# Decomposing Theory of Mind: How Emotional Processing Mediates ToM Abilities in LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15895 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15895/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Activation steering methods, one of 13 directions in Mechanistic interpretability.
- Builds on 3 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- Mechanistic interpretability / [Activation steering methods](https://mlsanity.com/mechinterp/activation-steering-methods/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Steering Llama 2 via Contrastive Activation Addition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06681/) (2023)
- [Understanding Social Reasoning in Language Models with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15448/) (2023)
- [Designing a Dashboard for Transparency and Control of Conversational AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07882/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [RepBench: Compiling Benchmarks into Capability Representations for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28008/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent work shows activation steering substantially improves language models' Theory of Mind (ToM) (Bortoletto et al. 2024), yet the mechanisms of what changes occur internally that leads to different outputs remains unclear. We propose decomposing ToM in LLMs by comparing steered versus baseline LLMs' activations using linear probes trained on 45 cognitive actions. We applied Contrastive Activation Addition (CAA) steering to Gemma-3-4B and evaluated it on 1,000 BigToM forward belief scenarios (Gandhi et al. 2023), we find improved performance on belief attribution tasks (32.5% to 46.7% accuracy) is mediated by activations processing emotional content : emotion perception (+2.23), emotion valuing (+2.20), while suppressing analytical processes: questioning (-0.78), convergent thinking (-1.59). This suggests that successful ToM abilities in LLMs are mediated by emotional understanding, not analytical reasoning.