Hood, Bruce - Supersense

Our difficulty in ignoring the gaze of another person shows what an important component of human social interaction it is. 17They say that the eyes are a window to the soul. I don’t know about souls, but eyes are a pretty good indicator of what someone may be thinking. You can observe this yourself the next time you are standing in line at the supermarket checkout. Just watch the rich exchange of glances between people. It’s remarkable that we are often so unaware of how important the language of the eyes is. This is one reason why it is so unnerving to have a conversation with someone who is wearing sunglasses and we cannot monitor where they are looking. Police officers wear mirrored sunglasses to intimidate suspects for this very reason.

This sensitivity and need to see another’s eyes is present from birth. Newborn babies prefer that we look them in the eye. Even though their vision is so poor that they would qualify for disability allowance, 18they can still make out the eyes on a face, and they prefer the faces of adults whose gaze is directed towards them. 19Since they have little experience of people-watching, this strongly suggests that gaze-watching is another process built in at birth. People in love stare at each other, and parents and babies spend long periods engaged in mutual staring. If you look into the eyes of a three-month-old, the baby will smile back at you. Look away and the smiling stops. Look back and the baby smiles again. Mutual gaze turns the social smiling on and off. 20Not surprisingly, it works in the other direction. If the baby stares, parents smile. They really do have us wrapped around their little fingers.

Gaze is part of a general range of social skills called joint attention. 21When humans interact socially, they do so by sharing the same focus of interest. Whether it is discussing a topic, watching a basketball game, or admiring a painting, we can join in a combined effort to examine the world. Joint attention is not uniquely human; many animals use it to extend their range of potential interests or threats. Like meerkats, who watch each other for the first sign of danger, animals can gain the benefit of watching others watching the world. However, the jury is still out about whether other animals can infer the mental states that humans appear to infer. 22Consider this passage from Barbara Smuts’s ‘What Are Friends For?’:

Alex stared at Thalia until she turned and almost caught him looking at her. He glanced away immediately, and then she stared at him until his head began to turn toward her. She suddenly became engrossed in grooming her toes. But as soon as Alex looked away, her gaze returned to him. They went on like this for more than fifteen minutes, always with split second timing. Finally, Alex managed to catch Thalia looking at him. 23

Smuts suggests that Alex and Thalia could be two novices at a singles bar. In fact, this description comes from her field notes of two East African baboons beginning a courtship. It could have been lifted straight out of a scene from Sex in the City , although I would guess that a woman suddenly grooming her toes in public might be considered a bit of a turn-off in New York’s downtown Manhattan. Are animals capable of mind-reading? Certainly they seem to follow gaze, but it is not clear that they can really get to the next stage, which is to think that others have mental states such as beliefs and desires. That is something that seems to be a particulary human quality, and one that infants achieve somewhere between their first year and second year.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

Being able to understand others as having goals is a powerful mind-reading tool. It allows us to interpret other people’s actions as being purposeful and also allows us to anticipate what they might do next. Consider the following sequence of events as if watching a silent movie. Our intrepid climber approaches the steep hill and begins his ascent of the slope. Halfway up the hill, the climber comes to a level where he stops momentarily before resuming his journey. On top of the hill, another person is waiting. Suddenly this other person charges down the hill, blocking our climber’s progress and forcing him down the remaining slope with repeated shoving. What’s going on here? Is this about a land dispute? Or maybe they are dueling for the hand of the maiden who dwells at the top of the hill? What most people assume is that there is a clash of interest and that the two are not friends. In another version of the movie, instead of hindering our climber’s ascent, another individual comes along and helps the climber up the slope. Again, a fertile imagination could construct a feasible explanation. Is he a Good Samaritan who helps climbers up the hill?

Actually, the two events are computer animations used by Yale psychologists to investigate the origins of human morality. 24The various players in these mini-dramas – the climber, his assailant, and the Good Samaritan – are in fact geometric shapes with eyes simply moving around a computer screen. But when you watch these sequences, you cannot help but see them as purposeful individuals with goals and personality. At work here is the anthropomorphism that we described in the last chapter. Even simple geometric shapes seem alive if they move by themselves, taking paths that seem purposeful. Our anthropomorphism endows the shapes with humanlike qualities of mental states. By hijacking the rules for the movements of living things and applying them to objects, we effectively make them come alive.

Just like you or me, the twelve-month-old babies watching these sequences also judge the nature of each shape as good or bad based on the way it behaves. Long before we have a chance to teach infants about good and bad people, infants are making these judgements by simply watching social interactions. First, the climber is seen as purposeful with the desire to reach the summit. The assailant who forces the climber back down the hill is nasty, whereas the one who helps the climber is nice. We know this because if the helper or hinderer suddenly changes behaviour, babies notice the switch. Babies know something about the nature of the individual players. Not only that, but when later offered a replica toy of the helper or hinderer to play with, almost all babies choose the helper doll. Babies prefer to play with the Good Samaritan. 25

If, after pushing the climber downhill, the hinderer is painted so that it now looks like the Good Samaritan, babies are not fooled by the change in outward appearances. They know that deep down it is still a nasty piece of work because they are surprised if it suddenly starts helping the climber again. Babies know that appearances may be deceptive and that being bad is a deep personality flaw. As the saying goes, ‘A leopard can’t change it spots.’

SECRET AGENTS

Whether it’s heroic geometric shapes, animated toys, or contingent Russian shapkas, mind design forces us to treat such things as if they have purpose and goals. Our natural tendency to assume that people’s behaviours are motivated by minds allows us to predict what they might do next. This is what Dan Dennett calls adopting ‘the intentional stance’. When we adopt the intentional stance, we detect others as agents. An agent here is not James Bond, but rather something that acts with purpose. We attribute beliefs and desires to agents, as well as some intelligence to achieve those goals. 26This could be an adaptive strategy to ensure that we are always on the lookout for potential prey and predators. By adopting the intentional stance, you are giving yourself the best chance in the arms race of existence to find food and avoid being eaten.

However, the trouble with assuming an intentional stance is that it can be wrongly triggered. Things that don’t have intentions but seem to – because they either look as if they are alive (movements and faces) or behave as if they are alive (respond contingently) – make us think they are agents. We are inclined to think that they are purposeful and have minds. There’s a company in Somerset where I live that makes a vacuum cleaner that has a face painted on the front called a ‘Henry’. Actually, it’s called the ‘Numatic HVR 200–22 Red Henry vacuum cleaner’, but people know it as ‘Henry’ for short. From reading the customer reviews on the Amazon website, where you can buy the vacuum cleaner online, it seems to be a fine little sucker. What is surprising is the way people describe the vacuum cleaner. Henry is not referred to as a machine but rather as a ‘he’, ‘a loyal servant’, and so on. As one customer put it: ‘We’ve had our Henry for about 14 years. He cleans the house, the car and DIY dust without a complaint . . . and he’s always smiling. How many of your household appliances do you apologize to if you accidentley [ sic ] bang it on a corner as you go around?’ Henry clearly triggers a very strong intentional stance in his owners.