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

verfasst von

Anne Boeckler, Lukas Herrmann, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Tom Holmes, Tania Singer

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 high-level 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.

Externe Organisation(en)

Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Western Michigan University

Typ

Artikel

Journal

JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT

Band

1

Seiten

197-209

Anzahl der Seiten

13

ISSN

2509-3290

Publikationsdatum

06.2017

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Experimentelle und kognitive Psychologie, Neuropsychologie und Physiologische Psychologie, Kognitive Neurowissenschaft, Behaviorale Neurowissenschaften

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-017-0023-6 (Zugang: Offen)