In the olden days, the umpire didn’t have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you.
Leo Durocher, baseball player, manager, coach, 1905-91
Theory of Mind
Theory of mind is a construct about how we see others and interpret social cues based on context, behavior, substantive content, tone, body language and facial composition. Theory of mind attempts to explain the human capacity to interpret the mental states of others. Some researchers refer to it as mind-reading. By adolescence, our brains and cultural awareness have taught us how to engage with others with the knowledge that others’ mental states are different from what we, ourselves, perceive, process and experience. This encompasses beliefs, thoughts, desires, hopes, emotions, intentions, and expectations of reactions and conduct. Although the brain is observable and mapped by neuroscientists, the mind and its thoughts are unobservable.
Theory of mind is based on directly observing the conduct and demeanor of others, including what they say, how they say it, their expressions, body language, movement or dress. It may include experience or expectations from prior interactions or connections with them, including how they self-identify or affiliate with groups that share common values or goals. The goal is to understand motivations and intentions, to respond appropriately and to predict or explain conduct.
People communicate by more than the content of their language. Aspects of facial expressions, tone, movement, physical closeness and context all form what is referred to by researchers as social cues. These are the ways in which we communicate without using words. Research estimates that over 60% of understanding in conversation comes from social cues. See, G.N. Foley and J.P. Gentile, “Nonverbal communication in psychotherapy,” 7 Psychiatry (Edgmont) No. 7, (6): 38, (2010).
The six basic emotions — anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise — are conveyed by facial expressions. People usually focus on the eyes and mouth during conversation. See generally, Robert A. Creo, “The Effective Lawyer: Navigating Emotions — Emotional Intelligence Competency,” Pa. Lawyer (July/August 2018).
Our physical proximity to others is also an important social cue. This was coined “proxemics” in 1966 by anthropologist Edward Hall, whose research indicated that in American culture there are four proxemic zones. These relate to the level of comfort or intimacy between people:
- Intimate (18 inches or less): Parents and children, lovers, spouses and partners
- Personal (18 inches to 4 feet): Close friends
- Social and consultative spaces (4 feet to 12 feet): Friends, co-workers, routine business or social interactions with acquaintances and strangers
- Public (12 feet or more): Strangers, impersonal, relatively anonymous social situations
Proxemic norms vary greatly among cultures.
Social cues are dependent on culture, context and individual personality. There are medical disorders that may limit the ability to interpret common social cues. These may include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other diagnosis along the autism or other cognitive disorder spectrums. See, Heather Jones, “Types of Social Cues,” (Dec. 20, 2021, https://www.verywellhealth.com/social-cues-5204407).
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Deception Detection
There is no surefire method to discern truth from lies in oral statements or testimony. A bedrock principle of the legal system is the concept of determining the credibility of witnesses, which is within the sole purview of the trier of fact and is not subject to reversal except under the rarest of circumstances. The term of art is “demeanor of the witnesses” in findings of fact and credibility, which will be explored in future columns on honesty, misrepresentations and omissions by lawyers and clients. The context to be explored is in a simple contest of “he said, she said” without corroborating direct or circumstantial evidence and how good people are at interpreting the array of “social cues’ to discern accurately what happened. I do not like to frame it as truth versus lies because there are many statements and beliefs provided in good faith that are inaccurate. An assertion does not have to be an intentional lie to be false. People genuinely misremember what was said or done, especially in startling or panicked situations. People are not perfect historians and recollection can be impacted by emotions, values or the stakes at hand.
The short “answer” is that people vary in their ability to accurately label oral statements as truth or lies. There are no universal tells. Failure to look someone in the eyes may or may not be indicative of truthfulness. Some of the best liars are artists of deception who can make sincere eye contact, turning others into true believers with their uttered falsehoods. There is a wide range in the innate and learned ability to interpret social cues and the accompanying language for accuracy.
Paul Ekman has for decades studied deception, body language, facial expressions and interpreting emotions. His research found that people can make over 10,000 facial expressions, with about 3,000 relevant to emotion. He and his colleague Maureen O’Sullivan conducted a massive, multiyear survey of over 20,000 people to learn more about how well people could identify truth from falsity by interpreting inconsistencies in emotion, body language and the spoken word. The test benchmark was an 80% threshold — those who could be correct more than 80% of the time were deemed to be “Truth Wizards,” besting the performance of 50% which would occur randomly over a large number of trials. Only 50 people of the more than 20,000 met this standard. The best performers were secret service agents; law enforcement personnel and psychiatrists did not outperform other groups. The research also found that experienced arbitrators and mediators were top performers, but not in the same class as Truth Wizards. During communications I had with Professor Ekman in 2005, he opined that the better performance of arbitrators may result from their baseline of objectivity, having an open mind and the reserving of judgment inherent in the being a successful arbitrator or mediator.
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Attribution Bias or Error
Fundamental attribution error occurs when people create their own inferences of the causes of events or the behaviors of others. Attributions can be internal or external, based on the situation. Social psychologists have broadly categorized these as follows:
- Interpersonal Attribution: Placing yourself positively in the story.
- Predictive Attribution: Creating a pattern based on weak correlations to influence future choices or behavior.
- Explanatory Attribution: Two basic or default personal perspectives: optimistic or explanatory style.
People with an optimistic style attribute positive events to stable, internal and global/macro causes, and negative events to unstable, external and specific/micro, causes. Those with a pessimistic style attribute negative events to internal and global causes and positive events to external and specific/micro causes.
There are several theories exploring attribution error. One developed in 1965 is Correspondent Inference Theory: People make inferences about others in cases where their actions are intentional rather than accidental. The inferences are based on the amount of perceived choice t, plus the expected behavior and its effects. Another theory is Common Sense Theory: People observe and analyze the behavior of others and explain it by their own common-sense explanation and views. Fritz Heider developed this model around 1958, postulating that people group these explanations into either external or internal attributions: External attributions stem from situational forces, while internal attributions are blamed on individual characteristics, traits or flaws. In examining ourselves, the tendency is to blame suboptimal outcomes on external forces rather than on our personal characteristics. One explanation for this cognitive bias is that we have asymmetrical information: We know more about ourselves and our circumstances than about others. The more you know about the beliefs, experiences, affiliations, values and proclivities of another person reduces the probability of attribution error.
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