University of Birmingham researchers have found that people with strong mind reading abilities — the ability to understand and take the perspective of another person’s feelings and intentions — are more likely to cooperate to successfully complete tasks than people with weaker mind reading abilities.

These qualities, which the researchers dubbed “theory of mind,” are not necessarily related to intelligence.

Theory of mind (ToM) skills, they said, can be improved through training programs to foster improved cooperation in the workplace.

“As a psychology researcher, I often get asked if I can read minds, and while this is often said to me as a joke, humans do have mind reading abilities,” said lead researcher Roksana Markiewicz. “Our study shows that these qualities are clearly important in activities that require cooperation.”

In the study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: LMC, the research team measured theory of mind in over 400 participants.

Sorted into pairs, the participants joined a researcher on a zoom call where they played a series of communication games.

Each participant had a set of visual clues on their screen, which could not be viewed by their partner, the researchers noted.

They then had to communicate about the different sets of clues and use them together to solve a puzzle.

Participants with high theory of mind abilities and who were matched with people who had similarly high ToM scores cooperated more effectively than players matched with low ToM abilities, the researchers found. This is likely due to a heightened ability to align in the same mental space and to recover rapidly when misalignment occurs, the team said.

Similarly, the researchers found that failures in cooperation were more common among participants with low ToM abilities.

According to the study, this may be due to participants experiencing a harder time finding ways to align their thinking, leading to more frequent mistakes, and poorer recovery from mistakes.

“We show for the first time that cooperation is not all about you,” said Roksana. “Even if you have excellent mind reading abilities yourself, it will still be advantageous to cooperate with someone with similar abilities, so choose your cooperation partner wisely!”