Abstract
Mentalizing, or theory of mind, is the ability to infer the mental states, such as desires and beliefs, that motivate others’ actions. Mentalizing is fundamental to human social life, underpinning many of the forms of communication, cooperation, and culture that are likely unique to our species. But how did human mentalizing evolve? Comparative experiments with humans and other primates suggest that theory of mind has deep phylogenetic roots: its most basic foundations appear to be shared widely among primates while more sophisticated precursors are found only in our closer relatives, suggesting that they may have been present only in more recent common ancestors. Of course, still other features of human theory of mind have evolved uniquely in the human lineage, in the past 6–9 million years since we diverged from the other apes. Inter- and intra-specific studies suggest that mentalizing has likely evolved in response to the demands of competing and cooperating with others, with dietary and metabolic adaptations probably playing an important role as well. Future comparative work will continue to prove fruitful in determining exactly what it is about human mentalizing that makes us human and how it came to be.
Keywords
- Social cognition
- Theory of mind
- Mind-reading
- Perspective-taking
- Cognitive evolution
- Human evolution
- Primate
- Nonhuman
- Monkey
- Ape
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Josep Call, Brian Hare, Richard Byrne, and Andrew Whiten for discussions over the years on topics relevant to this paper. I am also grateful to the European Commission for financial support (Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship MENTALIZINGORIGINS). Finally, abundant thanks are owed to Michael Gilead and Kevin Ochsner, for their kind invitation to participate in this exciting compilation and for their enduring patience and support.
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Krupenye, C. (2021). The Evolution of Mentalizing in Humans and Other Primates. In: Gilead, M., Ochsner, K.N. (eds) The Neural Basis of Mentalizing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51890-5_6
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