Theories of understanding others: The need for a new account and the guiding role of the person model theory

Abstract

What would be an adequate theory of social understanding? In the last
decade, the philosophical debate has focused on Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and Interaction Theory as the three possible candidates. In the following, we look carefully at each of these and describe its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on this
critical analysis, we formulate the need for a new account of social understanding. We propose the Person Model Theory as an independent new account which has greater explanatory power compared to the existing theories.

Full text

Belgrade Philosophical Annual 31 2018 doi: 10.5937/BPA1831127C
Sabrina Coninx Original Scientific Paper
Albert Newen, UDK 165.242.2
Ruhr-Universität Bochum1
THEORIES OF UNDERSTANDING OTHERS:
THE NEED FOR A NEW ACCOUNT
AND THE GUIDING ROLE
OF THE PERSON MODEL THEORY
Abstract. What would be an adequate theory of social understanding? In the last
decade, the philosophical debate has focused on Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and
Interaction Theory as the three possible candidates. In the following, we look carefully
at each of these and describe its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on this
critical analysis, we formulate the need for a new account of social understanding. We
propose the Person Model Theory as an independent new account which has greater
explanatory power compared to the existing theories.
1. Introduction
Humans are hyper-social beings that are highly dependent on adequate
interaction with others. Right after birth our survival depends on social
interaction, and this remains a key aspect of biological, economic and social
success throughout our entire lives. Given the phylogenetic and ontogenetic
relevance of social interaction, researchers across disciplines aim for an
adequate theory of how humans are able to understand others. This aim
has not yet been definitively reached, but recently the debate has received
new input after a decade of stagnation (in the 90s) within a philosophical
debate virtually restricted to the choice between Simulation Theory and
Theory Theory. Now, multiple accounts are on the table. This motivates us
to clarify the main positions, their arguments and their relations to each
other. We proceed as follows: first, we dedicate one section apiece to each
central (class of) positions, namely Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and
Interaction Theory. Based on the advantages and disadvantages that these
accounts reveal, we argue in a second step in favor of what we call Person
Model Theory.
1 For fruitful contributions we would like to thank Atesh Koul and Julia Reh as well as
two anonymous reviewers. The paper was supported by the DFG-Research Training
Group (no. GRK2185) “Situated Cognition” and by the DFG-project (NE 576/14-1) “The
structure and development of understanding actions and reasons”.

128 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
2. Philosophical Theories of Mind-Reading
Three competing alternatives enjoy the lion’s share of discussion
within the philosophy of ‘mind-reading’. Theory Theory introduces theory-
based inferences relying on folk-psychological rules as the central basis for
understanding others. This view may account for a great deal of explicit
and reflective social understanding after age 4 or 5. However, it seems to
be inadequate to account for the intuitive understanding of others which
develops rather early in infancy and remains active even after we have
acquired the capacity for explicit theory-based inferences. Simulation Theory
is especially suited to account for the early intuitive social understanding
that takes place on the basis of simulating the mental state of other subjects.
However, one main deficit is that the simulation process may not be possible
in many real-life situations, including observations of persons with mental
disorders or radically different cultural backgrounds. Moreover, it appears
questionable whether this theory is an adequate framework to integrate the
basic mirror neuron story on which most defenders of this account strongly
rely. Interaction Theory argues plausibly for the importance of direct and
smart perception in social understanding as well as for the distinguishing role
of online interaction. However, when seen in the light of recently available
empirical evidence, Interaction Theory overestimates the primacy of basic
forms of direct social coordination.
2.1 Theory Theory
The core idea of “Theory Theory’ (TT) is the claim that the capacity to
understand others is based on a folk-psychological theory that is used for
systematic inferences. Humans employ a folk-psychological theory (i.e. an
abstract and coherent system of law-like assumptions) to derive the mental
states of others, such as their beliefs, attitudes, desires or emotions, and to
thereby anticipate their future behavior.
A modular version of TT is provided by Baron-Cohen (1995), according
to which the human psychological system is composed of various modules
which interpret the world in accordance with an inborn organizational
structure evolved through natural selection. Each module is tailored to solve
a certain adaptive problem, and correspondingly there exists a specialized
mindreading system designed to comprehend and predict the behavior
of other subjects. Due to its linkage with perceptual processes, this system
enables the recognition of visible cues reliably indicating the internal mental
states of others. The flexible and fast inference of the complete range of
mental states from observable signals depends on the management of the
‘Theory-of-Mind-Mechanism’ (ToMM).
In contrast, Gopnik & Wellman (1992) assume that children gradually
develop a Theory-of-Mind (ToM) ability that is based on the same cognitive

