The objective of the article is the reconstruction of the conceptualization related to the ways in which people experience and understand the mental states of other people. These investigations have been put into words by the use of terms such as sympathy, empathy, perspective taking, mind reading. The historical analysis of the definitions accompanying the implementation and contemporary usage of these terms shows that they frequently refer to the same psychological processes. Particular attention shall be dedicated to approaches contemporarily prevailing in the field of the studies on: theory of mind, the theory theory and the theory of simulation. They explain the recognition and predictions of the mental states of other people as processes in which human beings use, respectively, notions and a folk theory pertaining to the structure and function of the mind, or imagination and their own decision processes. These two types of approaches are not treated as mutually excluding, but often, as necessarily concurrent.