MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2020 Jun;149(6):1032-1047. doi: 10.1037/xge0000704. Epub 2019 Oct 31.
Using a "theory of mind" allows us to explain and predict others' behavior in terms of their mental states, yet individual differences in the accuracy of mental state inferences are not well understood. We hypothesized that the accuracy of mental state inferences can be explained by the ability to characterize the mind giving rise to the mental state. Under this proposal, individuals differentiate between minds by representing them in "Mind-space"-a multidimensional space where dimensions reflect any characteristic of minds that allows them to be individuated. Individual differences in the representation of minds and the accuracy of mental state inferences are explained by one's model of how minds can vary (Mind-space) and ability to locate an individual mind within this space. We measured the accuracy of participants' model of the covariance between dimensions in Mind-space that represent personality traits, and we found this was associated with the accuracy of mental state inference (Experiment 1). Mind-space accuracy also predicted the ability to locate others within Mind-space on dimensions of personality and intelligence (Experiment 2). Direct evidence for the representation of minds in mental state inference was obtained by showing that the location of others in Mind-space affects the probability of particular mental states being ascribed to them (Experiment 3). This latter effect extended to mental states dependent upon representation of trait covariation (Experiment 4). Results support the claim that mental state inference varies according to location in Mind-space, and therefore that adopting the Mind-space framework can explain some of the individual differences in theory of mind. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
使用“心理理论”使我们能够根据他人的心理状态来解释和预测他们的行为，但心理状态推断的准确性存在个体差异，这一点还不太清楚。我们假设，心理状态推断的准确性可以通过表征产生心理状态的心智的能力来解释。根据这一建议，个体通过将心智表示为“心智空间”（Mind-space）来区分心智，Mind-space 是一个多维空间，其中的维度反映了可以区分心智的任何特征。心智的表示和心理状态推断的准确性的个体差异可以用一个人对心智如何变化的模型（Mind-space）和在这个空间中定位个体心智的能力来解释。我们测量了参与者对 Mind-space 中代表人格特质的维度之间协方差的模型的准确性，我们发现这与心理状态推断的准确性相关（实验 1）。Mind-space 准确性也预测了在人格和智力维度上定位他人在 Mind-space 中的能力（实验 2）。通过表明他人在 Mind-space 中的位置会影响将特定心理状态归因于他们的概率，获得了心理状态推断中存在心智表示的直接证据（实验 3）。这种效应扩展到依赖于特质协变表示的心理状态（实验 4）。结果支持了这样的说法，即心理状态推断根据 Mind-space 中的位置而变化，因此采用 Mind-space 框架可以解释心理理论中的一些个体差异。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。