 eories of Understanding Others 129
mechanisms that adults apply in the development of scientific theories.
During a constant learning process, children generate general assumptions
about unobservable entities, formulate expectations, adjust their theory in
accordance with the evidential data they collect through experience, invent
auxiliary hypothesis and replace their theoretical constructs and rules in
the light of continuously occurring counter-evidences. The progressive
improvement of this causal-explanatory theory about how others come to
perform specific actions finally leads to a coherent representational system of
propositional attitudes.
Accordingly, the main difference between those two accounts concerns
the acquisition of the ability to explicitly represent the mental states of others.
Gopnik & Wellman claim that the ToM ability is based on a psychological
theory which passes through the same dynamic process of prediction,
falsification and adjustment as do scientific theories, until it reaches the status
of a mature theory which complies with the demands of a full-blown ToM
ability. Conversely, Baron-Cohen argues for a phased maturing of distinct
innate modules, where the ToMM comes into operation only in the final stage.
Nevertheless, both accounts agree on the assumption that from a certain point
in infantile development humans refer to a complex theory-like structure of
mentalistic knowledge to infer the propositional attitudes of others.
This idea is supported by experimental studies proving that approximately
around the age of 4 children possess the mentalistic abilities to pass the so-
called ‘false belief task’, an experimental setup which has been implemented
in widely known versions by Wimmer & Perner (1983). According to Baron-
Cohen (1995), at this age children have mastered the use of the ToMM, while
Gopnik & Wellman (1992) interprets the results as a further improvement
of their causal-explanatory theory based on previous experiences of false
prediction. Independently from the question of ontogenetic genesis, the
employment of theory-based inferences is treated as the general epistemic
strategy used by older children and adults in everyday life. This inferential
mindreading mechanism proves especially useful in understanding other
subjects which differ fundamentally in their mindset and their behavioral
patterns from oneself. Such situations might occur in contact with members
of other cultures, with persons suffering from mental diseases, or with animals
(Newen 2015a). Furthermore, humans tend to use the epistemic strategy of
TT when a social situation offers merely a small number of perceptual cues
for the internal state of persons involved (Baron-Cohen 1995).
According to TT, theory-based inferences are the primary mentalistic
strategy. However, TT overlooks the possibility of having direct access to many
basic mental phenomena, simply by simulating the other’s situation or directly
perceiving their mind state. It overintellectualizes intuitive understanding in
early infancy and it underestimates the role of second-person involvement as
well as the role of one’s own experiences in understanding others.

130 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
The TT assumes the employment of a third-person viewpoint towards
another person’s mental states in a manner analogous to scientific inquiry.
Nevertheless, the ability to comprehend and predict behavior in mentalistic
terms becomes particularly important in interpersonal cooperation where
the mindreading person does not merely function as an observer but as a
dynamic interacting part (Di Paolo & De Jaegher 2012). The worry is that
the observational stance which is usually adequate in science is only an
exceptional perspective in understanding others, while humans are frequently
involved in second-person interactions (Vogeley, Schilbach & Newen 2013;
Schilbach et al. 2013). Furthermore, instead of relying on a theory, people
sometimes just rely on their own sparse experiences in similar situations as a
basis for mindreading (Goldman 1992).
The method of the TT is grounded on the assumption that internal
mental states are only accessible due to complex inferences whereas
observational behavior constitutes the evidential basis for further theoretical
considerations. Conversely, understanding others does not always require
such intellectual capacities (Gallagher 2008). At least within human culture,
we seem to possess the universal ability to directly perceive basic emotions
(Ekman & Friesen 1971; Gallagher 2008; Newen et al. 2015). Even young
infants are able to intuitively understand others although they have not yet
acquired an explicit or implicit theory of systematically interconnected beliefs.
Ontogenetic studies clearly demonstrate that infants of less than one year of
age are sensitive in their reactions to the affective expressions of caretakers,
as in the visual cliff experiment (Sorce et. al. 1985), and they expect a smooth
interaction pattern which leads to irritation if not used, as in the still face
paradigm (Weinberg et. al. 2008).
2.2 Simulation Theory
In contrast to TT, ‘Simulation Theory’ (ST) dismisses the assumption
that humans use a specific ‘theory’ to understand other people’s minds.
Rather, subjects simulate the others’ situations and ‘put themselves in the
other’s shoes’. The ST account does not need to presuppose a generalized set
of laws similar to science, and it is characterized as information-poor mind-
reading (Goldman 1992) as it does not presuppose an interconnected set
of beliefs or belief-like information. However, as argued by Gordon (1986,
1992), simulating other minds does not merely mean to project one’s own
situation, as it also requires necessary adjustments concerning other persons
and their perspectives. It is suggested that ST is routed in phylogenetically
and ontogenetically basic mechanisms, taking advantage, for instance,
of human abilities to read gaze direction or to imitate others (Gallese &
Goldman 1998). Simulation enables subjects to generate explanations for the
behavior of others and to predict how they are most likely to act in the future
(Goldman 1989; Gordon 1992; Spaulding 2010). Some of these simulations

 eories of Understanding Others 131
are thought of as conscious and voluntary processes (Goldman 2006), others
as unconscious and automatic in the sense that they do not require access or
control over the stimulation processes (Gordon 1992).
Egocentric errors or biases, i.e. the influences of the mindreader’s own
mental states on the ascription of mental states to others, provide the first
evidence for ST (Goldman & Jordan 2013). A paradigmatic example is
the so-called curse of knowledge. This term designates the phenomenon
that the participant’s own knowledge influences his attribution to another
person, although the participant is informed about the difference between
their own and the other person’s knowledge (Birch & Bloom 2003; Camerer,
Loewenstein & Weber 1989; Nickerson 1999). ST also gathers support from
neurophysiological studies where, for instance, amygdala lesions do not only
strongly reduce the experience of fear in patients, but also their ability to
recognize the fear of others on the basis of their facial expressions (Adolphs
et al. 1994).
The interdependence of first-person experience and third-person
observation receives further evidence from the discovery of mirror neurons.
The class of mirror neurons, first discovered in monkeys, is active both during
the performance of an action as well as during the observation of another
individual performing this very action (Di Pellegrino et al. 1992; Rizzolatti &
Craighero 2004). It has been proposed that when we observe someone perform
an action, activation in our mirror neuron system simulates the action ‘as if’
we were performing it. The discovery of mirror neurons is supposed to be the
most striking evidence for ST, as they are supposed to constitute the neural
realization of at least the automatic forms of simulation. The mirror neuron
system has thus been proposed as the basis for our understanding of others
(Gallese & Goldman 1998; Keysers & Gazzola 2009; Rizzolatti & Craighero
2004; Sinigaglia & Rizzolatti 2008).
Despite the supporting evidences for ST, the theory faces several main
issues. First, one can think of many cases in which subjects reliably predict
the experience and behavior of others without being able to simulate
them. For instance, ST is not necessary to understand persons with mental
disorders, such as patients suffering from delusion of persecution, or persons
who exhibit idiosyncratic, irrational behavior (Tversky & Kahneman 1974).
The same also holds for beings involved in radically different cultures
(Newen & Schlicht 2009). Their minds are simply too different from one’s
own to apply the epistemic strategy of simulation. Nonetheless, persons who
possess general or specific knowledge about the respective subjects are able
to understand what is going on in their minds and to successfully interact
with them (Newen 2015a). This general or specific information we make
use of can be learned as rules-of-thumb or an explicit theory, e.g. how to
deal with a schizophrenic family member, without being able to simulate this
person. Understanding based on behavioral rules-of-thumb or a theory can

