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Why is it so hard to know what others want?
28th September 2009
Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes? Why is it so hard to change what they believe?
Scientist Rebecca Saxe takes a look at how we can guess what others are thinking when often we have virtually no information to help us.
Apparently we have a special brain region that does this job - above and behind your right ear. It develops slowly as we grow up with the most significant stages of development taking place between the ages of 3 and 7. It is at this age that we develop a capacity to understand that others do not always know what we know. We begin to develop a theory of mind.
This has implications on our moral judgements - if we can begin to try to understand the motivations of others then we can start to understand how much blame they ought be attributed for their actions. Rebecca goes on to demonstrate that this moral analysis we make can be affected by electro-shocks.
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