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The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test (RMET)

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Cognitive empathy; Emotion recognition; Eyes test; Mentalizing; RMET

Definition

The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test is a test of mental state recognition where participants are required to match the mental state of a person, shown in a photograph of their eye regions with one of four mental state words.

Introduction

Social cognition is a vital part of social interaction and involves the processing of complex mental state and other social stimuli prior to produce an appropriate response. It is essential for interpersonal relationships and for mental well-being. Individual and group differences exist in social cognition. Difficulties in aspects of social cognition such as emotion recognition and “theory of mind” (the ability to imagine other people’s thoughts and feelings and to use such information to make sense of and predict another person’s behavior) can cause difficulties in social interaction and these in turn contribute to some mental health conditions. Different...

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References

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Correspondence to Varun Warrier .

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Warrier, V., Bethlehem, R.A., Baron-Cohen, S. (2017). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test (RMET). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_549-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_549-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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