132 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
be quite advanced and enables smooth interaction despite lacking short-term
or even long-term simulating or intuitive access to the deviating mindset of
the others. To justify this relevance of rules-of-thumb or explicit theories in
cases of mental disorders, we appeal to everyday experiences in dealing with
persons with different mindsets (and without knowing this mindset), but we
can also rely on studies with Asperger autistic people: they have a large deficit
in all types of intuitive or simulative epistemic access to others but they can
learn to partially compensate by learning to apply explicit theoretical rules.
This indicates that simulation is not necessary and that non-autistic people
rely on a plurality of epistemic strategies, not only simulation which can be
lacking (for details see section 3.2 the pathology argument).
Second, ST remains limited in the sense that it adopts a first-person
perspective in which the simulating individual is still considered as an
observer (Gallagher 2008). Our requirements for understanding others’
actions, however, is critical when we are interacting with them (Schilbach
et al. 2013) whereby this online interaction is often realized with non-
simulative but complementary actions (de Bruin et al. 2012). Third, the
discovery of mirror neurons does not so far explain the relation between
the first-person and third-person perspective. Mirror-neurons encode for
certain types of actions and emotion, but they do not provide an answer to
the question of how we attribute internal states to others on the basis of these
neural processes. Moreover, the neural correlate in the case of third-person
attribution of, for instance, beliefs does not involve the most characteristic
correlates of first-person attribution of belief (Vogeley et al. 2001; Vogeley
& Newen 2002), whereas ST would expect such an involvement. Thus,
despite the important discovery of the mirror neuron system, its role in
the process of understanding others still needs to be worked out in detail
and its function in cases of simulation (which might sometimes happen)
needs to be complemented by further neural processes. As long as this part
of the story is missing, the mirror neuron system remains an interesting
and still important component for automatic social processing (Neufeld et
al. 2016), but this component still needs to be integrated into a theory of
understanding others.
2.3 Interaction Theory
Interaction Theory (IT) is a phenomenologically inspired approach
which claims that we understand others primarily and most importantly in
situations of direct social interaction, which leads to the distinction between
online and offline forms of social understanding (Frith & Frith 2003). More
precisely, IT combines at least two claims: one about the important role of
direct perception of mental states of others independent from any inferences
(Gallagher 2008), and one about the primacy of understanding by adequate
interaction (Hutto & Gallagher 2008).

 eories of Understanding Others 133
IT characterizes human ‘mindreading’ as a form of smart perception.
This means that the content of our perceptual experience can be rich and
include mental phenomena in the sense that we can directly perceive the
internal states of other subjects. While some argue that the contents of
perceptual experiences are exclusively low-level properties (Tye 1995),
in recent years many people have argued that the contents of perceptual
experiences can also involve high-level entities such as causal relations
(Butterfill 2009; Siegel 2009), actions and agency (Gao et al. 2009; Rutherford
& Kuhlmeier 2013). In the same way, a phenomenological perspective is
often used to argue for the rich content of our perceptual experience in social
cognition, prominently defended by Gallagher (2008) and Zahavi (2011). The
general line of argument can be roughly characterized as follows: perceptual
experiences can be cognitively penetrated and they can thereby involve a rich
content (McPherson 2012; Vetter & Newen 2014; Newen & Vetter 2016).
Expert perception, we may say, is different from the perception of laypersons.
A chess expert has a richer perceptual content when looking at a chessboard
compared to a novice (Newen 2017). Since humans are hyper-social beings
and, thus, most likely experts in understanding others, we are able to have a
rich content in our social perception, e.g. in the perception of others’ emotions
(Zahavi 2011; Marchi & Newen 2015) or intentions (Pacherie 2005).
The relevance of direct perception has been convincingly argued for, and
as a consequence even some representatives of TT have recently started to
include direct perception as an important epistemic tool (Herschbach 2012;
Carruthers 2015). Thus, direct perception appears as a certain kind of epistemic
strategy that might be employed in different forms of mind-reading, even
from a third-person perspective. In contrast, IT accounts rely in large parts on
the assumption that the central constituent of understanding others is direct
perception in online interaction which highlights the relevance of the second-
person perspective in mind-reading (Gallagher 2002, 2008). Different versions
of IT allow for several strategies of understanding others, all of which assume
the primacy of understanding by interaction (Hutto & Gallagher 2008). De
Jaegher & Di Paolo (2007), for instance, claim that the constitutive feature of all
cases of online interaction is participatory sense-making where this is explained
in terms of coordination. According to them, the process of coordination in
interaction is constitutive in many cases of social understanding. The main
examples to support this claim are cases of special joint action based on mutual
social understanding, such as ballroom dancing.
Some evidence for the relevance of social interaction for social
understanding is drawn from developmental psychology, which distinguishes
the capacity for primary, secondary and sometimes in addition tertiary
intersubjectivity (Trevarthen & Hubley 1978; Trevarthen 1979). Primary
intersubjectivity involves the ability to reciprocate in face-to-face exchange
and starts from two months of age onwards and thereby goes beyond the very
early pure imitation abilities. It is, for instance, demonstrated in the still- face-

