Understanding the minds of others (i.e., their emotions, beliefs and preferences) is essential for social functioning and has bee extensively studied in social psychology. Not much research however has studied what enables accurate mind reading.

We aim to identify the barriers for accurate mind perception and the cognitive strategies that may overcome these barriers. We compare between two strategies for mind perception in terms of accuracy – perspective taking, a strategy that relies on top-down inferences, and perspective getting, a strategy that relies on bottom-up individuating information about the other.

We study specific questions like: Whose minds do people wish to understand, what do they wish to know, and when? Which strategies do people prefer applying when reading the minds of an ingroup- versus an outgroup member? Are people aware of how accurate they are in reading the minds of others? Are people aware of which strategies promote versus harm accurate mins reading?

Selected Publications:

Epley, N., & Eyal, T. (2019). Through a looking glass, darkly: Using mechanisms of mind perception to identify accuracy, overconfidence, and under appreciated means for improvement, Advances of Experimental Social Psychology, 60, 65-120.

Eyal, T., Steffel, M., & Epley, N. (2018). Perspective mistaking: Accurately understanding the mind of another requires getting perspective, not taking perspective Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114, 547-571.

Eyal, T., & Epley, N. (2010). How to seem telepathic: Enabling mind reading by matching construal. Psychological Science, 25, 700-705.