Abstract
The current study investigated whether children's relative social status within a context influences their ability to identify others’ mental states. Across two experiments, 3- to 7-year-olds (N = 103) were randomly assigned to hold either an advantaged or disadvantaged social status and were assessed on their ability to accurately identify others’ mental states (via false-belief and belief-emotion “theory of mind” assessments). When participants’ status was manipulated by a structural factor (gender; Experiment 1), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely than participants with advantaged status to pass the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments. When status was manipulated by an individual factor (performance; Experiment 2), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely to pass the false-belief assessment but not the belief-emotion assessment. Results provide the first empirical evidence that an individual's contextualized perspective (i.e., his or her social status situated within a given context) influences the individual's ability to identify others’ mental states.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 30-41 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Child Psychology |
Volume | 169 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Contextualized perspective
- Mental state understanding
- Moral development
- Social cognition
- Social status
- Theory of mind
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology