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Principal investigator: Geoffrey Bird
Co-investigator: Caroline Catmur
Postdoctoral researchers: Bryony Payne, Zoe Pounder, Aisling Mulvihill
This was a John Templeton Foundation-funded project, "The role of cultural evolution in human understanding". The project ran from January 2022 to December 2024. We investigated how cultural learning contributes to understanding others' minds, specifically their thoughts and their emotions; and we tested interventions to boost the ability to understand others. You can read more about the project findings on this website.
Outputs from the King's College London part of the project team:
Journal articles (see publications page for more details):
Payne, B., Bird, G., & Catmur, C. (2025). Anti-social learning: The impact of language on mentalizing. British Journal of Psychology.
Payne, B., Bird, G. & Catmur, C. (2024). Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups. Scientific Reports, 14: 19432.
Payne, B. & Catmur, C. (2024). Embodiment in the Enfacement Illusion is mediated by self-other overlap. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379: 20230146.
Samuel, S., Erle, T.M., Kirsch, L.P., Surtees, A., Apperly, I., Bukowski, H., Auvray, M., Catmur, C., Kessler, K. & Quesque, F. (2024). Three key questions to move towards a theoretical framework of visuospatial perspective taking. Cognition, 247: 105787.
Quesque, F., ... Bird, G., … Catmur, C., ... Brass, M. (2024). Defining key concepts for mental state attribution. Communications Psychology, 2: 29.
Long, E.L., Cuve, H.C., Conway, J.R., Catmur, C. & Bird, G. (2022). Novel Theory of Mind task demonstrates representation of minds in mental state inference. Scientific Reports, 12(1):21133.
Conference proceedings:
Payne, B., Bird, G. & Catmur, C. (2024). Understanding in-group and out-group minds: How to better understand politically dissimilar others. Talk presented at European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2024, University of Ghent, May 24th 2024.
Catmur, C., Pounder, Z. & Bird, G. (2024). Empathy for dissimilar others: learning to feel empathy for out-groups. Talk presented at European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2024, University of Ghent, May 24th 2024.
Payne, B., Bird, G. & Catmur, C. (2024). Understanding in-group and out-group minds: Feedback on mental state inferences improves accuracy and awareness. Talk presented at Experimental Psychology Society meeting, University College London, January 4th 2024.
Catmur, C., Payne, B. & Bird, G. (2023). Similar thoughts, similar minds: Are people less prone to consider the minds of dissimilar others? Talk presented at International Convention of Psychological Science, Brussels, 9th March 2023.
Catmur, C. (2023). Perspective taking and ‘implicit’ mentalising. Talk presented at International Perspective-Taking Workshop, UC Louvain, 7th March 2023.
Payne, B., Bird, G. & Catmur, C. (2023). Are people less prone to consider the minds of out-group members? A new mental state inference task. Talk presented at Experimental Psychology Society meeting, University College London, January 4th 2023.
Payne, B., Bird, G. & Catmur, C. (2022). Predicting the beliefs and opinions of others: Are people less prone to consider the minds of out-group members? Poster presented at Experimental Psychology Society meeting, University of Stirling, July 13th-15th 2022.
Other outputs:
Talk at University College London, March 2025.
Talk at University of Galway, November 2024.
Article for Inspire the Mind, September 2024.
Article for The Conversation, August 2024.
Symposium 'Representing Outgroup Minds' at European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience conference, Ghent, May 2024.
Contribution to "Mindscapes" art exhibition, Scientific Arts Lab, University of Galway, July-August 2023.
Pint of Science talk, London, May 2023.
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