134 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
paradigm (Bertin & Striano 2006). Consequently, we have a communication
basis that allows even infants to exchange and read common cues via bodily
movements, gestures, facial expressions, eye direction, etc. Secondary
intersubjectivity is typically realized when triadic intentional communication
begins, e.g. in interactions involving joint attention which start at
approximately 9 months. This secondary level involves the understanding of
other people while acting together in a pragmatic context. It permits sharing
and coordinating with another person’s attention, feelings and intentions
toward a third object, event, or action (Trevarthen & Hubley 1978). While it
is assumed that primary intersubjectivity is innate and allows even newborns
to perceive other person’s mental processes, secondary intersubjectivity
develops later in the first year of life. Tertiary intersubjectivity develops when
children aged 4 begin to employ an ethical stance by beginning to manifest
explicit rationale about what is right and wrong, as well as explicit attitudes
about others’ mental states (Trevarthen 2006).
In addition, there is now more and more evidence that social cognition
is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather
than merely observing them. This is shown by systematic investigations of
the underlying neural processing, e.g. in a test of observing facial expressions
which are either directed towards oneself or towards another. While self-
directed facial expressions lead to a differential increase of neural activity
in the ventral portion of the medial prefrontal cortex and the (superficial)
amygdala, other-directed facial expressions result in a differential recruitment
of medial and lateral parietal cortex (Schilbach et al. 2006). In another study
(Schilbach et al. 2010) of two persons either realizing joint attention towards
an object or looking at different objects, it was shown that joint attention had
a specific neural profile which closely matches with the so-called mentalizing
network relying on the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate
cortex. Furthermore, it was shown that producing joint attention (e.g.
directing someone else’s gaze toward an object) activated the ventral striatum
(i.e. reward system). This indicates that activating joint attention is pleasurable
for healthy people. Together with other evidence, this triggered the claim that
we should presuppose a second-person neuroscience (Schilbach et al. 2013)
and, thus, it is convincingly argued that understanding others in a situation of
online-understanding is systematically different from understanding others
by observation without interaction.
The most important insight is delivered by the claims that online-
understanding is a specific form of understanding in contrast to offline-
understanding, and that direct perception plays a decisive role in social
understanding. This is the strongest feature of IT, but it still leaves us with
the open question whether online understanding is in fact primary to offline
understanding, and if so in which sense – phylogenetically, ontogenetically
or even constitutively. It remains questionable to what extent observations of
simple coordination can be generalized to all cases of social understanding

 eories of Understanding Others 135
and whether it is prior in comparison to the diverse other forms of social
understanding (Andrews 2012; Newen 2015a). The evidence here is uncertain
but evolutionary considerations may speak for the claim that both are equally
relevant strategies of understanding. To survive as social beings, humans
need to learn from both interaction and observation as much and as soon as
possible. Thus, a primacy claim leaves the burden of proof on the side of IT.
Furthermore, IT overlooks the importance of the long-term social
relationships which are habitual and re-activated in social interactions, e.g. in
the case of understanding a familiar person. This long-term person-centred
information can become strongly relevant in shaping an online interaction,
much more so than any specific information about the situation in which
one deals with this person, and it is also relevant in offline understanding,
such as when trying to understand the familiar person while discussing
him or her with a friend. This criticism can be condensed into one core
difference for which IT cannot account: namely, the difference between the
social understanding of a person’s actions in one and the same situation
type, where in one case the person is a complete stranger and in the other
a well-known person such as a family member or a friend. This is especially
relevant since this difference is already implemented in early infancy, e.g. the
phenomenon of infant shyness in which infants react shyly to adult strangers,
which manifests during the third quarter of the first year.2 The relevance of
prior information in the evaluation of a person’s mind-set is also reflected in
empirical studies investigating the impact of stereotypes. Culturally anchored
stereotypes (Macrae & Bodenhausen 2000) and stereotypes in general
(Macrae & Quadflieg 2010) substantially shape our understanding of others
(review: Newen 2015a, sec. 5.1–5.3).
3. Person Model Theory
3.1. Definition
The central idea of the ‘Person Model Theory’ (PMT) is twofold: On
the one hand, we need to accept that humans use a multiplicity of epistemic
strategies (theory-based inferences, simulation, direct perception, contextual
or narrative embedding) to account for all cases of understanding others.
On the other hand, we need to take into account that humans rely on prior
information stored in form of person models and situation models. As such,
2 Defenders of IT may reply that they can include memorized interactions to account for
these facts. However, this would require substantial alterations of the innate proposal of
IT in accepting memorized models of other persons. Another move would be to claim
that the memorized information is available in the form of narratives, since those are
an additional tool in IT. Although narratives are an important instrument to enrich
information about others which unfolds from 2 years of age onwards (Hutto 2008; Newen
2015), they cannot account for the relevant sensitivity in early infancy.

