Deep social mind is a concept in

evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...

; it refers to the distinctively human capacity to 'read' (that is, to infer) the

mental state A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definiti ...

s of others while reciprocally enabling those others to read one's own mental states at the same time. The term 'deep social mind' was first coined in 1999 by

Andrew Whiten David Andrew Whiten, known as Andrew Whiten (born 1948) is a British zoologist and psychologist, Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, and Professor Henry Wardlaw, Wardlaw Emeritus at University of St Andrews in Scotland.

, professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology at St. Andrews University, Scotland. Together with closely related terms such as ' reflexivity' and '

intersubjectivity In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives. Definition is a term coined by social scientists to refer to a variety of types of human interac ...

', it is now well-established among scholars investigating the evolutionary emergence of human sociality, cognition and communication.

Mind-reading in apes and humans

It is widely agreed that the brain is social in both human and nonhuman primates. But, according to

, human sociality goes much further than ape sociality. Ape

social intelligence Social intelligence is the capacity to know oneself and to know others. Social intelligence is learned and develops from experience with people and learning from success and failures in social settings. Social intelligence is the ability to underst ...

is overwhelmingly ' Machiavellian' in the sense of manipulating others in social settings. One consequence is that while an ape may be motivated to 'read' (that is, to infer) the mental states of others around it, it has little motive to reciprocate. Instead of making its own mental states transparent to potential rivals, it seeks to block others from 'reading' its own mind. For example, one way to infer what another primate might be thinking is to detect which way its head is pointed, so as to reconstruct what it might be looking at. In the case of

gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

s and

chimpanzees The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...

, adult apes have evolved eyes which give away very little information concerning direction of gaze. Their eyes are dark-on-dark: the iris is dark brown or even black and the same applies to the sclera and surrounding skin. Looking at the eyes, therefore, it is not easy to detect direction of

gaze In critical theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, the gaze (French ''le regard''), in the philosophical and figurative sense, is an individual's (or a group's) awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. The concept ...

. In the human case, the eyes are very different, the dark iris standing out against a white surrounding sclera. This feature, combined with the relatively large size of the human eye and its horizontally elongated shape, assists neighbouring

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...

s to detect direction of gaze and, on that basis, engage in mind-reading. According to the 'deep social mind' theory, this means that humans have become cognitively adapted to reflexivity and

: as a species, we are well-adapted to read the minds of trusted others while at the same time assisting those others in reading our own minds. One consequence of this is self-awareness or 'egocentric perspective reversal': I read your mind as you are reading mine. Therefore, between us, we can gain an awareness of our own minds as if from the outside: my mental states as these are reflected in yours and yours as they are reflected in mine. In that sense, if this argument is accepted, our minds mutually interpenetrate. 'Mind' in the human sense is not locked inside this or that skull but instead is relational, stretching between us. According to evolutionary psychologist

Michael Tomasello Michael Tomasello (born January 18, 1950) is an American developmental and comparative psychologist, as well as a linguist. He is professor of psychology at Duke University. Earning many prizes and awards from the end of the 1990s onward, he is c ...

, a human child normally achieves egocentric perspective reversal—viewing its own mental states as if from the standpoint of others—at around one year of age.M. Tomasello (2000)
Culture and Cognitive Development.
''

Current Directions in Psychological Science ''Current Directions in Psychological Science '' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) that is published by SAGE Publications. Publication Scope ''Current Directions in Psycholo ...

'', 9: 2, pp. 37-40.

References

{{reflist Anthropology Biological anthropology Paleoanthropology Evolutionary psychology Cognitive neuroscience Philosophy of mind

Mind-reading in apes and humans

See also

References