Abstract

In his study “Facial Expression Theory from Romanticism to the Present,” Alan Richardson reminds us that “successful social communication” would be greatly impoverished if “we did not have a reasonably reliable and speedy, and therefore largely unconscious, cognitive mechanism for gauging the emotions and intentions of others through reading their faces.”1 This innately sympathetic capacity for “mind-reading”—that is, for interpreting others’ facial expressions as indicative of internal states of mind—is historically termed “Theory of Mind” (ToM) by cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and primatologists.2Notably, discussion of ToM has mostly revolved around the question of successful or failed empathy, with ..