ET's a nudist (Part 1)
What if you went to ET's planet and all of the other ETs were wearing clothes. - @brnbne
Howdy.
This tweet (1) made me laugh for a solid 20 minutes and (2) is an EXCELLENT example of the way I think about human interactions, so I’ve decided to spent the month of October discussing it.
First… let’s take a moment to consider this. How would your impression of ET change if you found out everyone else in his hometown wore clothes?
Well, within the time it took me to read the tweet, my perception of him went from innocent alien immigrant to a nudist extraterrestrial study abroad kid.
It’s a bit funny how my perception of ET quickly shifted once I considered his social world might be different than we were led to believe in the movie.
I let my imagination run a bit wild…
I realized I’d taken for granted that ET wasn’t thinking the same “complex” thoughts that humans think.
and then my imagination was doing a full sprint…
What were his ulterior motives? Why was he left behind? Would I have left him behind, too? Can he speak better English than he lets on? Was he sent by his government? And if he was sent was it for espionage or exile?
I even started playing back parts of the movie in my head again to see if there were other clues that this little man knew exactly what he was doing. I looked at the tweet replies and realized other people were engaging in the same mental exercise:
Benjamin, Deano, Kieran, my head hurts :(, and I are all engaging in what psychologists call Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind is fascinating, and is likely why “humans be like” humans be. :) Here is a definition:
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. A theory of mind includes the knowledge that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own.[1]
Theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. It enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and can be used to explain and predict—the behavior of others.[12]
This week, I challenge you to pause and notice the assumptions you might be making about how other people are thinking. This is hard to do.
What is a bit easier is noticing when your opinion of someone changes when you find out new information about their context:
One example in my life recently was when I was at gradudate student orientation session. The OG-readers of humans be like know that I am very, very, very critical of orientation programs. In this one, I found myself becoming a bit frustrated at the workshop leader for oversimplifying her advice to students.
About halfway through the session I realized she was likely doing this because about 80% of the other attendees were non-native English speakers. She had to carefully balance giving feedback that was actionable, but also semantically accessible. It was only once I considered how she may have been thinking that I considered she probably wasn’t being lazy, but strategic. My frustration transmuted to admiration.
In the next posts, I’ll introduce a few related frameworks that I was introduced to in my master’s research at LSE back in 2019. They’ve changed the way I see the world since and, as you will see, informs my current work significantly.
See you next week! - Kayla