Theory of Mind in Psychology

Theory of mind is our ability to recognize that other people have thoughts, feelings, and perspectives that may be different from our own. It’s a key social skill that usually develops in early childhood, helping us predict behavior, show empathy, and navigate relationships.

Examples

Theory of mind (ToM) was first introduced by psychologists David Premack and Guy Woodruff in 1978.

They suggested that humans don’t just see what others do – we imagine what they might be thinking, wanting, or believing, even though these states are invisible.

We then use those guesses to explain and predict behavior.

In this sense, each of us carries an everyday “theory” about how minds work, and we put it into action whenever we interact with other people.

As humans we assume that others want, think, believe and the like, and thereby infer states that are not directly observable, using these states anticipatorily, to predict the behavior of others as well as our own. These inferences, which amount to a theory of mind, are to our knowledge, universal in human adults (Premack & Woodruff, 1978).

Having a theory of mind means recognizing that other people have their own beliefs and desires. This helps us navigate daily social life by interpreting their thoughts and predicting their behavior.

Here are some examples:

1. Predicting behavior: We often anticipate what someone will do based on what we think they know or believe. For instance, if your roommate loses their keys, you expect them to search in the place they last remember leaving them—even if you already know the keys have been moved.

2. Showing empathy: Theory of mind allows us to recognize and respond to feelings that differ from our own. You might feel excited about going out, but still understand your friend is anxious about the crowded venue and offer reassurance or a quieter plan.

3. Understanding someone’s mood: Subtle cues like body language and tone of voice often reveal how someone is feeling. If a coworker gives short answers and avoids eye contact, you might infer they’re stressed or upset—even without them saying it directly.

4. Perspective-taking: Theory of mind helps us recognize that others don’t share all of our knowledge or experiences. For example, when telling a story about a party, you pause to explain who “Sam” is because your new friend wasn’t there and wouldn’t know him.

5. False beliefs: We understand that people can hold beliefs that aren’t true, based on the information they have. For instance, if your classmate saw you put your water bottle on the desk but you later moved it to your bag, you know they’ll mistakenly believe it’s still on the desk.

6. Understanding sarcasm and irony: ToM lets us detect when someone’s words mean the opposite of what they say. If a friend walks into the rain and says, “What a perfect day for a picnic,” you recognize they’re being sarcastic, not serious.

7. Inferring intentions: We constantly interpret the motives behind people’s actions. If a friend texts “Good luck!” before your exam, you take it as genuine support; but if a rival says the same with a smirk, you might suspect it’s meant sarcastically.

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How Does ToM Develop?

Core Stages of Theory of Mind (Preschool Years)

The preschool years mark a critical turning point in the development of theory of mind. According to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage (ages 2–7) are often egocentric – they struggle to see the world from another person’s point of view.

A classic example is a 3-year-old who plays hide-and-seek by simply covering their eyes, assuming that if they cannot see others, then others cannot see them.

At the same time, preschoolers show growing use of symbolic thought, such as language and pretend play, which provides the foundation for perspective-taking.

The Great Shift in Preschool Years

Between ages 3 and 5, children undergo what many researchers call the “great shift” in theory of mind.

During this period, they begin to recognize that people have thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that may differ from their own.

This ability is often tested using false-belief tasks. In a typical version, a child knows that an object has been moved from one location to another while a character is out of the room.

When asked where the character will look, a child with ToM will say the original location, showing they understand that the character holds a mistaken belief.

Younger, more egocentric children tend to answer with the actual location, revealing difficulty separating their own knowledge from another’s perspective.

Researchers such as Wellman (2004) and Wellman & Peterson (2012) describe the preschool years as following a sequence of increasingly complex steps:

Tasks Listed From Easiest to Most Difficult

• Understanding wanting: Realizing that people can have different desires and act in different ways to get what they want.

• Understanding thinking: Recognizing that people can hold different beliefs about the same situation and act based on those beliefs.

• Seeing leads to knowing: Understanding that knowledge depends on perceptual access – if someone hasn’t seen something, they don’t know it.

