Memories of situations hurt us when we felt that the people we loved did not understand what we were saying or understood it wrong, but the damage goes beyond the psychological pain barrier, so the way we communicate and react depends on our understanding of what others think, yet the process of understanding the other is complex and not all of us can do it.
Understanding is an instinct that is not acquired
Researchers at the University of Bath surveyed more than 4,<> people to test their social abilities and find out the motives for understanding or disagreement between humans, and asked participants to provide details about their social and demographic background and political orientation, and used the "Mind Reading Scale" to make sure to which participants understand what others think.
Psychologists have looked at traits associated with understanding others, such as distinguishing the other person's emotions or predicting what they will do, respecting their differences, and understanding the causes and motives of different opinions, desires and intentions, all of which fall under a cognitive mechanism that psychologists call the "theory of mind."
The scientists analyzed the respondents' statements, and gender was the most dominant indicator of the "theory of mind", followed by education, political beliefs, income and finally age, and concluded that aging negatively affects the human ability to understand with those around him, and considered elderly people the poorest human beings for the advantage of understanding.
They also found that educated females were more capable of interacting, understanding and reading their facial expressions than men.
When comparing men to each other, liberals and high-income people were more understanding than other men.
Mind-reading refers to understanding what others think in relation to empathy and understanding what others feel (Getty Images)
Women know more
In February 2021, researchers developed the Mind Reading Scale, which relied on data from 4,<> autistic and non-autistic people in the United States and Britain to understand the challenges autistic people face in building relationships, a group known to have difficulties understanding others.
Researchers differentiate between mind-reading and empathy, as mind-reading refers to understanding what others are thinking, while empathy is about understanding what others are feeling.
The difference here may seem simple but very important, and each is controlled by very different brain networks, and this was the first scientific study to differentiate between empathy and mind-reading.
Researchers have found that women are much better at putting themselves in someone else's shoes, recognizing subtle behavioral cues that may indicate that someone we are talking to is thinking about something they are not saying, such as mocking us and claiming to be making innocent jokes or lying to us when they claim otherwise.
According to PsychologyToday, this may be explained as one of the problems of the ability to read thoughts, which appears between parties in relationships in the form of an overassessment of the ability of a partner or family member to read their own thoughts, assuming that anyone who knows them well should know what they are thinking or feeling even if they do not express it out loud.
Researchers have discovered that women view humans with a binary view, i.e. a distinction between body and mind (Getty Images)
The man is of good faith.
Researchers from Northeastern University and Chicago University have linked mind-reading to our view of humans in autistic and male cases across 4 psychological experiments.
The researchers discovered that women look at the human being with a dual vision, that is, a distinction between the body and the mind or what we consider in our Arab culture the duality of spirit and body or the duality of feelings and ideas, so women see deeper dimensions in the speech of the other, to deduce his feelings and thoughts based on his behavior and actions, and the researchers assumed that it is a psychological mechanism that women may be born with.
Monovision people do not distinguish between mind and body, and when researchers re-experimented between healthy women and men, they found that men were more likely than women to believe a person's thoughts and feelings without questioning.
This behavior is consistent with the fact that people with autism, like males, score lower on tests that examine their ability to think about what is on the minds of others, which is why they are often seen as having social problems.