thing that involves four different individuals. Obviously, the
only way to produce such complex thoughts is to have infor-
mation about these different individuals, keep it in separate
files, access several of these files at the same time yet never
confuse them. This requires capacities that are developed to
this extent in no other species.
As I said above, what we call "intuitive psychology" or "the-
ory of mind" is a federation of brain structures and functions,
each of which is specialized in particular tasks: detecting the
presence of animate agents (which may be predators or prey);
detecting what others are looking at; figuring out their goals; [123]
representing their beliefs. Different species have different sets
of these components. Psychologist Daniel Povinelli showed
that chimpanzees can certainly follow another agent's gaze, but
they do not seem to have a rich representation of the agent's
intentionsas revealed by gaze direction. More generally, some
aspects of intuitive psychology seem to have evolved in pri-
mates as a way of catching prey and avoiding predators more
efficiently. This, in particular, may be the origin of our imme-
diate, emotionally charged detection of animate agents in the
environment. But the extraordinary development of intuitive
psychology in humans was also triggered by the advantages
that accrued to individuals who could better predict the behav-
ior of other human agents, since interaction with other human
beings is the real milieu of human evolution.^25
A taste for gossip. Although we tend to despise it or downplay
its importance, gossip is perhaps among the most fundamen-
tal human activities, as important to survival and reproduction
as most other cognitive capacities and emotional dispositions.
Gossip is practiced everywhere, enjoyed everywhere, despised
everywhere. Why is that? We can better understand these
three features if we recall what gossip is about. Its main focus
is information about other people, preferably information that
they would rather not have broadcast, and centers on topics of
adaptive value such as people's status, resources and sex. Gos-
sip loses much of its interest when it strays from these topics,
as demonstrated by our common attitude toward people who
feverishly acquire and exchange information in other
domains. Think of those obsessive fans who exchange infor-
mation about every track of every record ever issued by their
THE KIND OF MIND ITTAKES