Reading other people
Mental state attribution
Also searched as Mental state attribution.
In depth
A subdomain of social cognition: inferring another person's beliefs, intentions and knowledge — including that they may be different from your own.
What drives it
Reading emotion increases it.
This review of lesion and functional imaging evidence concludes that emotion perception is the lower-level process that precedes and feeds higher-level mental-state inference in information-processing models of social cognition, with substantially overlapping medial prefrontal and temporal substrates. doi 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.02.018 · PMID 25687032
What it drives
It increases Social cognition.
The DSM-5 Neurocognitive Work Group agreed on six principal domains of cognitive function, each with subdomains. Social cognition comprises recognition of emotions and theory of mind. Taxonomic edge, not a causal mechanism: this is a DSM-5 domain/subdomain relationship, not a pathway acting on another. Sachdev 2014, Nat Rev Neurol 10:634-642 — Classifying neurocognitive disorders: the DSM-5 approach. doi 10.1038/nrneurol.2014.181
It increases Social engagement.
Verbatim: 'The results showed that ToM and EP predicted social functioning in people with schizophrenia but attributional style was not associated with social functioning.' (10.32598/irj.16.3.239). Scope (human observational study): human · observational cross-sectional, no intervention · 62 chronic schizophrenia inpatients, purposive sampling from three Shiraz chronic-care centers · regression design. doi 10.32598/irj.16.3.239
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.