Is mind-mindedness trait-like or a quality of close relationships? Evidence from descriptions of significant others, famous people, and works of art

Abstract

(2014) 'Is mind-mindedness trait-like or a quality of close relationships? Evidence from descriptions of signicant others, famous people, and works of art. ', Cognition, 130 (3). pp. 417-427. Further information on publisher's website:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.009Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cognition. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A denitive version was subsequently published in Cognition, 130, 3, March 2014, 10.1016/j.cognition.2013 Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThe four studies reported here sought to explore the nature of the construct of mind-mindedness. In Study 1, involving 37 mothers of 5-to 8-year-old children, mothers' verbal mind-minded descriptions of their children were positively correlated with their mind-minded descriptions of their current romantic partner. Participants in Studies 2 (N=114), 3 (N=173), and 4 (N=153) were young adults who provided written descriptions of: a close friend and their current romantic partner (Study 2); two specified famous people, two works of art, and a close friend (Study 3); a specified famous person, a famous person of the participant's choice, and a close friend (Study 4). Study 2 obtained paper-and-pen written descriptions, whereas participants completed descriptions in electronic format in Studies 3 and 4. Mind-minded descriptions of friends and partners were positively correlated, but there was no relation between mind-minded descriptions of a friend and the tendency to describe famous people or works of art in mind-minded terms. Levels of mind-mindedness were higher in descriptions of friends compared with descriptions of famous people or works of art. Administration format was unrelated to individuals' mind-mindedness scores. The results suggest that mindmindedness is a facet of personal relationships rather than a trait-like quality. General IntroductionInterpreting other people's behavior in terms of its underlying mental states has been shown to be an important factor in development (e.g., Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002). Caregiver mind-mindedness (Meins, 1997) is an index of individual differences in caregivers' capacity to take the intentional stance with regard to their young childre...

Mind-mindedness in parents of looked-after children.

“…These findings have been replicated by Hill and McMahon (2016). Meins et al (2014) thus argued that mind-mindedness is not trait-like;…”

“…Meins et al (2014) reported no differences in mind-mindedness between online questionnaire and face-to-face interview administration. A link to the online questionnaire was circulated to adoptive parents via several channels: advertisements on a host adoption agency's social media pages, direct approach to participants by the adoption agency via email, a national adoption charity message board, and word of mouth between adopters.…”

“…However, there is no obvious reason why having caregivers' answers transcribed in real time should make them less likely to describe their children in mind-minded ways. Moreover, Meins et al (2014) reported that administration mode (transcribed interview, paper and pen written description, online written description) was unrelated to mind-mindedness. That said, future research should attempt to replicate these findings using identical procedures for transcription.…”

“…For example, both infant and preschool measures of mind-mindedness are unrelated to child characteristics such as gender (McMahon & Meins, 2012) and general cognitive ability (Meins et al, , 2001, and to caregiver characteristics such as socioeconomic status Meins, Centifanti, Fernyhough, & Fishburn, 2013) and psychological health (Meins et al, 2011; Walker, Wheatcroft, & Camic, 2012), although clinical levels of mental illness are associated with lower mind-mindedness (Pawlby et al, 2010; Schacht et al, in press). Mind-mindedness in Looked After Children Rather than being determined by the characteristics of the individual parent or child, Meins, Fernyhough, and Harris-Waller (2014) argued that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships. They based their argument on the results of a series of studies in which they compared levels of mind-mindedness in relation to different targets.…”

Watching More Closely: Shot Scale Affects Film Viewers’ Theory of Mind Tendency But Not Ability

“…The nature of these tasks allows them to successfully tap into participants’ ToM ability (or competence). It has been argued that beyond one’s ability to understand mental states, people demonstrate individual differences in their tendency to do so, resulting in a ‘competence–performance gap’ (e.g., Meins et al, 2014). Unlike recent distinctions between explicit and implicit ToM, that concern a person’s conscious awareness of their deliberate efforts to mentalize, the distinction between ability and tendency concerns the extent to which a person is prompted or spontaneously models the mental states of another.…”