Machiavellianism and Spontaneous Mentalization: One Step Ahead of Others

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 580-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsofia Esperger ◽  
Tamas Bereczkei
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Reading Skill ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
One Step ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cognitive Deficiencies

In spite of the Machiavellians’ successful strategies in exploitation of others, they show cognitive deficiencies, especially reduced mind–reading skill. Theory of mind is usually regarded as an ability to make inferences about the mental states of others and thus to predict their behaviour. In our study, we have instead emphasized a motivation–based approach, using the concept of spontaneous mentalization. This concept is construed solely in a motivational context and not in relation to the automaticity of mind–reading ability. It entails that people in their social relations make efforts to explore the thoughts and intentions of others and are motivated to make hypotheses about the mental state of the other person. We assumed that what is peculiar to Machiavellianism is spontaneous mentalization as a kind of motivation rather than mind–reading as an ability. To measure spontaneous mentalization, we created a set of image stimuli and asked our participants to describe their impressions of the pictures. The results show that individual differences in spontaneous mentalization correlate positively with the scores of Machiavellianism. These results suggest that those who have a stronger motivation for putting themselves into the mind of others can be more successful in misleading and exploiting them. Further research should be carried out to clarify how spontaneous mentalization and mind–reading ability relate to each other. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sachs, Chavafambira, Maggie: Prurience or the Pathology of Social Relations?

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grahame Hayes
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Traditional Healer ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
The South ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Mind

Black Hamlet (1937; reprinted 1996) tells the story of Sachs's association with John Chavafambira, a Manyika nganga (traditional healer and diviner), who had come to Johannesburg from his home in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Sachs's fascination with Chavafambira was initially as a “research subject” of a psychoanalytic investigation into the mind of a sane “native”. Over a period of years Sachs became inextricably drawn into the suffering and de-humanization experienced by Chavafambira as a poor, black man in the urban ghettoes that were the South Africa of the 1930s and 1940s. It is easy these days to want to dismiss Sachs's “project” as the prurient gaze of a white, liberal psychiatrist. This would not only be an ahistorical reading of Black Hamlet, but it would also diminish the possibilities offered by what Said (1994) calls, a contrapuntal reading. I shall present a reading of Black Hamlet, focusing on the three main characters - Sachs, Chavafambira, and Maggie (Chavafambira's wife) - as emblematic of the social relations of the other, racial(ised) bodies, and gender.

Metaphysics of Mind

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darragh Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Metaphysics Of Mind

Philosophy of mind addresses fundamental questions about mental or psychological phenomena. The question held by many to be most fundamental of all is a metaphysical one, often labeled the “mind-body problem,” which concerns the relation between minds and material or physical phenomena. Physicalists (and/or materialists) contend that mental phenomena are physical, or at least that they may be accounted for in terms of physical phenomena (brains, for example). Dualists deny this, maintaining that mental phenomena have fundamentally nonphysical natures, so that to account for minds we must assume the existence of nonphysical substances or properties. Nowadays physicalism is more widely espoused than dualism, but physicalists differ over which physical states/properties should be considered relevant, and over the precise nature of the relation between physical and mental phenomena. This is one of four bibliography entries on the philosophy of mind, and this particular entry concentrates on this metaphysical issue of the relation between mental and physical/material phenomena. Inevitably, there is a good deal of overlap between this and topics covered in the other three entries. For example, this entry includes authors who attack physicalism by arguing that it cannot account for the distinctive phenomenal qualities of conscious experiences; but that line of antiphysicalist argument features even more prominently in the entry on consciousness. Moreover, the other entries feature various issues that might perfectly properly be categorized as concerning the metaphysics of mind: for example, the debate between internalists—philosophers who hold that propositional attitudes (mental states such as beliefs and desires, which have representational contents) are intrinsic properties of minds/brains—and externalists, who think of certain attitudes as extrinsic or relational, is surely a question about the metaphysics of mind: but this is discussed in the entry on intentionality instead of here.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Mind-Body Dualism and Personal Values

