Parsing Interactive Social Cognition: Mentalizing Accuracy and Propensity in Dyadic Contexts

Abstract Successful social interaction requires attending to and accurately processing others’ thoughts and feelings, a social cognitive skill known as mentalizing. To date, however, mentalizing has most frequently been assessed in nondyadic contexts, leaving open questions as to whether variability in real‐world interactive social cognitive performance is due to trait‐level differences or to properties of particular interactions. The current study examined mentalizing about one's social partner in both close social dyads ( n = 50 dyads) and stranger dyads ( n = 52 dyads). Within these dyadic contexts, we measured empathic accuracy—or the ability to accurately infer another's thoughts and feelings—and mind‐mindedness, the propensity to spontaneously discuss another's mental states. We found that for both pre‐existing close dyads and stranger dyads, the empathic accuracy of one partner significantly correlated with the empathic accuracy of the other partner, suggesting that empathic accuracy may be better conceptualized as a property of the specific social interaction rather than solely an individual trait. In contrast, across both dyad types, one partner's level of mind‐mindedness did not relate to their partner's mind‐mindedness. Further, a noninteractive measure of mentalizing accuracy did not show dyadic concordance. Individual levels of empathic accuracy, mind‐mindedness, and noninteractive mentalizing accuracy were also uncorrelated. These findings underscore the importance of taking a multifaceted approach to measuring social cognition that considers the role of social context.