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from the sad-crying-clown-in-an-iron-lung dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Cognitive curiosity, cognitive ability, melancholy, and introversion predict social psychological skill, a new Yale study shows.
[...] The authors asked more than 1.000 subjects about how people think, act, and feel in social contexts. The two psychologists began the survey [...] by asking: “Can you accurately infer how most people feel, think, and behave in social context?” Gollwitzer and Bargh did a series of experiments to try and identify traits of those who accurately answered the questions.
[...] The key predictors of social psychological skill were the willingness to tackle a complex problem and cognitive ability, the authors claim.
Interestingly, the authors also found that lonely individuals, as well as individuals with lower self-esteem, tended to answer questions more accurately. Likewise, introverts answered more accurately than extroverts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @12:34AM (6 children)
Are you saying the study is 'autobiographical'? Are the authors projecting?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 21 2018, @12:38AM (5 children)
No. Just making an observation.
Besides, I'm an extrovert, so how the hell do I know what others are thinking or feeling?
Didn't you read the results of the study?!? Geez Louise!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @01:07AM (4 children)
Other than the most basic of emotions you usually can not infer anything. Even then it is hard as it can be faked (or we would not have actors).
At work everyone thinks I am happy and fun. I am not. That is an act. They probably can 'read what I am doing'. I cant. Neither can you. Read someones mind? Only a true narcissist would consider that a possibility that they can do that.
(Score: 1) by cocaine overdose on Wednesday March 21 2018, @01:22AM (1 child)
To those that disagree with determinism, if "sometimes things just happen for no reason" is in your day-to-day vernacular, reconsider posting before thinking, FELLOW!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday March 21 2018, @03:53AM
If that is true for you, you should take up poker. Being able to read people is not only big, it is the prime asset for success.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 21 2018, @03:19AM
Actually, "reading other people's minds" is an integral part of human society and culture, and has been for longer than there have been humans.
Doing so is the basis for things like empathy and sympathy. We do this both consciously and unconsciously via reading body language, facial expressions, affect, vocabulary and usage choices and a raft of other cues that we're constantly giving off, unless we're *very* good actors.
You say you're not happy, but pretend to be at work? It's likely that more people than you think are aware of this, unless you're singularly focused on projecting a false front while at work. Even then, it would be difficult to hide completely.
"Reading" other's thoughts has been widely studied in a variety of disciplines: neural science, social psychology, childhood development, group dynamics among others.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2666715/ [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2615424/ [nih.gov]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200709/mind-reading [psychologytoday.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/23/literary-fiction-readers-understand-others-emotions-better-study-finds [theguardian.com]
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/gls/docs/epleycompass.pdf [chicagobooth.edu]
https://lesley.edu/article/the-psychology-of-emotional-and-cognitive-empathy [lesley.edu]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21077870 [nih.gov]
http://theconversation.com/children-understand-far-more-about-other-minds-than-long-believed-72711 [theconversation.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind [wikipedia.org]
Often this is referred to as unconscious communication [wikipedia.org] and many types of nonverbal communication [wikipedia.org]. In fact, this sort of communication is critical in child development [psychologytoday.com].
That we do so is not only ubiquitous (with the exceptions of folks with social agnosia [wikipedia.org]), but also one of the primary reasons that we can cooperate and live in groups.
In fact, it's such a normal part of the human experience, that new theories [wikipedia.org] needed to be developed to address situations where we are unable (i.e., when communicating online) to experience and process the non-verbal cues that we are constantly giving off in person.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 21 2018, @05:59PM
I can read my own mind. Do you want to tell me I'm not someone? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.