136 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
the PMT according to Newen (2015a, 2017) aims to answer two mainly
independent questions.3
The first question asks which epistemic strategy humans use to access the
mental states of others and to gather information about them. Concerning the
epistemic strategy, PMT defends the multiplicity view: we do not rely on one
epistemic strategy as is suggested by most proposals in the literature (e.g. ST
claims that simulation is the only or at least the absolute dominant strategy).
On the contrary, human social understanding rather relies on a multiplicity
of strategies which are for the most part implicitly activated by contextual
cues. These strategies include at least simulation strategies, theory-based
inferences, and direct perception, as well as understanding based on social
interaction and narratives. A plurality of social understanding was described
by Andrews (2012), but she did not work out the important difference
between epistemic strategies and the relevant background information which
allows a systematic analysis of the rich and varying phenomena of so-called
mindreading.
The second question asks how the information we obtain to understand
others is stored and organized. The central claim is that information about
other humans as individuals or types of persons is stored and organized
in person models. These models are realized on two levels, namely the
implicit level of person schemata and the explicit level of person images.
Person models are representational structures like objects files unifying the
information about an entity, e.g. another individual or a group of individuals,
in a form that is less demanding than a full-fledged theory as proposed in TT.
Concisely, a model contains a unified body of information. This
minimal integrated package of information enables us to understand a part
of the world, e.g. by enabling us to represent an entity, such as an object, a
property, a process, etc. The resulting model enables a person to represent
such an entity in our world. If the information of a model is enriched over
time, it unfolds into an understanding of the represented entity. In the
case of understanding others, the relevant models are especially models of
persons. Thus, a person model of an individual constitutes a unified body
of information about the relevant individual. A person model typically has a
label, namely the person’s name, and it is under normal circumstances causally
anchored in an entity which is ideally identical to the person in question.
3 The notion of ‘epistemic strategies’ is understood in a wide sense and is here used equivalent
to ‘cognitive strategies’, i.e. it does not imply specific high-level epistemic abilities like
conscious deliberation and, thus, is not necessarily demanding. The answer to the question
concerning which epistemic strategy humans use leaves still quite some room for an answer
to the second question. One could in principle defend a simulation theory concerning
the epistemic strategy and argue that the relevant background information for simulation
is organized in person models or organized as a folk psychological theory, etc. Our view
consists in the combination of the multiplicity claim concerning epistemic access and the
organization of background information as person models.

 eories of Understanding Others 137
(Under certain circumstances, this condition might not be fulfilled, either
because something went wrong or because the respective person is non-
existent, such as in the case of fictional characters). It is further argued that
philosophical theories so far have tended to ignore the fact that we usually
understand others by relying on rich background information concerning
them and their situation. (A possible exception within the representatives of
IT is Gallagher (2011).) In addition to person models we also need situation
models – as we will argue below.
The two central aspects of PMT, the multiplicity of epistemic strategies
and the organization of relevant background information in form of models,
are explicated and motivated in more detail below.
3.2 Main Concepts
A Multiplicity of Strategies for Understanding Others
There are two main arguments employed to defend the multiplicity view
concerning epistemic strategies. (i) The ontogenetic argument indicates that
the ontogenetic development of understanding others can best be explained
by describing the development of a multiplicity of epistemic strategies such
that no strategy is eliminated once acquired. (ii) The pathology argument
turns on the observation that some cases of mental disorder can best be
described by demonstrating that some epistemic strategies are lacking and,
thus, others – which are still available – are used as substitutions, even
though they often cannot compensate for the complete lack of the original
strategies.
Ad (i) The ontogenetic argument: Quite early on, babies rely on online
understanding by coordinated interaction. They develop an expectation of
an interaction scheme as demonstrated by the still-face paradigm. Direct
perception is very relevant starting from early infancy, as proven by face-based
sensitivity for and recognition of emotions based on direct perception (Zahavi
2011; Newen et al. 2015). During ontogeny, we develop further important
strategies for understanding others, which also include strategies of offline
understanding. It will also be indicated that we cannot observe any general
dominance of one of these strategies, but that the activation of a specific
strategy is dependent on the context while strategies are often activated in
combination. At the age of 9 to 12 months children learn to understand
others as participating in joint attention and joint action (Tomasello
1999), where the latter is demonstrated e.g. by understanding the other as
following a plan like jointly constructing a Lego house (at 18 months). At
2.5 years children become sensitive to rules and norms such that they insist
that group members follow rules. This involves an understanding of others
as rule-followers, i.e. as members of the group governed by expectations
concerning rule-following behaviour in relevant situations (Rakoczy et al.

138 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
2008). Furthermore, there is the well-studied ability to understand others
by explicit false beliefs (age 4 onwards) which enables explicit theory-based
inferences or explicit simulation strategies to understand others.4 This is
correlated with early moral understanding (see above). Finally, understanding
by explicit second-order false beliefs develops between age 7 to 9 (Wimmer &
Perner 1983). Additional epistemic strategies can be fruitfully distinguished
as developing later in the process of growing up.
There is consensus that these abilities come gradually, and that abilities
acquired early remain intact and in use even when more sophisticated
abilities are available. To illustrate: looking at the face of a person, I may
directly perceive an expression of anger. However, when I am informed that
she is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and therefore has severe limitations
in controlling her facial expression, I will evaluate the same facial expression
quite differently. Despite having a standard ‘reading’ of emotions from
facial expressions, this new knowledge about Parkinson’s disease helps me
to override my spontaneous perception. Although the direct perceptual
impression is still in place, I will override it in this context and use a theory-
based inference to reach a new evaluation of the person, relying on other cues
including the person’s linguistic utterances. This also illustrates the context-
dependence of the preference of one strategy over the other.
Ad (ii) The pathology argument: Some mental disorders essentially
involve significant deficits in social understanding, and these cases can best
be explained such that at least one strategy of the normal bundle of strategies
is lacking. This can be illustrated by looking at people with Asperger’s
syndrome who lack an intuitive understanding of others. They are unable to
directly perceive emotions based on facial expressions and they tend to avoid
social interactions (Vogeley 2012). Thus, intuitive understanding by primary
interaction or direct perception is (almost) unavailable for them. Since
they also tend to experience themselves as being different (Vogeley 2012),
they do not use simulation as a strategy. Consequently, they can only refer
to theory-based inferences that might prove useful to understand others in
certain situations (Kuzmanovic et al. 2011). However, they lack an intuitive
generalization of this knowledge. Thus, in new or slightly modified situations,
they again feel lost since they do not even have a theory on which basis to
apply theory-based inferences. Since we have to deal with new or modified
situations almost every day, autistic people notice their tendency to get lost
and many of them avoid social encounters. This special situation is explained
by the fact that in contrast to the usual availability of multiple strategies of
4 It is an open debate how exactly theory-of-mind abilities and understanding by narratives
are related to each other. While Hutto (2008) claims that the latter is more primitive than
the former, we presuppose here that understanding by narratives is based on a theory-of-
mind ability and enriches it. Thus, we do not discuss its role in addition to theory-of-
mind abilities.

