Sometimes we're right.

Often we're not.​​​​​​​

 

And yet those guesses determine an extraordinary amount of what happens between people.

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The problem isn't that people don't understand other people's minds well enough. The deeper problem is that they don't recognize how they are constructing their understanding in the first place. In other words:​ 

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CAToM is about developing a better way of thinking about people. 

 

This is the realm of mentalization.

 

When we mentalize, we don’t read minds. We reason about minds.

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To develop this skill, we have created the CAToM framework: a framework of smaller, interconnected frameworks that make the process, components, dimensions, and levels of mentalization visible and easier to work with.

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CAToM provides a systematic way to reason about minds while keeping one crucial limitation in view: our understanding of another person’s mind is always constructed through our own mental states, memories, expectations, assumptions, and projections.

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Because when we better understand the mental states and perspectives that may be behind behavior, we can make better sense of what has happened, make better predictions about what may happen next, and make better decisions about what to do.

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Reason about minds → Explain behavior → Anticipate possibilities → Make better decisions​​​​​​

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So, let's become better at working out what might be going on—and let's remain aware that we're the ones constructing the explanation!