Mind-Mindedness versus Mentalistic Interpretations of Behavior: Is Mind-Mindedness a Relational Construct?

Mind-mindedness is a measure of the tendency to represent significant others in internal-state terms and is central to supportive parent–infant relationships. The two studies reported here explored whether mind-mindedness generalizes to representations of unknown individuals, using a novel task that assessed individual differences in adults’ tendency to interpret others’ behavior with reference to their internal states: the Unknown Mother–Infant Interaction Task (UMIIT). We compared UMIIT performance to measures of mind-mindedness from (a) adults’ descriptions of close friends and partners (Study 1, N=96), and (b) mothers’ appropriate versus non-attuned comments on their infants’ internal states (Study 2, N=56). In line with the proposal that mind-mindedness is a relational construct, UMIIT performance was unrelated to mind-mindedness in both studies