 eories of Understanding Others 139
understanding, they are left mainly with theory-based inferences and need
an explicit corpus of knowledge to apply them (since they lack intuitive
generalization) (for further arguments concerning the multiplicity view, see
Newen 2015a, 2015b; Fiebich & Coltheart 2015; Fiebich 2015).
In sum, social understanding usually relies on a multiplicity of epistemic
strategies which are selected in a highly context-dependent manner (as
demonstrated with the Parkinson case). Concerning the epistemic strategies
of social understanding, we may indicate that social understanding is strongly
dependent on the actual context.5
Person Models as Unified Information Structures (Person Files)
Having argued for the multiplicity view of epistemic strategies for
social understanding, we shall focus now on the organization of the relevant
background information in the form of so-called person models. There are
only a few authors who have considered and developed an account discussed
under the label ‘Model Theory’ (Newen & Schlicht 2009; Maibom 2009;
Godfrey-Smith 2005). The early motivation of Godfrey-Smith (2005) and
Maibom (2009) offers a general answer to the status of our folk-psychological
knowledge, both adopting the perspective of philosophy of science. Maibom
defends a version of the claim that folk psychological knowledge has the
status of a model, while understanding a model as a special version of a
theory such that she remains in the camp of TT. One important advance is
that she argues that a model can be based on ordinary everyday knowledge
and need not presuppose special knowledge. Godfrey-Smith agrees with the
latter characterization but also makes important additions by suggesting a
specific understanding of ‘model’ which is different from Maibom’s version.
According to Godfrey-Smith, a model should not be understood in the
tradition of a semantic view of theories. Furthermore, a model can be used
in different ways such that we should distinguish between a model and its
specific interpretation which he calls a ‘construal’. Newen’s6 account (2015a;
2018) shares the denial of a semantic understanding of ‘model’ and in
addition denies that a model needs to have the structure of a theory. We need
a widened understanding of ‘model’ because this is necessary to enable us to
account for the ontogeny of social understanding which is not the focus of
either Maibom or Godfrey-Smith.
5 PMT is a full-blown theory of understanding others and is has been developed in a
sequence of articles (Newen/Schlicht 2009; Newen 2015a; Newen 2015b; Newen 2018).
In this article, the structural organization of background knowledge in form of person
models and situation models as well as their interaction is in focus.
6 The use of the third person here indicates that the second author, Coninx, although
accepting the general line of the PMT, does not accept all facets of the person model
theory as presented by Newen (2015).

140 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
In line with Godfrey-Smith, Newen argues that a model can be much
more parsimoniously and flexibly used, for instance by relying merely on
particular parts of the model to understand certain parts of our world. The
used model is not necessarily a theory of the world. Due to its ontogenetic
perspective, Newen’s (2015a) view on models needs to be distinguished
from the claim that “one person predicts another by using a theoretical
model” (Godfrey-Smith 2005, p. 7). Social understanding involving models
can take place at different levels (see previous section) and one basic
type is online understanding by coordinated interaction. In these cases, the
model is not theoretical but perhaps just a memorized interaction schema
associated with and expected in relation to a certain person. Models can be
rather parsimonious information units which especially cluster information
about one person (or one situation).7 Focusing on information units
about persons, their usage in early ontogeny can be without a theoretical
stance: modelling a part of the world can be a different epistemic business
than building a theory about it – and in early infancy, it clearly is – while
models may unfold into theories during the systematic enrichment and
restructuring of information.
Newen’s paradigm case of a structure of a model is what is described as a
mental file (Perry 1990; Recanati 2012; Newen & Marchi 2016). We can create
a mental file of an object with very little information about it and start to
systematically enrich and restructure the information unified in this file until
it deserves to be called a concept (Newen & Marchi 2016). Since combinations
of concepts constitute beliefs and combinations of beliefs constitute theories,
there is a cognitive route from parsimonious models of single entities in the
world to a theory about complex parts of the world. Thus, folk-psychological
knowledge which is quite different and variable in structure is usually given
as a model, and may unfold into a theory.
There is for the time being only one philosophical approach which
aims to unfold the rather general framework of relying on ‘models’ into a
detailed account of understanding others. This is the recent work of Newen
(Newen & Schlicht 2009; Newen & Vogeley 2011; Newen 2014, 2015a, 2018).
The central claim here is that relevant information about other humans as
individuals or types of persons is stored and organized in person models
which are either implicitly available person schemata or explicitly available
7 Our notion of ‘model’ can be negatively characterized as different from semantic models
which have a very constrained structure as well as from complex models in philosophy
of science which always have the status of explicitly available structures. Models
positively characterized are systematic informational units which integrate information
about an enitity into a file which is stored in our memory system. The whole integrated
information of the file or a part it can be activated (together with at least one epistemic
strategy) and remain implicit to register matching properties, to trigger expectations or
evaluations concerning the relevant entity: this information could (but need not) also
enter an explicit prediction or evaluation of the relevant entity.

