Animal Mindreading

For many species of animal, the ability to predict the behavior of others is vital to their well-being and reproductive success. ¹ In the field of animal social cognition, there are two generally recognized types of strategies that animals are understood to use to make such predictions. Behavior-reading is one type of strategy. This strategy involves predicting the behavior of others on the basis of observable cues that are perceived, believed, or otherwise represented to obtain without interpreting those cues as signs of underlying mental states (Lurz 2009, 2011; Povinelli and Vonk 2003). The observable cues can include bodily appearances (e.g., threatening posture), behaviors (e.g., reaching toward a particular object or place), and environmental relations (e.g., looking in the direction of a particular object or place); and the predictive process itself can be the result of individual learning or innate mechanisms. The other behavior-predicting strategy is mindreading (aka theory of mind). This strategy involves inferring others’ mental states, such as sensory experiences, desires, and beliefs, from represented observable cues, and using this information about others’ mental states to predict their behavior (Premack and Woodruff 1978). Here, too, the inferential and predictive processes involved may be the result of individual learning or innate mechanisms. ²