“Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.”
First Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC · spoken to the prophet Samuel at the choosing of David
Chapter 8
On Reading Another Person
“As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.”
Book of Proverbs, c. 700 BC · Hebrew wisdom collection
“Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.”
Book of Proverbs, c. 700 BC · Hebrew wisdom collection
“See what a man does. Mark his motives. Examine in what things he rests. How can a man conceal his character?”
Confucius, c. 500 BC · Chinese teacher of the Spring and Autumn period
“Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place.”
Hillel, c. 10 AD · sage of the Mishnah, teacher in Jerusalem
“Enter into every man's ruling faculty; and also let every other man enter into thine.”
Marcus Aurelius, c. 175 AD · Roman emperor and Stoic
“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”
Walt Whitman, 1855 · American poet and wartime nurse
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat.”
George Eliot, 1872 · pen name of Mary Ann Evans, English novelist
People can read complex mental states from the eyes alone. How well they do it varies widely, and it predicts everyday social understanding.
Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues, 2001 · psychologists who built the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test
Across twenty-five experiments, imagining another person's viewpoint did not make people more accurate about that person. Asking them directly did.
Tal Eyal, Mary Steffel and Nicholas Epley, 2018 · psychologists testing perspective taking against perspective getting
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