• Understanding false beliefs: Recognizing that someone can hold a belief that doesn’t match reality (a milestone usually reached around age 4).

• Understanding hidden feelings: Realizing that people can mask or conceal their emotions, showing one feeling while experiencing another inside.

Together, Piaget’s insights and modern ToM research show that the preschool years are a time of rapid cognitive and social growth.

Children shift from an egocentric worldview toward a richer appreciation of other people’s inner lives, laying the groundwork for empathy, communication, and more complex social understanding.

Middle Childhood & Adolescence (6–18 years)

Middle childhood and adolescence mark a shift from basic recognition of others’ beliefs and feelings toward sophisticated social reasoning.

By the end of adolescence, most individuals can manage multiple, conflicting perspectives, appreciate irony and social nuance, and engage in the kinds of complex interactions that prepare them for adult work, relationships, and community life.

Ages 6–12:

Children’s thinking becomes less egocentric and more logical, helping them coordinate multiple perspectives at once (Piaget, 1977).

By this stage, they often master second-order false beliefs – understanding not just what someone thinks, but what one person thinks about another person’s belief (e.g., “She thinks that he thinks the toy is under the bed”).

This advance allows children to follow more complex stories, understand motives in literature, and engage in cooperative play and problem-solving with peers (Perner & Wimmer, 1985).

Humor, teasing, and sarcasm also become easier to understand and produce, reflecting a growing grasp of layered perspectives.

Adolescence (12–18)

Teenagers refine higher-order ToM and cognitive empathy—the ability to adopt someone else’s perspective while also connecting it to emotions (Vetter et al., 2013).

This supports the deeper friendships, romantic relationships, and sensitivity to social belonging typical of adolescence.

Teens also become better at evaluating ambiguous intentions, detecting hypocrisy, and reasoning about complex moral and social issues (Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010).

Neuroimaging studies show that these advances coincide with continued maturation of the prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction, brain regions linked to perspective-taking and social reasoning (Blakemore, 2008).

Adulthood and Later Life

Theory of mind abilities remain strong throughout most of adulthood, supporting the management of work, relationships, and complex social interactions.

Adults draw on ToM to navigate subtle forms of communication—such as reading between the lines in workplace conversations, understanding irony in friendships, or anticipating how others might react in negotiations and decision-making (Henry, Phillips, Ruffman, & Bailey, 2013).

However, research shows that ToM skills can shift with age.

Older adults often perform well on basic perspective-taking tasks but may show declines in more demanding areas, such as keeping track of multiple perspectives, detecting sarcasm, or interpreting subtle nonverbal cues (Phillips et al., 2011).

These changes are linked to natural aging in brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, which supports executive functions crucial for ToM (Moran, 2013).

At the same time, life experience tends to strengthen emotional understanding and compassion.

Some studies suggest that while older adults may be slower or less flexible in processing complex social information, they often excel in affective aspects of empathy and emotional perspective-taking (Richter & Kunzmann, 2011).

In short, while the speed and flexibility of ToM may decrease in later life, the depth of perspective-taking and empathy often remains, shaped by decades of social experience.

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Cultural Differences

One of the most widely used ways to study Theory of Mind (ToM) is the false-belief task.

These tasks test whether a child can recognize that another person may hold a belief that is different from reality and from the child’s own knowledge.

Passing a false-belief task is considered a major milestone in ToM development, typically reached between ages 3 and 5 (Wellman, 2004; Gopnik & Astington, 1988).

Why False-Belief Tasks Matter

Understanding false belief shows that a child can:

• Overcome egocentrism (realizing not everyone knows what they know).

• Use inhibitory control (suppressing their own knowledge of reality to answer from another’s perspective).

• Hold two perspectives in mind at once (their own and another person’s), which relies on working memory.

This ability reflects a broader shift away from Piaget’s description of young children as egocentric thinkers who assume everyone sees and knows what they do.

