Mind-reading ability: Beliefs and performance

Abstract

Every adult possesses and uses to a various extent, a powerful tool, a theory of mind. The ability to recognize emotions, intentions, and thoughts of others is an important component of social competence. The use of personality questionnaires implies that people are aware of their personality traits, experienced emotions, values, and attitudes. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that a normal adult is aware of his or her mind-reading abilities and can estimate, in relation to the others, how good he or she is at judging other person’s traits, states of mind, emotions, and intentions. In this study we have demonstrated that a person’s beliefs about their own mind-reading ability forms a single and unitary dimension. If a person believes that he or she is competent in forming judgments about another person’s personality traits then he or she has a relatively high opinion of their abilities to read another person’s thoughts and emotions. However, the results of our research show that the self-reported mind-reading ability was not correlated with actual performance. Those who believe that they are good at reading others’ minds are generally neither (1) significantly better than the others in recognition of emotions expressed in face or speech, nor (2) superior in their estimation of the personality traits of a stranger. The self-reported mind-reading ability was correlated with personality traits but not with psychometrically measured intelligence. On the contrary, the actual mind-reading performance was correlated with IQ scores. It is discussed why individuals are relatively accurate in estimation of their own personality but lack metaknowledge about their mind-reading abilities.