Everyone Thinks They’re A Psychologist: Why We Can’t Help But Try to Read People’s Minds

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It’s human nature to be a psychologist.

We’ve evolved to become a very social species, and because of this we’ve developed what psychologists call empathy or theory of mind. This is our ability to attribute mental states – like thoughts, feelings, and intentions – onto ourselves and others.

If we see someone smile, we assume they are happy. If we see someone crying, we assume they are sad. We are constantly reading into people’s behaviors, body language, and speech to determine what they are really thinking and feeling in any given situation.

Ultimately, this “theory of mind” comes with the understanding that what one person is thinking or feeling can be different than what you are thinking and feeling. We each have different minds.

Psychologists often test for this in children through something called a “False Belief Test.” You can find a video demonstration of it here. By the age of 4-5, most children are are the point in their cognitive development where they can attribute mental states to others (unless they have autism or a mental disorder).

While it’s natural to try to read people’s minds and understand more about their inner workings – to become a type of “folk psychologist” or “armchair psychologist” – this tendency can also get out-of-hand sometimes.

How often do we see articles on the internet psychoanalyzing celebrities, politicians, athletes, and other public figures? Everyone has their own pet theories: “This person is definitely a narcissist” or “This person is definitely a psychopath” or “This person is definitely bipolar.”

Of course this stems from our need to understand people and their behaviors. When we can label people or fit them into a box (even when we aren’t professionals), it gives our mind a bit of ease to think that we’ve “figured someone out.”

Like a psychologist, we want to be able to explain people’s choices and behaviors. But we’re also lazy. So it’s often easiest to explain people’s choices as the result of a personality trait or “mental disorder,” rather than taking into account all of the nuances that can influence people (education, past relationships, situational context, etc.).

While it’s tempting to want to be an “armchair psychologist,” I always try to avoid using diagnostic labels to describe people I’ve never met before or know very little about.

For starters, it’s often irresponsible to attach serious labels onto people just based on a small glimpse of their behavior. This is especially true for public figures being covered in the media, where we are often only getting one side of the story.

When we try to play the role of “psychologist,” or psychoanalyzing someone else, what we’re often doing is gossiping about others in a harmful way.

When people carelessly throw around labels like “narcissist,” “sociopath,” or “psychopath,” what they are often trying to do is tarnish that person’s point-of-view and judge them in a negative light.

This is especially true when people get into heated arguments. When someone disagrees with us or acts in a way we find wrong, it’s easy to just label them as broken or deficient, instead of genuinely trying to understand why they think or feel the way they do.

These labels also tend to reinforce an “Us vs. Them” mindset, which makes it more difficult to understand the person and truly empathize with them.

In this way, some people use “psychology” as a weapon. They use terms to try to judge or insult someone, or only share articles and studies that confirm their beliefs, rather than to understand human behavior from a neutral viewpoint (which should be the main goal of psychology).

Human psychology is something we’re all intimately aware of even if you aren’t someone who follows the latest science or research.

We all have our own minds – and we all have to interact with other minds. In this way, we can’t help but become a “psychologist” in one form or another. It’s in our nature.

At the same time, we need to be mindful of the ways we “psychoanalyze” people and engaging in too much mind-reading (where we falsely believe we know what someone is thinking or feeling).

We often overestimate how much we know about a person, and it’s all-too-easy to fall into the trap of putting simple labels on people rather than genuinely getting to know them.



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