# Social psychology: Predicting other people’s attention to understand their mind

## TL;DR

People can detect if someone's attention has been artificially manipulated, suggesting we understand others' minds through their attention patterns.

## Contribution

The study reveals humans can distinguish natural from artificial attention patterns with ease.

## Key findings

- Humans can easily detect if attention patterns are natural or manipulated.
- The study shows an intuitive understanding of others' mental states through attention cues.

## Abstract

Humans are highly social beings who are interested in what others are saying, thinking, and doing. A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that we can easily tell whether a person’s pattern of attention is natural or artificially manipulated.