 eories of Understanding Others 141
person images. The implicit person schema can typically be described as a
unity of sensory-motor abilities and basic mental phenomena associated with
one human being (or a group of humans). The schema typically functions
without any explicit considerations and is activated when directly seeing or
interacting with another person. In contrast to this implicit dimension, a
person image is constituted by explicitly (i.e. typically consciously) available
information concerning physical and mental phenomena associated with and
unified to belong to one human being (or a group of humans). Thus, a person
image is the unity of rather easily and explicitly available information about
a person, including the person’s mental setting. Both person schemata and
person images can be developed for an individual, e.g. one’s mother, brother,
best friend etc., as well as for groups of people, e.g., anthropologists, students,
medical doctors, lawyers, etc. Furthermore, person models are not only
created for other people, but also for oneself.
There is recent empirical evidence from neuroscience that we actually
construct and rely on person models (Hassabis et al. 2013, see Newen 2015a,
section 5.3). It has been shown that there are neural correlates of imagining
two central features of the ‘big five’ in personality psychology, i.e. ‘agreeable’
in contrast to anti-social personalities, and ‘introvert’ in contrast to extrovert
personalities. Furthermore, it was shown that the combinations of personality
types like ‘agreeable-ness’ and ‘extroversion’ are represented in a systematic
modulation of the medial prefrontal cortex.
Situation models and their intertwinement with person models
An account of full-blown PMT must mention one further component,
namely situation models. Humans have the ability to understand others by
completely abstracting from the individual: e.g. it can be sufficient to predict
the behaviour of a restaurant guest that we expect her to act according to
the conventions of a high-class restaurant. This type of understanding is
developed together with rule-based understanding of others at the age of 2.5
years (see above). In new contexts, especially in new cultural contexts, we
begin by employing an understanding of others mainly on the basis of noticing
rule-based behaviour which we discern as being adequate in a situation. For
instance, as a European one learns to understand other restaurant guests
by learning the rule-based behaviour characteristic of high-class restaurant
situations in Japan (special greetings, taking off shoes, sitting in a special way,
etc.). Thus, we not only create person models but also situation models, and
our understanding of others uses both types of model as input and selects
the model most helpful for evaluating the other person’s behaviour. In the
following, we explicate in two steps, first, why situation models are necessary
and, second, how person models and situation models interact in the social
evaluation process (figure adapted from Newen 2015a, p. 21).

142 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
The relevance of situation models is based on the observation that
situation models are sufficient to understand others, if we need not account
for the individual person we aim to understand. If one is not interested in
another as an individual, but merely as another agent in a situation, the
situation itself often offers sufficient information to predict the behaviour of
the people and to coordinate one’s own action with theirs, e.g. many shopping
interactions are of this type. Furthermore, situation models allow us to
predict the behaviour of all people fulfilling typical roles in the situation, e.g.
the role of the guest, the seller or the cleaning person within a restaurant.
Since humans frequently need to coordinate actions with many persons in
the same situation, understanding others on the basis of situation models is a
very important tool for life in larger groups. The distinction between person
models and situation models is also captured in the difference between reason
explanations which focus on consideration of an individual, on the one hand,
and causal history explanations which highlight the relevant situation and
how it developed, on the other hand (Malle et al. 2006, Fiebich 2015).
Thus, a full-fledged theory of understanding others needs to include
situation models as well as basic ideas of the interdependence of personal
models and situation models. A situation model is a pattern constituted
by a sequence of typical activities or events in a type of situation involving
human agents whereby the agents are only represented in an unspecific way
comparable to variables in logic. Paradigmatically, this includes situations,
such as entering a fast-food restaurant to arrange your lunch, entering a class
room to participate in a university seminar, entering a bar to meet friends,
etc. We need situation models to coordinate quickly with others according
to social expectations in such situations, even if we do not know the persons
involved. Of course, we need to account for the fact that situation models

 eories of Understanding Others 143
vary intensely across cultures, e.g. how you have to behave in a restaurant is
quite different in Japan and the United States.
Finally, we will briefly illustrate the second aspect, i.e. how person
models and situation models interact. If we consider once more the restaurant
situation, then a typical case could be that while waiting in the queue to order
lunch, one starts to communicate with the person in front. This immediately
initiates a basic person perception (Macrae & Quadflieg 2010; Newen 2015a)
which leads to the creation of a person model, at least, in the working memory.
Whether it is transferred into long-term memory depends on attentional
features that rely on the estimated relevance of this interaction for future life.
For instance, if the person in front impresses us a lot or if we discover that
she will start working in the same company, this would lead to the creation
of an explicit person model, i.e. a person image, which is enriched step by
step during each encounter. If we have a minimally rich person model, it is
cognitively economical to rely on this person model whenever interacting
with the person. It allows for much better predictions because we can account
not only for the general information concerning a situation type, but also for
the more fine-grained information about this very person.
Situation models can be enriched by person models and the other way
around: a situation model is a pattern constituted by a sequence of typical
activities or events in a type of situation involving human agents whereby
the agents are only represented in an unspecific way comparable to variables
in logic. Person models can enrich these variables in a way that can be
compared to substituting a variable by a logical constant (by fitting the
person representations into the unspecific agent slots of the event structure).
If one engages in a social understanding with an activation of a person
model, it can of course be naturally enriched by integrating the person
model into a relevant situation model (by including person representations
into an event sequence). The richest understanding of a social situation is
possible, if we have a detailed situation model. For instance, when we are
at a formal birthday party, and we know each member of the party, we can
enrich the situation model with all relevant person models. This allows us
to deliver detailed explanations and make detailed predictions. To sum up:
We rely on both person models and situation models. Situations models
are more important for basic social perceptions of situation including the
agents involved in the situation (but ignoring them as individuals), while
person models are especially fruitful, if an understanding of the individuals
themselves is relevant. The richest understanding demands a combination of
both and their integration in a structurally fitting manner.
3.3 General Profile and Advantages of PMT
The person model theory (PMT) contains both, a theory about the
epistemic strategies involved in social understanding and a theory about
the organizational structure of relevant background information, either in

