Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand Others

Abstract

Understanding others' feelings, intentions, and beliefs is a crucial social skill both for our personal lives and for meeting the challenges of a globalized world. Recent evidence suggests that the ability to represent and infer others' mental states (Theory of Mind, ToM) can be enhanced by mental training in healthy adults. The present study investigated the role of training-induced understanding of oneself for the enhanced understanding of others. In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N = 80 and N = 81) received a 3-month contemplative training. This training focused on perspective taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model that conceives the self as being composed of a complex system of inner personality aspects. Specifically, participants practiced perspective taking on their own inner states by learning to identify and classify different inner personality parts. Results revealed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves-reflected in the number of different inner parts they could identify-predicted their improvements in highlevel ToM performance over training. Especially the number of identified parts that were negatively valenced showed a strong relation with enhanced ToM capacities. This finding suggests a close link between getting better in understanding oneself and improvement in social intelligence.

Change in emotional self‐concept following socio‐cognitive training relates to structural plasticity of the prefrontal cortex

“…Overall, the Perspective Dyad trained participants to flexibly enact different inner parts and take perspective on these self-related aspects as well as improve perspective-taking on the belief systems and thoughts of the partner. Indeed, we found that the more inner parts participants could identify in the course of the training, the better they performed in a Theory of Mind task (Böckler, Herrmann, et al, 2017).…”

“…Perspective Dyad was developed to train perspective-taking onto aspects of the self and the mind of others and was inspired by both work in the therapeutic domain such as the Internal Family Systems model (IFS) (Holmes et al, 2007;Schwartz, 1997) and research about sociocognitive abilities such as perspective-taking on the beliefs, thoughts, and intentions of others (Frith & Frith, 2003;Singer, 2012). Overall, the Perspective Module can be regarded as an intervention that selectively trains perspective-taking on different aspects of the self as well as on the mind of others (see also Böckler, Herrmann, et al, 2017;Kok & Singer, 2017;Singer et al, 2016).…”

“…Initially, participants were asked to identify a set of six inner parts which they could change once per week throughout the Perspective Module. The Perspective Dyad (Böckler, Herrmann, Trautwein, Holmes, & Singer, 2017;Kok & Singer, 2017) consisted of two rounds and each participant took the role of the listener and the role of the speaker once.…”

Editorial: One Year of Journal of Cognitive Enhancement

“…The authors propose that the full potential of tDCS cannot be truly realized without a longitudinal design which allows for tDCS to act directly upon learning. Second, Böckler et al (2017) tested the effects of a 3-month contemplative training, which focused on observing-thought meditation and perspective taking and allowed healthy adult participants to practice the ability to understand their own and others' mental states. The data showed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves predicted their improvements in understanding others' mental states.…”

Editorial Special Topic: Enhancing Brain and Cognition Through Meditation

“…The authors discussed possible study limitations and gave a series of important suggestions for future studies on mindfulness and cognition. Böckler et al (2017) tested the effects of a 3-month contemplative training, which focused on observing-thought meditation and perspective taking and allowed healthy adult participants to practice the ability to understand their own and others' mental states. The data showed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves predicted their improvements in understanding others' mental states, namely, theory of mind (TOM) performance.…”