2009/10/01 by Thalia R. Goldstein, Katherine Wu, Katherine S. Wu +1
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Cultural Differences and Values #Developmental psychology #Empathy #GRASP #Linguistics #Media Influence and Health #Perspective (graphical) #Perspective-taking #Psychology #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Reading (process) #Scale (ratio) #Simulation theory of empathy #Social psychology #Theory of mind
paper · doi:10.2190/ic.29.2.c
crossref issued 2009/10/01 · crossref published 2009/10/01 · crossref published-print 2009/10/01 · openalex publication_date 2009/10/01 · crossref published-online 2010/01/05 · crossref created 2010/01/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/04/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03 · crossref indexed 2026/08/03
Actors must imagine themselves in a different world: they must adopt the perspective of multiple characters, grasp their beliefs and intentions, and feel their emotions. In this study we tested the hypothesis that actors have unusually sharp mind-reading abilities and unusually strong empathy. In Study 1, adolescent actors outperformed adolescents without acting experience in their ability to imagine the mental states expressed by pictures of peoples' eyes (a theory of mind measure), but did not excel on empathy as measured by a self-report scale. In Study 2, we replicated these findings with young adults using a different measure of theory of mind. These findings show that adolescent and adult actors are skilled in reading others' mental states, but do not report above average levels of empathy. Thus, strength in theory of mind can exist independently of strength in empathy.