Cody Kommers
DPhil Candidate
I am interested how we understand the minds of other people. The standard way of talking about this problem is the idea of the "intuitive psychologist" -- that when normal people attempt to make sense of the behavior of others, they are doing an informal version of what we professional psychologists do. While much interesting work has been done in this vein, I believe that it is insufficient for describing how people understand others from a social background that's dramatically different than their own. A more apt metaphor for this situation might be the "intuitive anthropologist." By using the basic methods and assumptions of anthropological fieldwork as a conceptual starting point, I study how we understand the minds of others: what we do well, what we do poorly, and how we can improve.