Anticipations Of Intentions

I am really getting with S.M. Stirling's suggestion that human intelligence has mainly evolved in response to human behaviour. For survival purposes, members of a human community must cope with:

inanimate objects;

plants that they gather or grow;

animals that they hunt or herd;

other people.

Another person might walk, run or creep forward. He might smile in friendship, smile in contempt, snarl in hostility, conceal his feelings, speak, whisper or shout. Two people might speak different languages or have other communication problems. Each of us must continually deduce everyone else's intentions and decide how to respond. This requires more thought than many other inputs. 

And then we have to cope with our own states of mind. Evalyth knows that her failure to comprehend her husband's death:

"...was the effect of the psycho-drugs..."

-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 671.

Consequently, she:

"...damned the kindliness of the medic.

"She felt almost glad to feel a slow rising anger. By evening she would be able to weep." (ibid.)

Not just anger but a second-order feeling: gladness at anger. Not yet grief but anticipation of grief. We must learn how to cope with shocks that disrupt the capacity to cope. A Larry Niven character reflected, "I've got to get over this some time. Why not now?" Most of the eventualities that we worry about do not happen and the few that do happen would have happened anyway. Maybe knowing this makes it easier to cope.