ABSTRACT
A fascination with mind and psychological states is fundamental to human intellectual functioning. For example, the diversity of literary genres, from Shakespeare to soap opera, share a common theme: exploring the reasons why people act as they do. There has been an ambivalence towards the concept of mind over the course of 20th-century psychology, but over the past couple of decades there has been an increasing consensus that our passion for dwelling upon psychological matters forms a central feature of the human condition. It is perhaps no mere coincidence that humans are unique both in their creation of culture and in their expertise in contemplating the psychological (see Crook, 1980, for a detailed socio-biological view of the emergence of culture). In this respect, we adopt the role of the “intuitive psychologist” (Humphrey, 1983).
