How Psychology Has Changed Human Behavior

People develop mindreading abilities when they start to understand others by having a cognitive theory of mind. Research evidence, children from the age of four begin to develop mindreading skills, psychologist control this by performing tasks such as the ‘Sally-Anne’ task and the ‘smarties’ task. However, arguments by psychologists define some children can pass visual perspective task from round the age of two and this demonstrates that children have some mindreading abilities following a developmental trajectory.

Psychology has revealed how the learning perspective is concerned with the environment and experiences leading to effects on a person’s actions. Within this perspective, behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards and punishers that maintain or discourage specific behaviors. B.F. Skinner once stated, I am sometimes asked, ‘Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?’ The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting. (Skinner, 1983). In the average college classroom, behaviorism effects students’ way of learning in that their behavior is shaped by either positive or negative reinforcement.

When it comes to discussing the school-age child’s theory of mind, recursive thought plays a huge role in the appreciation of second-order false belief. Second-order false belief allows a child to understand why another person believes a certain belief (Berk, 441, 1). In order for a child to be able to come to this conclusion, recursive thought must be used. A form of perspective taking is called recursive thought and is considered the ability to view a situation from at least two perspectives, which includes reasoning instantaneously about

People understand each other using cognitive skills, an example of this is mindreading. Mindreading abilities also referred to as the theory of mind (ToM) is acknowledging that other people have mental states, such as understanding that others have desires, motives, beliefs and intentions (Hewson, 2015a). This is generally an essential, undemanding skill for social interaction. Thereby, this essay will evaluate how psychology has helped to explain how people understand each other by firstly, explaining how different aspects of ToM have been studied. Additionally, Heider and Simmel’s (1944) study of geometric shapes will be explored to demonstrate how people interpret other people’s behaviour, even in animation. Subsequently, Autism

In this approach we see the theories of psychology that see the human mind function based upon the interaction of forces and drives within the mind, normally this means unconscious thoughts, but it also includes looking at the different structures of the personality.

T., & Freberg, L. A. (2013). Discovering Psychology The Science of Mind. Belmont, CA Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Retrieved from www.betheluniversityonline.net

Although naturalistic data plays some role, most of what people know about social-cognitive development comes from a wide variety of resourceful experiments (Bartsch & Wellman, 1989). The example of this that is studied the most is the false belief task. The false belief can be defined as the realizations that beliefs are mental illustrations and not straight indications of reality, and as such may be false.

Gjersoe, N. (2015) says in section 4.2 that ‘theory of mind’ is an easy description of meta-representation. Meta-representation is when a child gains the ability to ‘reflect on their own representation’. Children around the age of three and four years old start to show a significant change in the way they think about others and the actions they make. ‘Theory of mind’ is the phrase used when a child is able to show an understanding that other children and adults sometimes have the same feelings, thoughts and beliefs and that sometimes they have different feelings, thoughts and beliefs.

Scientists have discovered that bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas, do in fact posses many aspects of the theory of mind. The theory of mind was something scientists thought was unique to humans. These great apes can identify the goals and intentions that were behind actions of someone else, and they can also identify features of the environment that others can know about or see. There is one thing apes can’t seem to wrap their fingers around, which is understanding others false belief. One experiment they did was showing the apes a video of humans dressed like apes. In one scene of the video the human actor was trying to search for a stone that he saw King Kong hide within one of two boxes. However, the actor went away, and King

Upon in 2012 stated that theory of mind is very important for social and emotional functioning in early

In social cognition, theory of mind refers to a person’s ability to make causal attributions

Theory of mind is the ability to infer mental and emotional states of others and behave accordingly and predict the others’ behavior or thoughts ( ). ToM was historically described as a single cognitive process but new research has shown that ToM is included in several brain regions and the ToM concepts exceed the original definition (Westby & Robinson, 2014). Now, ToM has been found to be involved in thinking of emotions, thoughts, and intentions as well as, dissociable ToM which is thinking of others’ thoughts, emotions, and intentions (Westby & Robinson, 2014). In addition, ToM can be thought of as affective-cognitive which is also known as cognitive empathy were a person can recognize and respond to their own feelings and others. Another component that research has revealed is affective empathy, which is when a

Theory of mind (ToM) has been described as the ability to understand that others hold a different representation of the world to oneself. Wellman (2001) defined theory of mind as understanding others and their actions, in regards to inner experiences such as; emotions, intentions and desires. Previously, it was believed that, theory of mind was a construct limited to those of 4 years of age and above. Possible explanations for this being that, the development of the theory was tied to acquiring language in a social context (Perner & Ruffman, 2005).

According to Jeeves and Brown “theory of mind” occurs when, “We represent what people are doing in terms of what we believe they want and of what they known and do not know” (Jeeves and Brown, 2009, 73). Evolutionary psychologist became interesting in the study of “theory of mind” because they were curious if it applied to primates as well. However, studying the “theory of mind” of primates proves difficult because primates lack the ability to communicate with language. As mentioned above, the primary evidence supporting primate’s “theory of mind” emanates from observational studies. Specifically, “theory of mind” is represented in the forbidden mating habits of baboons. Yet, observation of such characteristics raises unanswerable questions concerning the rationale behind the young male baboon’s actions. Many difficult questions arise from observational studies because they lack empirical evidence to prove their bold claims. However, recent advances in neuroscience may provide answers to some of the difficult questions regarding “theory of mind.” Mirror neurons are an exciting new discovery in the field of neuroscience because they “possess functional properties not previously observed.” “The unusual property of these cells was that they were active not only when a monkey initiated a particular action but also when the animal observed another monkey initiating and carrying out the same action” (Jeeves and Brown, 2009, 78). Many neuroscientists believe mirror neurons will change the game and our understanding of how evolutionary psychology interprets the “theory of mind” across

Many researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention, gaze, perspective, or knowledge. There has been some controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to show theory of mind ability, or inability, in animals. Having a bucket or bag over there head, a blindfold over his eyes, or being turned away from the baiting does not know, and can only guess. They found that the animals failed in most cases to differentially request food from the "knower." They point out that most evidence in support of great ape theory of mind involves naturalistic settings to which the apes may have already adapted through past learning.