability, we just don't do it continuously during social interactions. These things are usually activated involuntarily and subconsciously.

As far as mind reading goes I think one can get a much more accurate perspective of someone else's experience through logic and a higher level of reasoning/intuition anyways.

I'll do my best to explain how I understand ToM:

When we were children, my mother used to tell us that one has to be kind in order to be liked by others, have friends and a happy life without hardship.

I believed her and tried to be kind all my life. As a consequence, I was taken advantage of, taken for granted, undervalued, unemployed, beaten and alone most of my life.

My siblings, however, understood what mother REALLY meant: "You have to kiss the ass of those in power over you because they'll shape your life and you can destroy those below you because they can't harm you." They're now rich and have lots of friends and live wonderful lives.

How did my siblings grasp the REAL meaning she was trying to convey? Because they had developed Theory of Mind, which among other things teaches a child that:

= people not necessarily mean what they say but you have to search for the hidden meaning
= that there is a pecking order in every group
= that people are often more concerned with how you make them look to others than how you treat them
= that people often have a personal interest to preach something
= that mother often teaches what's convenient for her that you do, not always what's best for you to do in the outside world

These "general truths about human psychological nature" that kids learn automatically and intuitively at age 3-4, Aspies don't ever develop, until much later and after lots of trial and error and with much analysis.

I think that's about right - and as a suspect Aspie I seem to fit.....I can often readily relate to somebody who has an experience I've had, and I can "feel" the emotions that the experience gives them, but if it's something I've never known then I have more trouble working out what they must be feeling.

But people are complicated, so it's not always that simple in real life. I may have learned to organise my life (at a "price") so I don't have to deal with a particular type of problem - a loved one may then fall into the trap I've so carefully avoided, and I'll feel destabilised because they've opened the door to something I'd managed to keep myself safe from.......and I start wishing I didn't care about others - I probably shouldn't but I sometimes feel the pain of people I'm close to very acutely. And sometimes the very subject matter of their plight stirs up old memories and associated negative feelings I'd rather not open back up.

Conversely, if they're having an experience that I've never been through myself, I can sometimes get some kind of a handle on their feelings by using stuff of my own that may be analagous in some way.....though maybe that's only possible with some kind of theory of mind - it can certainly be a rather slow and hazy process for me.

Also, in common with many Aspies, I tend to prefer the company of unusual people, who by definition are not going to conform well to the "standard" mindset, so the usual theory of mind might be somewhat misleading. And I've met a lot of men who say that they've no idea what goes on in a woman's head, so I don't feel particularly impaired compared to the average Joe.

I think the great thing is to check it out with the person, though they won't always be able to give a straight answer. I really wish people would just say how they felt all the time, but even for neurotypicals, feelings are often difficult to explain, and there's also the problem of who to trust with them even when they do know what they are. I've no particular reason to expect them to leave themselves wide open to me.

It's quite interesting - I heard one psychologist say that they thought love was the capacity to know what the partner needed before the partner knew it themselves. If he's right, I guess I've barely scratched the surface of love.

My understanding is that it's the other way around. A lack of empathy makes it impossible to read people and form a theory of mind.

Normal humans are born with a genetic predisposition to do certain things such as acquire language, walk, acquire Theory of Mind, etc. Aspies lack in their genes the predisposition to acquire Theory of Mind. A normal child acquires ToM at age 4 (normal development of a child). An aspie never does, we lack the means to acquire it. I believe empathy is lacking in us because we lack ToM (so we can't call on a general knowledge of humans to assume what someone may be feeling / thinking in a specific situation), and not the other way round - not that it matters much which comes first.

ToM is like a muddy lake and I am in one of those glass bottom boats. The ToM part of my brain doesn't work like the rest of it. When I think about people I get a mental fatigue in the part of my brain responsible for ToM and it keeps me from thinking too hard about them. It's a defense mechanism, I guess.

With me, empathy is easier than ToM, I can empathize with certain situations better than I can figure out what another person is thinking or wants, unless it's very obvious but sometimes, even when it is I stand there kind of dazed and like I cannot really get it. It's like, I can get it, I am capable, but in that moment when I have to figure out what's going on, I am paralyzed and can't do anything. I've done that before and used to wonder why. Now I know why I do that. It's because the part of my brain responsible for ToM can't translate what is going on around me.

It's really weird. When something happens right in front of me, like, let's say, someone shoplifts right in front of me, it will take me a few minutes to realize what just happened. I dunno if it's ToM related but it's weird. I will stand there in a daze and not realize someone just shoplifted a cigarette lighter or whatever right in front of me in line. But other times, it's obvious what they did and I am totally aware of it. It's like my brain has these moments that it doesn't put everything together.

It's kinda like that when watching a movie too. I can watch an entire movie and cannot tell someone anything about it afterwards. It's like, the entire time, I couldn't pay attention to it and might not even know the name of the lead characters.

