Psychology says people who invent stories about strangers may naturally engage in social imagination

You are sitting in a café when you notice someone at the next table. They are checking their phone, glancing at the door and occasionally smiling. Within seconds, your mind may have created a possible explanation: perhaps they are waiting for someone they love, preparing for an important meeting or meeting an old friend. You know none of this is necessarily true, yet your brain can effortlessly construct an entire story around a stranger. Psychology suggests that this kind of spontaneous storytelling can be connected to social cognition, mentalizing and spontaneous thought, cognitive processes that allow people to imagine other people's intentions, emotions, goals and experiences. Researchers describe mentalizing as the ability to think about other people's mental states, while research on spontaneous thought suggests that the mind regularly generates internally created scenarios even when there is no immediate task requiring it.

Psychology Says Humans Naturally Try to Explain Other People's Behaviour

Humans are constantly surrounded by incomplete social information. Someone laughs unexpectedly. A stranger walks quickly down the street. A person looks at their phone and suddenly starts smiling.

We see the behaviour, but we do not have direct access to the person's thoughts. That creates a gap between what we observe and what we think it means.


The work of Chris Frith and Uta Frith has highlighted how social cognition allows humans to interpret social signals and infer other people's intentions, beliefs and emotions. Their research describes mentalizing as an important part of predicting what others might do next.

Inventing a possible story about a stranger can therefore be viewed as an informal form of social inference. The important word is possible. Your brain is making a hypothesis, not discovering a fact.

What Is Social Imagination?

There is no single psychological process officially called “social imagination” that explains every instance of making up stories about strangers.

Instead, the behavior can be understood through several overlapping concepts, particularly mentalizing, social cognition and spontaneous thought.

Mentalizing involves representing another person's possible mental states, what they might believe, want, feel or intend. So when you see someone staring repeatedly at a closed restaurant, you might imagine:

“Maybe they are meeting someone.”

You have taken an observable behavior and generated an invisible mental-state explanation. That is remarkably similar to the kind of inference people make during ordinary social interaction.

Psychology Says the Brain Can Simulate Situations It Is Not Experiencing

Research into the brain's default network provides another piece of the puzzle. The default network is associated with internally directed thought, including imagining hypothetical situations, remembering experiences and thinking about other people's mental states.

Research by Diana Tamir and colleagues found substantial overlap between the neural systems involved in reading fiction and those involved in social cognition. Their work suggests that the default network supports the simulation of hypothetical scenes and mental states.

That makes everyday storytelling about strangers particularly interesting. You do not necessarily need a novel or movie to create a narrative.

A person walking past you can provide enough raw material. Their clothes become a detail. Their expression becomes another. Their destination becomes an unanswered question. Your imagination fills in the rest.

Why A Few Details Can Become an Entire Story

The human brain is exceptionally good at combining fragments of information into meaningful interpretations.

Imagine seeing a man carrying flowers while walking quickly toward a railway station. You might immediately imagine that he is rushing to surprise someone.

But another observer might assume he is attending a wedding. A third person might think he simply bought the flowers for himself.

The same observation can produce different narratives because social cognition involves interpretation rather than direct access to reality.

Research on social cognition shows that people construct representations of individuals and social relationships and use them to guide judgments and behaviour. Your imagination therefore does not simply reproduce what you see. It interprets it.

Psychology Says Mentalizing Can Happen Without Much Awareness

One of the most interesting aspects of this behavior is that it can happen almost automatically. You may not consciously decide, “I am now going to construct a psychological profile of this stranger.” The story simply appears.

A large 2024 meta-analysis examining implicit and explicit mentalizing found evidence that mentalizing can occur both with and without conscious awareness. The researchers analyzed 511 studies involving more than 78,000 participants.

That helps explain why social storytelling can feel effortless. Your brain can begin asking questions about another person's intentions before you deliberately decide to think about them.

The Brain May Be Predicting What Happens Next

Social imagination can also help people anticipate behaviour. Suppose you see someone repeatedly looking toward a door while checking their watch.

You might think: “They are waiting for somebody.”

Then another person enters. The stranger immediately stands up. Your imagined explanation suddenly seems plausible.

Psychologists including Chris and Uta Frith have described how humans use information about intentions, habits and social context to predict what other people are likely to do next. Social cognition therefore involves not only understanding the present but anticipating future behaviour.

This predictive element may make social imagination useful. It allows people to mentally rehearse possibilities before knowing exactly what will happen.

Psychology Says This Does Not Mean You Are Especially Good at Reading People

There is an important distinction between imagining and accurately knowing. Someone who frequently creates stories about strangers may have a vivid social imagination, but that does not mean their assumptions are correct.

In fact, social inference is vulnerable to bias. A stranger who looks serious may simply be tired. Someone sitting alone may not be lonely. A person repeatedly checking their phone may not be waiting for an important message.

Mentalizing involves making inferences about invisible mental states, and those inferences can be wrong. Research on social cognition emphasizes that people use both automatic and deliberate processes when interpreting others.

The imagination can therefore be creative without being accurate.

Why Fiction Lovers May Recognize This Experience

There is also an intriguing connection between social imagination and narrative experiences.

Research examining fiction reading and social cognition suggests that imagining fictional characters and their mental states overlaps with processes involved in understanding real people. This does not prove that people who invent stories about strangers are avid readers.

But it demonstrates something important: humans have cognitive machinery capable of constructing detailed hypothetical social worlds. A stranger can become a temporary character. The sidewalk becomes a setting. A few observable details become the beginning of a plot.

Psychology Says Spontaneous Thought Gives the Mind Room to Wander

People do not spend every waking moment focused on immediate external tasks.

Research into spontaneous thought describes mind-wandering, daydreaming and creative ideation as major components of everyday cognition. Such thought can involve simulations of situations that are not happening in the present moment.

This may explain why stories about strangers often emerge during relatively quiet moments.

You are waiting for a train.

Sitting in a café.

Standing in a queue.

Walking through a shopping centre.

Your attention is not completely occupied, leaving room for internally generated narratives. The stranger becomes an unexpected prompt for imagination.

The Psychology Behind Making Up Stories About Strangers

Inventing stories about strangers does not necessarily mean someone is nosy, judgmental or disconnected from reality. It may simply reflect the interaction between social cognition, mentalizing and spontaneous thought.

The mind sees fragments of behaviour and tries to construct meaning from them.

It asks what another person might be thinking. It imagines what could have happened before. It predicts what might happen next. And sometimes, without any conscious effort, it turns a stranger into a character in a story.

That story may be completely wrong. But the ability to create it illustrates something fundamental about human cognition: we do not merely observe other people. We constantly try to understand the invisible worlds behind their visible behaviour.

FAQs

Why do people make up stories about strangers?

People naturally interpret social information and make inferences about other people's possible intentions, emotions and goals. This involves processes associated with mentalizing and social cognition.

Is imagining a stranger's life a form of mentalizing?

It can involve mentalizing when the imagined story includes assumptions about what another person might be thinking, feeling, wanting or intending. However, simply inventing a fictional story is not necessarily the same as accurately understanding someone's mental state.