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Gunne Grankvist ◽  
Petri Kajonius ◽  
Bjorn Persson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Values ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Dualists view the mind and the body as two fundamental different “things”, equally real and independent of each other. Cartesian thought, or substance dualism, maintains that the mind and body are two different substances, the non-physical and the physical, and a causal relationship is assumed to exist between them. Physicalism, on the other hand, is the idea that everything that exists is either physical or totally dependent of and determined by physical items. Hence, all mental states are fundamentally physical states. In the current study we investigated to what degree Swedish university students’ beliefs in mind-body dualism is explained by the importance they attach to personal values. A self-report inventory was used to measure their beliefs and values. Students who held stronger dualistic beliefs attach less importance to the power value (i.e., the effort to achieve social status, prestige, and control or dominance over people and resources). This finding shows that the strength in laypeople’s beliefs in dualism is partially explained by the importance they attach to personal values.</p>

Hot Baths and Cold Minds

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN HARRIS ◽  
DAVID R. LAWRENCE
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Hot Baths

Abstract:The idea—the possibility—of reading the mind, from the outside or indeed even from the inside, has exercised humanity from the earliest times. If we could read other minds both prospectively, to discern intentions and plans, and retrospectively, to discover what had been “on” those minds when various events had occurred, the implications for morality and for law and social policy would be immense. Recent advances in neuroscience have offered some, probably remote, prospects of improved access to the mind, but a different branch of technology seems to offer the most promising and the most daunting prospect for both mind reading and mind misreading. You can’t have the possibility of the one without the possibility of the other. This article tells some of this story.

scholarly journals The Theory of Thinking and the Capacity to Mentalize: A Comparison of Fonagy's and Bion's Models

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Mantilla Lagos
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Developmental Line ◽  
The Way

This paper presents a comparison of two psychoanalytic models of how human beings learn to use their mental capacities to know meaningfully about the world. The first, Fonagy's model of mentalization, is concerned with the development of a self capable of reflecting upon its own and others' mental states, based on feelings, thoughts, intentions, and desires. The other, Bion's model of thinking, is about the way thoughts are dealt with by babies, facilitating the construction of a thinking apparatus within a framework of primitive ways of communication between mother and baby. The theories are compared along three axes: (a) an axis of the theoretical and philosophical backgrounds of the models; (b) an axis of the kind of evidence that supports them; and (c) the third axis of the technical implications of the ideas of each model. It is concluded that, although the models belong to different theoretical and epistemological traditions and are supported by different sorts of evidence, they may be located along the same developmental line using an intersubjective framework that maintains tension between the intersubjective and the intrapsychic domains of the mind.

scholarly journals Placebo: Feeling Better, Getting Better, and the Problems of Mind and Body

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Kihlstrom
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

Over its history, medicine has vacillated between acknowledging placebo effects as important and trying to overcome them. Placebos are controversial, in part, because they appear to challenge a biocentric view of the scientific basis of medical practice. At the very least, research should distinguish between the effects of placebos on subjective and objective endpoints. Theoretically, placebos are of interest because they underscore the other side of the mind-body problem: how mental states can affect physical conditions.

Mind-reading motivation

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan M. Carpenter ◽  
Melanie C. Green ◽  
Kaitlin Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Individual Difference ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Reading Motivation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Narrative Persuasion ◽  
Mind Reading

Abstract Previous research suggests a link between perspective-taking and the tendency to become immersed in narratives or literature. We extend that research by considering both individual differences and persuasion outcomes. Specifically, Mind-Reading Motivation (MRM) is an individual difference in the willingness to effortfully engage with other people’s perspectives and mental states. Stories may be most influential when readers put themselves in the place of another person, even a fictional other. In Study 1, higher MRM was correlated with more fiction reading but not more nonfiction reading. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrated that higher MRM was associated with greater transportation into a narrative. We replicated this effect in Study 3, showing that MRM was associated with both higher transportation and narrative persuasion. The effect of MRM on persuasion is mediated by connections to the characters. This research helps identify which individuals are most likely to be persuaded by narrative communications.

