9 min
As Close to Mind Reading as Brain Science Gets "Developing and Using Theory of Mind in Your Daily Life" Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning
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- How To
This is episode 46. This week we are on our last solo episode of diving deep into Dr. John Medina’s Brain Rules. I wonder: how are you managing your time during these unexpected life events that are happening in our world today? “You can build up your ‘cognitive reserve,’ or your brain’s innate ability to get a job done, through different types of learning and or through new experiences.” People with a stronger and healthier cognitive reserve—one that’s been strengthened with learned experience—have been shown to be more capable of coping with unexpected life events.” (30 Amazing Facts About Your Brain).[i] I highly encourage using any extra time that you might have in your schedule for learning instead of reading the news or wasting time. This can be a time for all of us to ramp up with our knowledge if we are able to manage the inevitable distraction around us.
Welcome to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, I’m a former educator whose been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Each week we bring you an expert who has risen to the top of their industry with specific strategies that you can implement immediately, whether you are a teacher or student in the classroom, or working in the corporate world, to take your results to the next level.
In episode 42[ii], Dr. John Medina gave us some new insights on applying 12 Brain Rules to our daily life. I could spend a year on these rules but have just taken a few of the concepts that stuck out to me as important, to dive deep into. Dr. Medina spoke a bit about Theory of Mind as being “as close to mind reading as brain science gets.”[iii] So why is Theory of Mind so important? Theory of Mind (ToM)[iv] is crucial for everyday social interactions with others[v] as it is used to analyze, judge and infer other people’s behaviors. It is an important “social-cognitive skill that involves the ability to think about mental states, both your own and those of others.”[vi]
Psychologists have called this idea a theory because we really do not know exactly what is going on in someone else’s mind, we can only learn to make inferences based on life experience, intuition and practice.
Why would this skill be important in the classroom? Imagine how much easier life would be if you could look at your students and be able to know if they were feeling anxious before a test, or even before a sporting event and be able to intervene with a quick strategy to calm their nerves.
What about in the workplace? Imagine if you were working in a restaurant, how much easier it would be to serve your customers if you could read facial cues that come along with needing something like an empty water glass, or a utensil or maybe even something like warming up a plate of food that came out and wasn’t hot. The ability to look and read what someone else is thinking makes life much easier in these situations and is a skill that can be learned with practice.
Before we take a deeper dive in ToM, I want to tell you when I first learned about this skill. When I was in high school, (In Toronto, Canada where I grew up) there was this awful span of time where there were crimes committed by someone the media called the Scarborough rapist (late 1980s-1990s). Anyone living in Canada at this time would remember when they finally caught this man, who committed these terrible crimes with his wife that ended up being the most horrific crimes in Canadian history, the media changed what they called them to the Ken and Barbie Killers based on their appearance. I remember asking my Mom at the time, “how would I ever know if someone is bad, if these two people could be so evil, yet they don’t look evil at a glance?”
My Mom looked at me and said, “you can’t see it in their eyes?” and sat me down at the kitchen table and started what were know
This is episode 46. This week we are on our last solo episode of diving deep into Dr. John Medina’s Brain Rules. I wonder: how are you managing your time during these unexpected life events that are happening in our world today? “You can build up your ‘cognitive reserve,’ or your brain’s innate ability to get a job done, through different types of learning and or through new experiences.” People with a stronger and healthier cognitive reserve—one that’s been strengthened with learned experience—have been shown to be more capable of coping with unexpected life events.” (30 Amazing Facts About Your Brain).[i] I highly encourage using any extra time that you might have in your schedule for learning instead of reading the news or wasting time. This can be a time for all of us to ramp up with our knowledge if we are able to manage the inevitable distraction around us.
Welcome to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, I’m a former educator whose been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Each week we bring you an expert who has risen to the top of their industry with specific strategies that you can implement immediately, whether you are a teacher or student in the classroom, or working in the corporate world, to take your results to the next level.
In episode 42[ii], Dr. John Medina gave us some new insights on applying 12 Brain Rules to our daily life. I could spend a year on these rules but have just taken a few of the concepts that stuck out to me as important, to dive deep into. Dr. Medina spoke a bit about Theory of Mind as being “as close to mind reading as brain science gets.”[iii] So why is Theory of Mind so important? Theory of Mind (ToM)[iv] is crucial for everyday social interactions with others[v] as it is used to analyze, judge and infer other people’s behaviors. It is an important “social-cognitive skill that involves the ability to think about mental states, both your own and those of others.”[vi]
Psychologists have called this idea a theory because we really do not know exactly what is going on in someone else’s mind, we can only learn to make inferences based on life experience, intuition and practice.
Why would this skill be important in the classroom? Imagine how much easier life would be if you could look at your students and be able to know if they were feeling anxious before a test, or even before a sporting event and be able to intervene with a quick strategy to calm their nerves.
What about in the workplace? Imagine if you were working in a restaurant, how much easier it would be to serve your customers if you could read facial cues that come along with needing something like an empty water glass, or a utensil or maybe even something like warming up a plate of food that came out and wasn’t hot. The ability to look and read what someone else is thinking makes life much easier in these situations and is a skill that can be learned with practice.
Before we take a deeper dive in ToM, I want to tell you when I first learned about this skill. When I was in high school, (In Toronto, Canada where I grew up) there was this awful span of time where there were crimes committed by someone the media called the Scarborough rapist (late 1980s-1990s). Anyone living in Canada at this time would remember when they finally caught this man, who committed these terrible crimes with his wife that ended up being the most horrific crimes in Canadian history, the media changed what they called them to the Ken and Barbie Killers based on their appearance. I remember asking my Mom at the time, “how would I ever know if someone is bad, if these two people could be so evil, yet they don’t look evil at a glance?”
My Mom looked at me and said, “you can’t see it in their eyes?” and sat me down at the kitchen table and started what were know
9 min