Literary Evidence for the Cultural Development of a Theory of Mind

The term Theory of Mind is used within the cognitive sciences to refer to the abilities that people have to reason about their own mental states and the mental states of others. An important question is whether these abilities are culturally acquired or innate to our species. This paper outlines the argument that the mental models that serve as the basis for Theory of Mind abilities are the product of cultural development. To support this thesis, we present evidence gathered from the large-scale automated analysis of text corpora. We show that the Freudian conception of a subconscious desire is a relatively modern addition to our culturally shared Theory of Mind, as evidenced by a shift in the way these ideas appeared in 19th and 20th century English language novels. A Cultural Theory of Mind One topic that is strikingly pervasive across the cognitive sciences is that of Theory of Mind, in reference to the abilities that people have in reasoning about their own mental states and those of others. It is the set of Theory of Mind abilities that enable people to reflect introspectively on their own reasoning, to empathize with other people by imagining what it would be like to be in their position, and to generate reasonable expectations and inferences about mental states and processes. Although there are inherent difficulties involved in investigating behavior that is largely unobservable, a relatively sophisticated understanding of Theory of Mind abilities has emerged through the synthesis of widely disparate sources of evidence. This evidence suggests that Theory of Mind abilities progressively develop in children and adults (Wellman & Lagattuata, 2000; Happe et al., 1998), are degraded in people diagnosed with the illness of autism (Baron-Cohen, 2000), have a relationship to localized brain regions (Happe et al., 1999; Frith & Frith, 2000), and are a uniquely human cognitive faculty not available to other primates, e.g. chimpanzees and orangutans (Call & Tomasello, 1999). This last contribution to our understanding of Theory of Mind suggests that these abilities must have arisen in the human lineage only after a split from that of chimpanzees some 6-8 million years ago. Although in may be reasonable to assume that Theory of Mind abilities emerged in humans through a combination of natural evolution and cultural evolution, the relative importance that one ascribes to either of these two forces can radically change one’s conception of the mental lives of humans that are contemporary on a genetic time scale and primitive on a cultural time scale. If genetic evolution is the prime contributor to human Theory of Mind abilities, then we could imagine that human beings tens of thousands of years ago reflected introspectively on their own reasoning, empathized with other humans they had contact with, and were able to generate expectations and inferences about mental states and processes. If instead cultural is seen as the prime contributor, then human beings tens of thousands of years ago would not be capable of any of these behaviors, among many others. In attempting to determine whether the emergence of Theory of Mind abilities is genetic or cultural, researchers are immediately faced with the problem of evidence. Drawing comparisons between Theory of Mind abilities is an extremely difficult task, even between people that participate in controlled psychological experiments, let alone across cultures separated by distance and/or time. Several researchers have thought that the strongest evidence for a cultural Theory of Mind would be the discovery of significantly different Theory of Mind abilities across contemporary cultures. Lillard’s review of research in cultural variation in Theory of Mind (1998) suggests that meaningful variations may exist among the peoples of the world, but argues that there is little evidence available to draw firm conclusions, and that the methodologies employed in the past to study mental representations in other cultures have been problematic. A second type of evidence for a cultural Theory of Mind has looked for significant variation within a culture across time. One of the more provocative of these historical analyses was that of Julian Jaynes in support of his ideas on the emergence of consciousness (1976). In this work, Jaynes examines references to psychological concepts as they appear in a variety of early narratives, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. By comparing how these texts and others use terms such as thumos, phrenes, kradie, etor, noos, and psyche, Jaynes advances his claim that there was a shift in the way the people of ancient Greece thought about the role that mental phenomena played in controlling behavior. Although Jaynes successfully argues that there was a shift in the way that mental concepts were referenced in these early texts, one could argue that these changes can