Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley as Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in the 2005 screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. FilmAffinityAt the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s most well-known novel, the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, overhears Mr Darcy speaking ill of her. This, naturally, leads her to form a negative opinion of him. ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me’. Mr Darcy speaks without realising that the subject of his comment is listening. C. E. Brock /Wikimedia Commons However, she is unaware of the real reasons behind his words, while Mr Darcy, for his part, does not realise that he has been overheard. Thus begins an emotional and mental dance between two characters, with each trying to decipher the other’s thoughts and feelings over the course of the novel.The reader, meanwhile, exists as an omnipresent third party, privy to the character’s innermost thoughts. This means that the book’s exercise in interpreting emotions not only takes place within the story itself, but also within the reader.Austen and ‘theory of mind’Our enjoyment of literature and fiction is rooted in theory of mind: the cognitive ability to attribute mental states (intentions, desires, thoughts, emotions) to others and make sense of their behaviour. We all possess this capacity, and it is fundamental to any social relationship. This skill is essential for understanding a narrative, since what we read would be meaningless without being able to put ourselves in the characters’ shoes in order to discern the motives that drive their actions. A 2013 study, published in the journal Science, found that reading fiction improves this ability. Austen’s writing is particularly well-suited to training our “mindreading” skills. Leer más: Jane Austen: why are adaptations of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey so rare? Thinking about thoughtsUsing plots based on misunderstandings, deception, irony and social expectations, Austen reflects the social psychology of her era – the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The minds of her characters are the centrepieces, and efforts to understand them drive conflict within the stories, creating characters with whom it is easy to empathise. Therefore, in Pride and Prejudice, Austen not only presents a love story – she entangles the reader in a web of thoughts about thoughts, a veritable tapestry of what is known as mental recursion. This concept, central to theory of mind, refers to our ability to represent the mental states of others in our own minds, and to do so on multiple levels or “orders”.First-order recursion is straightforward – it occurs when Elizabeth says that she knows her sister Jane is unhappy. But Austen rarely stops there, as her novels develop much more complex structures.This can include the following: Elizabeth thinks Darcy believes she is interested in Wickham. This is third-order recursion, as it involves the thoughts of three different characters: the protagonist, the co-protagonist, and the man with whom they both have a connection. At key moments in the novel, these levels overlap, generating misunderstandings, tensions and narrative twists, all of them laden with meaning. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, in an illustration by Hugh Thompson for the 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice. Lilly Library, Indiana University This type of complex mental reasoning is not only what defines the characters – the reader also participates in it. In order to understand the misunderstandings in certain scenes, the reader needs to know more than the characters themselves – as well as what the characters believe the others know, and what they do not know that they are unaware of. This means that when Elizabeth reads Darcy’s letter, given to her after she has rejected him, the reader has work alongside her to reorder all previous levels of interpretation: what she thought he felt, what he thought she felt, the intentions she thought he had, and the intentions she now believes he has.Cognitive psychology suggests that the human mind can comfortably handle up to three levels of recursion. Literary fiction, especially that which explores complex interpersonal relationships, is a natural way to train this ability. In this sense, reading Austen is like lifting mental weights. Her characters invite us to think with them, about them, and sometimes against them. Leer más: IQ tests can't measure it, but 'cognitive flexibility' is key to learning and creativity Hearing others’ thoughtsOne of the most powerful devices Austen uses to immerse us in her characters’ minds is free indirect speech. This narrative technique acts as a bridge between the narrator and the characters, granting access to their ideas and emotions without explicitly labelling them as such. Free indirect speech eliminates the marks of thought, and presents it as a fluid part of the narrative discourse without indicating the change in perspective.In these types of sentence, it is not entirely clear whether it is the narrator or the character speaking. It is precisely this ambiguity that forces us, as readers, to frequently activate our theory of mind, since we must infer who is speaking, what they are really thinking, whether or not they are telling the truth, and whether there is a contradiction between what they say and what they feel.This form of narration is training in “mind reading” because, since the characters’ thoughts are not stated directly, we have to reconstruct them. In other words, free indirect speech not only shows what a character is thinking – it forces us to think like them, at least for a few pages.A way to understand other peopleTo read Jane Austen is to lose oneself in intricate layers of hidden thoughts and emotions, and this trains our unconscious abilities. Through free indirect speech and multiple levels of recursion, the writer allows the reader to enter the mind of each of the characters, and to feel like any other member of the peculiar society she portrays in her works. In psychology, we know that this immersion does not happen by chance, as when we read, we activate and exercise a crucial skill for navigating the minds of others. Reading Austen’s works is not only a source of entertainment – it also subtly refines our ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes (and heads).This may be the reason why reading – even works that are more than two centuries old – never goes out of style.Las personas firmantes no son asalariadas, ni consultoras, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado anteriormente.