I dunno if that's ToM related or not. Maybe it's all under the same jurisdiction.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 27 May 2009, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm still confused on the whole "what's empathy" and "what's sympathy" thing...I thought empathy was just understanding a person's emotional state, whereas sympathy was putting yourself in another person's emotional state. This whole 'Theory of Mind' thing just adds to my confusion.

I disagree. I don't think it's that black-and-white.

Don't sugar-coat it, Greentea. How do you really feel? This is funny, because it's sooooo true. I'm not sure if that's the official definition of Theory of Mind, though.

Honestly, I don't know if I have Theory of Mind or not. By the way, I HATE the phrase, "Theory of Mind". What does theory have to do with anything?

I'll try to give an example of how I see ToM, including the ways in which it confuses me. Let's say I know someone who really loves baseball. Now, personally, I think baseball is stupid, and can't really relate much to baseball-lovers in general. My hypothetical baseball-loving friend really, REALLY wants to go to the game on Sunday...but he has already made a commitment to drive his mother to her knitting club. Or something like that. Now, I personally would not be disappointed if I missed some silly baseball game, but I can understand and accept that he might be disappointed. I would not feel his disappointment, UNLESS he was someone who I cared very deeply about, and then I would feel a certain amount of sadness at the fact that he was feeling disappointed, and missing out on something that was special to him. It would be much easier to feel his disappointment if, instead of a baseball game, it was an activity that I enjoy.

Now...where does the ToM come in? Do I have ToM because I could understand and accept that he feels disappointed, albeit not actually feel the disappointment myself? Or do I lack ToM, and that's why I'm not experiencing a twang of disappointment at his missing the game? And if that's what ToM is, then where are all these NTs who supposedly have it? Wouldn't being able to know how other people are feeling impede people from wanting to step all over each other, and claw their way to the top?

I know an extremely NT father who has been teaching his kids for years that the most important thing is to WIN, and if you have to stomp on others or cheat a little, that's okay (his logic is that, as a gay man, he's been stomped on enough and the world owes him and his kids something). Does he have ToM? He's an expert at playing the game and manipulating his way to the top, and it has served him well, judging from the size of his house and the amount of toys his kids have. I can't manipulate people the way he does, but I'm not sure if it's because I lack ToM or because HE does. That's what confuses me.

Thank you, Elderwanda, for putting it so clearly. I share your confusion aswell as your experience in the matter.

That wasn't the type of ToM I was refering to in my post. I was refering to the ToM involved in looking at someone and knowing, sorta, what they want. That is something I am clueless about and it has been noted many times by those who know me. It's not so much understanding someone will be disappointed if they don't get to go somewhere they want to go just because I don't have an interest. It's more about all these sideways glances and subtle hints. Like, when someone wants me to stop talking without actually saying "shut up". I don't realize they want me to stop until they say "shut up" and then my feelings are hurt because they were so rude. Then I get a bad impression of them based on that and their impression of me is that I can't take a subtle hint or I'm dumb or something.

My friend called it "the social script" which she said no one gave me a copy.

The ToM does more serve as an instrument - an automatically working assessment and prediction tool regarding the inner state of an other person. It can be used to produce empathy, but also to play power games for the own benefit.

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In my experience and my observation of myself I figured out that this automatism can be up to a certain extent replaced by an intellectual reasoning: When I talk to my lover about certain issues, I know he will explode, except he is slightly drunk than he will be depressed - and-so-on. Our problem is that we need to develop such tools in an empirical trail-and-error method and this process hinders us in all-day situation (and often also professionally). Also our intellectual models are fare from being perfect.

Wanda, I used to hate that word too! Then I thought about it. It's called a Theory precisely because, as opposed to empathy, it refers to the general (humans) and not the specific (my friend, right now). And calling it a Theory is accurate, because what kids develop at age 4 is not a psychic ability to read all minds and hearts and know what each human feels and thinks, but a general idea that still needs to be tested each time in the here and now, by using empathy. Which we also lack.

I'll give some more examples of ToM (which I learned the hard way):

= people generally will lash out or ignore you if you threaten their belief systems (this may not be true for Tom last Saturday - empathy must re-check)

= people generally want to celebrate on their birthdays (again, it may not be true about dad, but if I assume it's true about him without checking through empathy, I won't be considered weird because as long as you apply ToM, people can see your point and agree with you).

And marshall, unfortunately it is black and white. Neurology is not flexible like Psychology because it can't be changed by socially environmental influences.

As someone who is more "on the border" of autism than many here, I have gotten pretty good at this over the years. Not in all cases, but in many. There are some instances where I am reading someone, however, at a "gut" level, yet I don't trust my "gut" for whatever reason (maybe because it's been wrong so often before.)