scholarly journals Kebinekaan Agama dan Budaya dalam Tafsir Al-Iklīl Fī Ma‘ānī Al-Tanzīl

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zainal Abidin ◽  
Fahma Maulida
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Mind

This paper contains a study of the dynamics of Miṣbāḥ Muṣṭafa interpretation of the verses of the Qur’an in the theme of religious diversity in the interpretation of al-Iklīl fī Ma‘ānī al-Tanzīl. The dynamics are seen in the interpretation of the verse about the status of heresy and safety of non-Muslims in the hereafter. Besides explaining the interpretation of the issues related to the above problem, this paper also wants to explore further the interpretation of Miṣbā ḥ Muṣṭafā about religious diversity, which in its interpretation on one side of the mind is still relevant to the context of Indonesian social relations. But on the other hand it contradicts him. With the descriptive-explorative method, this paper discovers four principles of religious diversity in Tafsir al-Iklīl, namely: 1) diversity as sunnatullāh, as illustrated in the Misbah interpretation which believes in diversity such as Muslims and non-Muslims. 2) Islamic recognition of the existence of other religions, which is reflected in the absence of coercion in choosing religion as its belief. 3) the ability of non-Muslims to ask for protection from Muslims, and 4) religious tolerance, reflected in the absence of prohibitions to their followers to do good and fair to non-Muslims as long as they do not do bad and denounce the religion of Islam.

scholarly journals Social cognition or social class and culture? On the interpretation of differences in social cognitive performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Dodell-Feder ◽  
Kerry J. Ressler ◽  
Laura T. Germine
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Emotion Identification ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Impact

AbstractBackgroundThe ability to understand others’ mental states carries profound consequences for mental and physical health, making efforts at validly and reliably assessing mental state understanding (MSU) of utmost importance. However, the most widely used and current NIMH-recommended task for assessing MSU – the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET) – suffers from potential assessment issues, including reliance on a participant's vocabulary/intelligence and the use of culturally biased stimuli. Here, we evaluate the impact of demographic and sociocultural factors (age, gender, education, ethnicity, race) on the RMET and other social and non-social cognitive tasks in an effort to determine the extent to which the RMET may be unduly influenced by participant characteristics.MethodsIn total, 40 248 international, native-/primarily English-speaking participants between the ages of 10 and 70 completed one of five measures on TestMyBrain.org: RMET, a shortened version of RMET, a multiracial emotion identification task, an emotion discrimination task, and a non-social/non-verbal processing speed task (digit symbol matching).ResultsContrary to other tasks, performance on the RMET increased across the lifespan. Education, race, and ethnicity explained more variance in RMET performance than the other tasks, and differences between levels of education, race, and ethnicity were more pronounced for the RMET than the other tasks such that more highly educated, non-Hispanic, and White/Caucasian individuals performed best.ConclusionsThese data suggest that the RMET may be unduly influenced by social class and culture, posing a serious challenge to assessing MSU in clinical populations given shared variance between social status and psychiatric illness.

The Motion Picture Mind-Reading Test

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akio Wakabayashi ◽  
Asami Katsumata
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Reading Test ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Empathy Quotient ◽  
Young Adult Population

The Motion Picture Mind Reading (MPMR) Test is a novel naturalistic mind-reading task, designed to measure individual differences in a young adult population in Japan. Short scenes from TV films showing characters in social situations were presented to 128 university students; participants judged the mental state of a character in these films. The distribution of task performance (MPMR Test) of participants was approximately normal and its psychometric properties were found to be satisfactory. The MPMR Test scores correlated positively with those of the Eyes Test and also with scores on the empathy quotient (EQ); they correlated negatively with scores on the systemizing quotient (SQ). The MPMR Test provides a further method for assessing subtle individual differences in mind-reading ability in the general population.

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