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Beyond perspective-taking: Mind-reading motivation

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Abstract

Mind-reading motivation (MRM) is an individual difference in individuals’ willingness to effortfully engage with other people’s perspectives and mental states, a tendency which has consequences for processes ranging from persuasion to teamwork. In four studies, we tested the effects of this unique social motivation in a variety of contexts. Study 1 demonstrated that levels of mind reading motivation are stable over time and distinct from mind-reading ability. Study 2 showed that MRM predicts more nuanced and detailed spontaneous descriptions of close others’ minds. Study 3 demonstrated effects of MRM on persuasion: matching the source (salient mind versus not) to individuals’ levels of MRM increased elaboration. Study 4 demonstrated that MRM directly increases individuals’ perceptions of co-leadership during a dyadic task, in turn affecting joint performance as a pair. Individual differences in MRM thus have consequences in both laboratory and social contexts.

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Notes

  1. Other scales have attempted to measure constructs that are related to, but distinct from, mind-reading motivation. For example, the Attributional Complexity Scale (ACS; Fletcher et al. 1986) focuses on people’s tendencies to theorize about other people’s minds, but it is wider in scope than MRM. The ACS measures the sophistication and complexity of behavior attributions, including temporal explanations and metacognition, rather than the motivation to engage with perspectives, motivations, and thoughts more specifically.

  2. The scale was inspired by the intersection of three research literatures: innate motivational tendencies (such as the need for cognition), perspective-taking, and Zunshine’s work (2006) suggesting that stories and literature are rewarding because they allow individuals to practice their theory of mind skills. Therefore, in constructing the scale, we considered literature in perspective-taking, empathy, motivation (particularly motivations to think in various ways, including need for cognition), and theory of mind. From this literature review, we developed a larger set of 28 face-valid items. These items were reduced and substantially altered thanks to expert feedback from the members of the first author’s thesis committee and survey studies testing this larger set with groups of undergraduates. The reported pilot survey is the first set of data collected using the existing scale. See Carpenter (2008) for further details.

  3. In each study, participants who failed to complete the full materials were dropped from analysis and are not included in the overall N (Study 1 = 110; Study 2: n = 27; Study 3, n = 9; Study 4: n = 6). The high number of incomplete surveys in Study 1 is largely due to participants who signed into the survey but answered no questions, implying they were accidental logins. More specifically, participants in Study 1 were required to complete the study on a computer rather than a smartphone, in order to display the videos properly. We suspect that many of these logins are students who forgot this requirement, accessed the study on their phones, and then saw the reminder on the introduction page.

  4. Including gender in the analyses did not significantly affect our results in this study or in any subsequent studies, except where specifically noted.

  5. To further explore the relationship between Mind Reading Motivation and Mind-Reading Skill, we re-ran Study 1 using a different measure of empathic accuracy, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (Baron-Cohen et al. 2001), which asks participants to guess people’s emotional states from pictures only of their eyes. Participants (70 undergraduates, 60 female, 10 male, who were compensated with a candy bar of their choice) completed MRM and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task; 49 of these participants (42 female, 7 male, given an additional candy bar) also completed the MRM scale again one week later. One participant was eliminated from analysis for response satisficing (i.e., giving the same answer for all questions). As in the reported Study 1, test–retest reliability was strong; participants’ scores were highly correlated across waves, r(47) = .85, p < .01. Also, MRM showed only a weak (marginal) positive correlation with performance on the Mind in the Eyes task, r(68) = .21, p < .08. These results bolster both MRM’s test–retest reliability and its conceptual distinctiveness from mind-reading ability.

  6. K’NEX building blocks consist of small, plastic interlocking rods and connector pieces that snap together. The pieces are typically used to build small models, like cars and animals—each requiring anywhere from 35 pieces to several hundred pieces. In this study, participants built obscure objects that did not resemble any real objects and consisted of approximately 12 pieces each.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to B. Keith Payne, Noah Eisenkraft, and Joe Simons for helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript, and Barbara L. Fredrickson and the UNC Kenan Distinguished Professorship Funds for supporting data collection of Study 4. We thank Keta Desai, Amber Johnson, BreAnne Allen, Stephanie Komoski, Alice Ma, and Kristina Pantano for their assistance in data collection.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jordan M. Carpenter

  2. Department of Communication, University at Buffalo (SUNY), 359 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Melanie C. Green

  3. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk

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  1. Jordan M. Carpenter
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  2. Melanie C. Green
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  3. Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Melanie C. Green.

Appendix

Appendix

Mind-reading motivation scale

  1. 1.

    When I meet new people, I like wondering how they got to where they are in life. (.49)

  2. 2.

    If someone’s actions do not relate to me directly, I generally do not concern myself with why they do what they do. r (.38)

  3. 3.

    When I am conversing with more than one person, I like to think about how one person is interpreting what another person says in the conversation. (.37)

  4. 4.

    I don’t tend to actively seek out other people’s opinions, even when they probably agree with my own. r (.42)

  5. 5.

    I rarely find myself wondering what other people are thinking. r (.51)

  6. 6.

    There is just something intriguing about the insight different people can offer about someone else’s motivations and perspective. (.56)

  7. 7.

    In a social group, I don’t make any special effort to keep track of what each person thinks about the other people in the group. r (.44)

  8. 8.

    When I see two strangers arguing, I often catch myself speculating on what their conflict is. (35)

  9. 9.

    People who disagree with me about important issues are generally just misinformed. r (.18)

  10. 10.

    It is pointless to try to see things from other people’s points of view. r (.49)

  11. 11.

    I have little patience for listening to other people’s problems. r (.41)

  12. 12.

    If I can tell where someone is coming from, I don’t need other people’s thoughts on the matter. r (.39)

  13. 13.

    If the way I define something works for me, I don’t need to know what other people think about it. r (.50)

Note: r indicates that the item is reverse-scored. Numbers indicate item loadings for a one-factor exploratory factor analysis.

Response scale is 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

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Carpenter, J.M., Green, M.C. & Vacharkulksemsuk, T. Beyond perspective-taking: Mind-reading motivation. Motiv Emot 40, 358–374 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-016-9544-z

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