I am not a mind reader and neither are you

Well, seeing as this is a Be Less Certain week, I thought I’d point out a place where’s it’s really quite useful to practice being less certain: people’s intentions.

Mindreading – we can’t help it

First watch this video based on an experiment done in the 40s by Heider and Simmel (even if you’ve seen it before – this version is extra dramatic – no sound).

I tell you, the way it’s done you can’t help but see it as a story and talk about what’s happening for the little triangle being bullied by the big triangle. Right?

‘The little circle gets scared and hides…’

Amazing.

I’ve seen it several times (I used it when I taught cross-cultural communication) and there would still be times when I thought, ‘I hate this bit.’

It’s black and white shapes on a screen!

But it seems we are hard-wired to look at the world and find intention.

Don’t tell me you’ve never said: ‘My laptop wants to connect to the printer, but the printer’s having none of it’?

And isn’t there that condition where people think they’re surrounded by intentionless zombies? (And yes, I tried to Google it, but you try ‘zombies disorder intention’ and see how far you get).

So, evidently when the ability to assign intention is broken, it’s a disorder.

(Can I write ‘evidently’ when I didn’t come up with any evidence? Well, evidently. I’ll never be a scientist.)

The impact-intention fiasco

Stone, Patton, Heen and Fisher from the Harvard Negotiation Project talk about a phenomenon in their pretty damn useful book Difficult Conversations. *

We infer someone’s intention from the impact their actions have on us.

All too often, if we feel hurt, we presume they intended to hurt us.

(The reverse of this is often true: ‘But I didn’t mean to hurt you…’)

Even sitting here in the food court, I can look around me and think I know what the guy at the tea stall is thinking just by glancing at him.

(He’s pretty happy that that nice girl is working the till.)

We can’t help it.

Ventilating your certainty – or give them a break

So my suggestion? Become deliberately less certain about people’s intentions, especially when they’re pissing you off or stressing you out.

I find five:

One really bad one
One really good one
One mildly bad
One mildly good
One really out there

For example…

He didn’t reply to my email because:

He thinks I’m an utter douche-hat
He thinks I’m a god, but doesn’t know how to tell me
He thinks I’m pretty ok, but got busy
He thinks I’m a bit of an arse, so hasn’t prioritised replying
He was up all night worried about the environment, so hasn’t switched on any electrical appliances today.

(What? They only have to be possible, not probable).

Theory’s not good enough

Theoretically, you can understand that you don’t really know someone’s intentions.

But I find that actually stopping, going wide and seeing what’s happening in front of me, then finding five alternative intentions helps my mind to really realise that I’m treating imagination as fact.

Then, perhaps, I can behave a little bit less like a freaked-out freakazoid.

Or, you know, ask them what their intention was.

I know.

Asking.

Radical, eh?

*(And, yes, FTC that book link is an affiliate link.)