Aspect	First-Order False Belief	Second-Order False Belief
What it tests	Understanding that another person’s belief can differ from reality.	Understanding what one person thinks about another person’s belief.
Key Question	“Where will Sally look for her marble?”	“Where does Anne think Sally will look for her marble?”
Age Typically Passed	Around 4 years old	Around 6–7 years old
Cognitive Demand	Distinguish own knowledge from another’s perspective.	Hold multiple perspectives in mind (beliefs about beliefs).
Example Task	Smarties/Crayon Box task; Sally–Anne (basic version).	Advanced Sally–Anne or similar scenarios involving nested beliefs.

The Deceptive Container Task (Smarties/Crayon Box)

First-order false-belief tasks test whether children understand that another person can hold a belief about the world that is different from reality – and from what the child themselves knows.

Passing this kind of task shows that a child can separate their own knowledge from someone else’s perspective, a key step in developing Theory of Mind.

A classic example is the Deceptive Container Task, sometimes called the “Smarties Task” or “Crayon Box Task” (Gopnik & Astington, 1988).

Here’s how it works:

1. Presentation: A child is shown a familiar container, such as a candy box labeled “Smarties” or a crayon box.

2. Expectation: The researcher asks the child what they think is inside. Naturally, the child will say “Smarties” or “crayons.”

3. The Reveal: The container is opened to show something unexpected, such as pencils or candles. Now the child knows the true contents.

4. The Critical Question: The container is closed again, and the child is asked what another person – who has not looked inside – will think is in the box.

Interpreting the Results:

A child who has developed Theory of Mind will correctly answer “Smarties” or “crayons.”

This shows that they can step into another person’s perspective and recognize that the person will form a false belief based on the box’s appearance.

In doing so, the child is able to set aside what they themselves know about the true contents and accurately predict what someone else would think.

A younger child, who has not yet developed ToM, will usually answer “pencils” or “candles.”

This response is considered egocentric – the child assumes everyone shares their knowledge and cannot yet take another person’s perspective.

Second-order false-belief tasks

Second-order false-belief tasks test whether a child can understand what one person thinks about another person’s belief (Baron-Cohen, 1995).

In these tasks, children must recognize that beliefs can differ not only from reality but also from each other’s perspectives.

For example, a character hides an object in one place. While they are away, another character moves it.

To pass the task, the child must infer not just where the first character will look, but also what the second character thinks the first character believes.

A commonly used second-order false-belief task is the Sally-Anne task, in which a character leaves an object in one location, and while he or she is outside the room, the object is transferred to a new location.

In the original Sally–Anne study, Baron-Cohen and colleagues (1985) found that:

• 85% of typically developing children and 86% of children with Down syndrome answered the false-belief question correctly.

• By contrast, 80% of autistic children failed, showing difficulty in understanding that Sally would hold a belief different from reality.

Follow-up studies confirmed that most children begin to pass false-belief tasks around ages 4–5 (Gopnik & Astington, 1988; Nelson et al., 2008; Sung & Hsu, 2014).

This is widely seen as the age when a mature Theory of Mind first emerges.

However, newer research suggests that signs of Theory of Mind appear even earlier. Using nonverbal versions of the task, researchers tested toddlers as young as 15 months.

In these experiments, children watched as Sally returned and looked either in the basket (her false belief) or in the box (the true location).

Instead of asking them questions, experimenters measured how long the toddlers looked at each action.

The results were striking: toddlers looked longer when Sally searched the box, as if surprised by her choice. This suggests they expected Sally to act on her false belief and look in the basket.

Studies by Onishi & Baillargeon (2005), later replicated by Träuble et al. (2010), indicate that even very young children have some implicit grasp of other people’s mental states, long before they can explain them in words.

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Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Although most people develop the ability to understand others’ thoughts and feelings, this skill is not equally strong in everyone.

In fact, difficulties with Theory of Mind (ToM) are a common feature of several psychological and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

• Core difficulty: Trouble recognising that other people can have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs different from their own.

