Our understanding of other minds is based epistemically on a multiplicity of strategies, the core strategies being direct perception, interaction, simulation, and theory-based inferences (including learning from narratives). The most important aspect of understanding others is the activation of prior knowledge of individuals or groups of persons. This is organized into person models. The main claim of PMT is that we rely on person models to understand others. These person models form the basis for perceiving and evaluating persons, their social behaviour, and their mind-set. We develop person models for ourselves, for other individuals, and for groups of persons (group models). Furthermore, all types of person models can be realized on two levels: (implicit) person schemata and (explicit) person images. A person schema is a bundle of information including information about sensory-motor abilities, voice, face, basic mental dispositions, etc., and such schemata are intuitively used, implicitly developed, and not usually easily accessible for linguistic report. A person image is a unity of explicitly-registered mental and physical dispositions as well as situational features (like perceptions, emotions, attitudes, etc.) that is usually easily accessible for linguistic report (albeit sometimes with the help of gesture, drawings, etc.). The PMT has several advantages over existing accounts of social understanding (e.g., TT, ST, and interaction theory), since it can account for all of the following criteria:
It explains specific and more general social understanding of particular individuals in terms of individual person models and group person models. (Not accounted for in ST.)
It accounts for the difference, for which evidence is presented, between implicit, intuitive forms of social understanding and explicit deliberative ones by appealing to the role of person schemata and person images respectively. (Not accounted for in interaction theory.)
It does justice to folk-psychological evidence that we understand very familiar persons much better than unfamiliar ones: We have rich person images of individuals with whom we are very familiar. (Deficit of all former theories.)
It marks adequately in what ways our understanding of others and our self-understanding are interdependent, e.g., in special cases of simulation, understanding the other relies on self-models. (Generally not accounted for in TT.)
It offers an adequate framework that is in line with the best explanations of some mental diseases in understanding others, such as the Capgras and Fregoli syndromes. (Deficit of ST.)
It can account for cultural differences in social understanding: Future research will show how person models vary with culture, and we have already illustrated that it varies in the case of self-models between Asian and Western cultures. (Not accounted for in any former theory.)
Thus, PMT is at least a serious alternative account, and certainly a candidate for future investigation.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express special thanks to Luca Barlassina, Kai Vogeley, Anna Welpinghus, and Tobias Starzak for their helpful comments. This paper is part of the project “Social Information Processing and Culture” funded by the VolkswagenStiftung.