Those who can do this are the most valuable kind of friend, the ones who can lead others to deep realizations about themselves. But they must guide gently, Hodges cautions. A comment like "It seems that you're feeling a little sad about this—could that be right?" will be more readily accepted than a presumptuous "I know what you're really feeling."
The ability to read minds actually begins at birth, newborns prefer faces to any other stimulus, and babies just a few weeks old are able to imitate facial expressions. By two months, infants can perceive and respond to the emotional states of their caregivers; by one year, "children monitor adults' expressions and use them to guide their behavior," reports Nancy Eisenberg, a psychology professor at Arizona State University and an expert on emotional development. At 2 years of age, children can infer others' desires from the direction of their gaze; at 3, they can label facial expressions as happy, sad, or angry.
By age 5, children have acquired a rudimentary ability to read others' minds; they possess a "theory of mind." That is, they understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from their own.
Children hone their mind-reading skills by eavesdropping on adult conversation, from which they discern the complexities of social rules and interactions. Play with peers provides opportunities to practice reading the minds of other kids, necessary preparation for knowing what's going on in grownups' minds. Such abilities unfold seamlessly in the normal course of development. But they may be impaired in abused or neglected youngsters. Children from violent homes, for example, may be overly sensitized to angry expressions, seeing anger where it doesn't exist; severely deprived children, such as those raised in institutions, may lack the ability to clearly identify any emotions at all.
Sophisticated mind reading of the "I know that you know that I know" variety emerges only in late adolescence. That's because the ability to hold in mind the subjective perspectives of several people at once—and to integrate what you understand of the world and of the particular person you are encountering—often requires a fully developed brain. The natural narcissism of teenagers may lead them to interpret others' thoughts and feelings in the most self-centered way possible: When a mother panics because her daughter arrives a few minutes after curfew, the daughter will likely think "Mom's trying to control me again!" instead of the more accurate "Mom is upset because she was worried about me."
Surprise, Surprise
Ickes is eager to shoot down one of the oldest canards about mind reading—that women have some intuitive advantage. With UT colleague Tiffany Graham, he found "virtually no evidence" that women are better mind readers than men. So why the persistence of the gender stereotype? "It may be not an ability gap, but a motivation gap," says Ickes. "In everyday life, women seem to be more easily motivated to try hard to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling."
Support for such an interpretation comes from a study in which researchers offered cash bonuses to participants for accurately reading others' minds. The payments "wiped out any difference between men's and women's performances," suggesting that men can read minds as well as women when they want to. The trouble is they don't always want to.
The role of motivation in accurate mind reading helps explain another counterintuitive finding: Newly married husbands and wives are very good at sensing each other's states of mind. But just when we expect them to get even better at it, because they know each other more intimately, something unexpected happens: Empathic accuracy actually ebbs after the first year of marriage.
Why should those who know each other better do worse at understanding each other? They become a bit arrogant, confident that they know each other, and perhaps less motivated to put effort into reading each other, Ickes suggests. That lack of motivation may affect marital dynamics; sociological data show that marital satisfaction also plunges after one year. No matter how long you've been married or in a friendship, Ickes observes, assuming you know what someone's thinking kills mind-reading accuracy.
Research on mind reading offers more surprises. You might think that high scorers on tests of sensitivity would be great mind readers. But they aren't. Neither are professional listeners: A study of psychics found that they were no better at mind reading than the rest of us. Psychotherapists prove no more accurate than laypeople in making inferences based on facial expressions; however, they're significantly more accurate in making inferences based on language.
And shared experiences (of, for example, new motherhood, alcoholism, or parental divorce) don't help us get into other
people's heads—a fact that may come as a surprise to the millions of people who participate in support groups.
What Helps Can Also Hurt
So what does matter to effective mind reading? Advanced education, high intelligence (especially verbal intelligence), open-mindedness, and good mental health abet empathic accuracy. Everybody does better when reading people they know—but people who are better than average at figuring out strangers are also superb at reading those in their inner circle. Then, too, some people are easier to read than others. They talk more and use more gestures, providing the rest of us with a detailed map of their thoughts
and feelings.
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