144 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
person models or situation models. The resulting general picture of social
understanding is the following. Social understanding needs the activation of
at least one epistemic strategy. Epistemic strategies can be used individually
or in combination as they gradually occur in ontogeny. Epistemic strategies
are activated in a particular situation by social cues. This activation can be
based on a single social cue, e.g. biological motion, but typically, it relies
on the perception of many social cues at once, e.g. in the case of emotion
recognition based on facial expression, body posture, gestures. Moreover,
in the activation of a particular epistemic strategy typically person models
and/or situation models are involved. Social understanding does not merely
rely on directly perceivable social cues but also on background information
organized in models. Person models and situation models of certain entities
also unfold ontogenetically (Newen & Marchi 2016) and are systematically
enriched by the new information a person receives. Thus, these models are
not rigid but dynamically developing.8 This enables flexible and reliable
social registration, prediction and evaluation. The interaction of epistemic
strategies, person models and situation models enables thereby a great variety
of types of social understanding. In a simplified overview, we distinguished
ontogenetically three main types of social understanding:
(i) online understanding of others realized as coordinated interaction or
as participating in joint attention and joint action, typically based
on intuitive epistemic strategies like direct perception or low-level
simulation in combination with person model information, e.g. a
child smoothly interacting with its mother activating an interaction
schema or joint attention concerning an object.
(ii) understanding of others as rule-followers realized as expecting others
to follow rules which are constitutive for members of a social group
in a specific situation. This is based on person models for types of
individuals which are also called person models of groups (Newen
2015a), e.g. when we recognize a person as a member of a soccer
club, we expect him to be a good soccer player preparing for a
game when it is time to do so or to help preparing a club party
when the celebration of the local championship is announced.
These examples illustrate that person models of groups (types of
individuals) are essentially involved and they have to be combined
with situation models to activate specific expectations. Furthermore,
some epistemic strategy has to be activated and this can be any
of the available strategies. Such a flexible use of the most efficient
epistemic strategy is also presupposed for the third type of social
understanding:
8 This implies that the epistemic strategies are not only used to register and evaluate a
social situation but they are at the same time a tool of adjusting the contents of person
models and situation models.

 eories of Understanding Others 145
(iii) understanding of others as having an individual mindset of attitudes
realized by the attribution of beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, etc. to
others in a certain situation. This is based on person models of
individuals in a specific situation. Thus, persons are represented
as having individual beliefs and desires such that e.g. they can be
predicted not to behave according to a relevant social roles they
have in a situation but according to their individual mindset which
can differ from relevant social expectations.
In the scope of this article, the PMT cannot be outlined in more detail.
However, it has been illustrated that PMT clearly differs from its competitors.
PMT can account for the plurality and development of epistemic strategies
employed by a person in different situations with regard to different agents and
in different stages of ontogenetic development. In addition, the introduction
of the person model enables the understanding of several important aspects
which at least one of the competitors fails to account for:
1. The person model theory can convincingly account for the
difference between understanding a complete stranger by relying on
a situation model and understanding a well-known familiar person
by relying on a rich and more specific person model. No other
theory can account for the systematic understanding of individual
idiosyncrasies and the relevance of cultural schemata of how to
behaviour in a particular context. On the contrary, person models
and situation models can do the job.
2. By appealing to the distinction between implicit and explicit person
models, PMT can account for the difference between basic or
intuitive understanding and complex or theory-based understanding
of others which is underdeveloped in TT.
3. With the difference between a person model of oneself and
person models of others, PMT can account for an understanding
of others which goes beyond the own-self model as the sole
source of understanding others, contrary to ST. PMT can account
both for an understanding of others based on the self-model and
an understanding of others based on the person model of other
individuals or types of individuals which can be radically different
from the self-model.
4. PMT differs from IT, since it addresses not only basic online
understanding, but also offline social understanding.
5. Furthermore, with the outlined dynamics between situation models
and person models, PMT especially offers a tool to account for
situational and personal features as well as the cultural variation of
their relevance. Thus, it seems correct to call PMT a new approach,
not just a variant of an existing one.

146 Sabrina Coninx, Albert Newen
3.4 Challenges
PMT is a new framework to account for understanding others which
confers several advantages compared to the alternative accounts. Nevertheless,
it is still accompanied by open questions and challenges. This includes
among others a more precise investigation of how the different epistemic
strategies interact and under which conditions one strategy is preferred in
case it conflicts with another. Moreover, there is a need to clarify further how
person models are individuated and how they are cognitively implemented.
While in the published work, there is a description of an fMRI study of
Hassabis et al. (2013) that provides evidence for person models as models
of personality types (person schemata for groups), it would be helpful to
provide similar evidence concerning the implementation of person models of
individuals. PMT also needs an explication of the borderline between person
models of groups which are already general and rather general knowledge
of folk psychological rules as described by TT. Finally, a detailed description
of the interaction between situation models and person models is needed as
they strongly influence each other: a person often has different dispositions
to behave, to the point of virtually different personality traits showing up
depending on the situation. In a job situation a person may be extremely
harsh, while being friendly in a family context.
4. Concluding remarks
We discussed the four main theories of understanding others: ST, TT,
IT and PMT. While the first three accounts – which have indeed been under
discussion in the philosophical literature for quite some time – reveal critical
gaps, PMT offers a promising attempt to close these gaps, albeit still having
open questions that its defenders have to answer. The future of the debate
about social cognition will tell which theory is the most fruitful framework
and how it should be unfolded to deliver the most adequate descriptions
and predictions. This is clearly an interdisciplinary challenge which requires
the combination of insights at least from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry
and neuroscience. The current state of knowledge indicates the need for a
multidimensional and flexible understanding of human mindreading which
involves individuals, groups, cultures and situations.
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