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Theory of Mind

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Belief-desire reasoning; Common-sense psychology; False belief understanding; Folk psychology; Mentalizing; Mindreading; Perspective taking; Social understanding

Definition

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states, such as desires, knowledge, and beliefs, to others in order to predict and explain their behavior.

Introduction

The capacity to predict and explain the behavior of others using mental states, such as desires, knowledge, and beliefs, called “theory of mind” (ToM), has been a topic of extensive theorizing and research within psychology and neuroscience since the late 1970s. Researchers have studied the ability to reason about others’ mental states using a variety of different names: “folk psychology,” “common-sense psychology,” “mentalizing,” “social understanding,” “mindreading,” and, of course, “theory of mind.” Within the field of developmental psychology, researchers have focused primarily on children’s understanding of the relations between...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB23RQ, UK

    Rory T. Devine

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  1. Rory T. Devine
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Correspondence to Rory T. Devine .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz, Smugowa 10/12, 91-433, Lodz, Poland

    Monika Wróbel

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Devine, R.T. (2016). Theory of Mind. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_560-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_560-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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