• What this looks like: People with autism may find it harder to read facial expressions, understand sarcasm, or predict how someone else will react. Even if they pass structured “false-belief” tests in the lab, they may still struggle to apply these skills in everyday conversations.

• Why it happens: Brain studies show differences in areas linked to social understanding, such as the superior temporal sulcus and fusiform gyrus. These differences affect how social cues like eye gaze and facial expressions are processed.

Schizophrenia

• Core difficulty: Problems inferring other people’s intentions or emotions.

• What this looks like: Individuals may misinterpret social cues, withdraw from relationships, or struggle with disorganized communication. ToM problems are closely tied to real-life challenges like unemployment and social isolation.

• Why it happens: Brain regions that normally support perspective-taking, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction, function less efficiently. In some cases, difficulty separating one’s own thoughts from others’ can even contribute to symptoms like auditory hallucinations.

ADHD

• Core difficulty: Not a direct ToM problem, but challenges with attention and impulse control can make social thinking harder.

• What this looks like: Children with ADHD may interrupt, miss social cues, or misjudge situations—not necessarily because they don’t understand others’ minds, but because their executive functions (like working memory and self-control) make it harder to put that understanding into action.

• Why it happens: ToM relies on executive skills like holding two perspectives in mind and inhibiting your own viewpoint. Since these skills are weaker in ADHD, social difficulties can look similar to ToM problems, even if the root cause is different.

Depression

• Core difficulty: Trouble integrating social and emotional information to understand others’ perspectives.
• What this looks like: People with depression may misread others’ emotions, assume the worst in social situations, or struggle to connect with how someone else is feeling. This can contribute to withdrawal and reinforce feelings of isolation.
• Why it happens: Studies show that depression is linked to difficulties in both social-perceptual skills (like reading facial expressions) and social-cognitive skills (like reasoning about beliefs and intentions). Changes in brain function related to emotion regulation and attention may make it harder to process social cues accurately.

Social Anxiety Disorder

• Core difficulty: Less accurate at decoding mental states and heightened fear of negative evaluation.
• What this looks like: People with social anxiety may overthink how they’re being perceived, misinterpret neutral cues as criticism, or avoid interactions altogether. This makes everyday situations like group conversations or public speaking feel overwhelming.
• Why it happens: Social anxiety involves both heightened emotional reactivity and reduced accuracy in reading others’ thoughts and feelings. Brain regions involved in threat detection and emotion (like the amygdala) can become overactive, while systems that support accurate perspective-taking may be underused.

Dementia

• Core difficulty: ToM abilities can decline as dementia progresses, especially in conditions like Alzheimer’s or frontotemporal dementia.

• What this looks like: People may find it harder to follow conversations, recognise when someone is joking, or respond to the emotions of family and friends.

• Why it happens: Brain regions that support memory, self-awareness, and perspective-taking (like the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes) are affected by the disease process.

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ToM in The Brain

Understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings may feel effortless, but it depends on a special network of brain regions working together.

Neuroimaging studies, where people complete Theory of Mind tasks inside an MRI scanner, have shown that no single “mind-reading” area exists.

Instead, a set of regions—sometimes called the mentalizing network or social brain—light up when we think about what others believe, want, or feel.

Key Brain Areas

• Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC): Located in the front of the brain, the mPFC helps us think about ourselves and others. It plays a role in distinguishing our own perspective from someone else’s and predicting the emotional or behavioral consequences of another person’s mental state. It is also active when people understand irony or subtle social cues.

• Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ): Found where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, the TPJ is a key hub for perspective-taking. It activates strongly when we reason about other people’s beliefs—especially false beliefs—and when we interpret jokes, sarcasm, or irony.

• Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS): This region helps us interpret social signals such as eye gaze, body movements, and tone of voice. These cues are often the first step in figuring out someone’s intentions.

• Precuneus and Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC): These midline regions support self-reflection and retrieving personal memories, which can be used to simulate another person’s experience.

