Free Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman Page A

can’t learn to do it better.
    The Miracle of Mentalizing
Although we begin to gain the capacity to appreciate the differing beliefs and perspectives of others in our preschool years, even as adults we continue to use this capacity somewhat inefficiently.Nevertheless, mentalizing is one of the signature achievements of thehuman mind, one that separates us from all other species.Along with our capacities for language and abstract thinking, mentalizing is the primary reason we live in homes with air-conditioning and communicate over tiny wireless devices.No business, classroom, or friendship can thrive without this miraculous mental process.Mentalizing allows us to imagine not only what other people are thinking or feeling right now but also how they would react to nearly any event in the future.It even allows us to consider how their reactions would change as their development, interests, or circumstances change.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs suggested that his own view on product design was much like that of Henry Ford, who famously said, “If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse.’”The essence of successful inventing, Ford would say, is to figure out what people will want before it exists.Steve Jobs was a master at understanding what we would want better than we could guess ourselves.The iPod was declared dead on arrival when it was first announced in 2001.By 2011, more than 300 million iPods had been sold, not counting the iPhones, iPads, and countless rival devices it inspired.The idea of the iPod may not have been inspiring to most, but Steve Jobs bet the entire future of Apple on his belief that when other people experienced his products, they would love them.
In little ways, every day, we use mindreading to anticipate the desires and worries of the people in our lives and act to make their lives a bit better.When we are lucky, they do the same for us.Our ability to mentalize is the difference between social pain and pleasure being random occurrences and their being destinations that we can navigate toward or away from.

Figure 9.2 Dot Configurations That (A) Do and (B) Do Not Induce Prosocial Behavior. Adapted from Rigdon, M., et al. (2009). Minimal social cues in the dictator game. Journal of Economic Psychology , 30(3), 358–367.
It is one thing to strategically take into account whether you are being seen before you engage in bad behavior, but what does a photograph of eyes or dots forming a triangle imply about the actual likelihood of your getting caught and punished?Rationally, people in these studies can tell you that they know they are not being watched and are not likely to be caught, no matter what they choose to do.Nevertheless, people restrain themselves as if they might be seen.
    Panopticons of the Mind
Think back to the days of your youth when October 31 represented the single best opportunity of the year to gorge yourself with so much candy you might actually regret it afterward.On Halloween, all you have to do is knock on a stranger’s front door in some semblance of a costume, and you are rewarded with candy.Imagine you walk up to the forty-second front door of the evening, and just afterthe owner of the home greets you, he gets an important phone call.He says, “I’m sorry, but I need to take this call.The candy bowl is right inside the door.Go ahead and take one piece of candy.But I need to go to the other room.”He walks away and leaves you alone with a large bowl of candy.What do you do?Do you take a single piece as he invited you to do, or do you put as much in your bag as you can, as quickly as possible.No one can see you.Well, one person can see you—you.Behind the candy is a mirror that reflects your own actions back to you.Would this affect your decision?
Apparently, when put in this situation, our natural impulse is to take more than we should. When children (ages nine and up) were put in this scenario without a mirror, a little more