• Amygdala: Best known for its role in emotion, the amygdala helps us recognize feelings from facial expressions and attach emotional meaning to social interactions. Damage to the amygdala can impair empathy and the ability to read emotions in others.

How Scientists Study This

A common experiment compares false-belief stories with false-photograph stories.

In a false-belief version, a participant reads a story like the Sally–Anne task and answers where Sally will look for her marble.

In the false-photograph version, they might read:

“A photo is taken of an apple hanging from a tree. While the film develops, the apple falls to the ground. When the photo is developed, where is the apple?”

This requires reasoning about a physical change, not a mental state.

Brain scans show that the TPJ is active during false-belief stories, but not during false-photograph ones (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003). 

This difference helps researchers isolate brain regions that specifically support Theory of Mind.

Mirror Neurons and Theory of Mind

When we watch someone else act, our brain doesn’t just stay passive – it often mirrors what we see.

This is thanks to mirror neurons, special brain cells that fire both when we perform an action ourselves and when we watch another person do it.

This mirroring ability is thought to be one of the building blocks for Theory of Mind (ToM), the capacity to understand that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

How Mirror Neurons Help Us Understand Others

• Imitation and Intentions: From infancy, humans are natural imitators. Mirror neurons allow us to copy what others do, but more importantly, they help us guess why someone is doing it. By simulating another’s actions in our own brain, we can start to infer their goals and intentions.

• Empathy: Mirror neurons are also linked to empathy—the ability to share and understand someone else’s emotions. Watching another person smile, cry, or wince can trigger similar brain activity in us, giving us a direct sense of what they might be feeling.

• Social Understanding: This mirroring process supports broader social skills. It’s easier to predict, cooperate with, or comfort others when our brain can “resonate” with their experiences. Some researchers even argue that this system provided an evolutionary stepping stone toward language, which began with shared gestures and later developed into speech.

Where Mirror Neurons Are Found

In humans, the mirror neuron system is thought to be located near Broca’s area, a brain region involved in speech and language.

This overlap hints at a close link between understanding actions and communicating – suggesting that our ability to connect with others through words may have grown out of our ability to mirror their movements.

The Bigger Picture

Theory of Mind is more than one brain region – it relies on:

• Executive functions like working memory and inhibition, which allow us to juggle conflicting perspectives.

• Language, which gives us the tools to talk and think about thoughts, beliefs, and desires.

• Self-awareness, since understanding others’ minds builds on the ability to reflect on our own.

Together, these brain systems allow us to predict behavior, interpret communication, and navigate the complexities of social life.

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Learning Check

1. Clarifying Concepts

• What do we mean when we say someone has a “theory of mind”?

• How is understanding another person’s belief different from just observing their behavior?

• Can you give an everyday example where you use ToM without even thinking about it?

2. Probing Assumptions

• Do you think babies are completely unaware of other people’s thoughts? Why or why not?

• Is ToM something we’re born with, or something we have to learn as we grow?

• Do you assume other people think about the world in the same way you do?

3. Examining Evidence

• What evidence do psychologists use to figure out whether children understand false beliefs?

• How does the Sally-Anne task actually test perspective-taking?

• Why might children younger than 4 usually fail that task?

4. Considering Alternative Perspectives

• Could animals, like dogs or chimpanzees, have some form of ToM? How would we know?

• If someone has autism and struggles with ToM in everyday life, does that mean they can’t ever understand others’ thoughts? Or might they use different strategies?

• Do adults always use ToM correctly, or can we misjudge what others believe?

5. Exploring Implications

• What happens to friendships or relationships if someone struggles with ToM?

• How might a lack of ToM skills affect someone in a workplace setting?

• Why do you think ToM is considered such a critical milestone in child development?

6. Meta-Cognition (Thinking About Thinking)

• When was the last time you misinterpreted someone’s thoughts or intentions? What does that say about the limits of ToM?

• Do you think ToM always leads to empathy? Or could it also be used in negative ways (e.g., manipulation)?

• How does reflecting on your own thoughts help you understand the minds of others?

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