Micro-cultural influences on theory of mind development

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ike Anggraika Kuntoro ◽  
Liliek Saraswati ◽  
Candida Peterson ◽  
Virginia Slaughter
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Class Groups ◽  
Life Circumstances

We investigated cultural influences on young children’s acquisition of social-cognitive concepts. A theory of mind (ToM) scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004) was given to 129 children (71 boys, 58 girls) ranging in age from 3 years 0 months to 7 years 10 months. The children were from three distinct cultural groups: (a) trash pickers ( pemulung) living a subsistence lifestyle in Jakarta, Indonesia; (b) middle-class Jakartans living and attending preschools within 5 km of the pemulung group; and (c) middle-class Australians. All children were individually tested in their native language. Cross-group comparisons revealed no significant differences among the three groups in mastery of false belief (the traditional ToM indicator), despite their widely different socio-economic circumstances. However, the pemulung children were slower than the two middle-class groups in mastering two other ToM concepts, namely knowledge access and emotion concealment. These findings shed new light on patterns of cross-cultural consistency in false-belief mastery, as well as revealing cross-cultural variation in other ToM concepts that plausibly reflect variation in children’s everyday life circumstances.

Adolescents’ Attribution and Outcome Expectancies Regarding Relational Aggression: A Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Value Associations

2020 ◽  
pp. 027243162097767
Author(s):  
Yan Li ◽  
Michelle F. Wright ◽  
Danae Rollet
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Relational Aggression ◽  
Romantic Relationship ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Outcome Expectancies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Chinese Adolescents ◽  
Outcome Expectancy ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison

This study compares 477 Chinese and 342 American adolescents’ responses to open-ended questions regarding attribution and outcome expectancies of relational aggression, and investigates how cultural values were related to these social cognitive processes. Results revealed cross-cultural similarities and differences. In particular, American adolescents attributed romantic relationship competition, which was absent in Chinese adolescents’ responses. Furthermore, American adolescents demonstrated a stronger instrumental orientation in their social cognition (e.g., gain status), whereas Chinese adolescents tended to hold the blaming the victim attribution, and the socially harm the victim outcome expectancy. Finally, this study revealed that in both cultural groups, higher collectivism was linked to the blaming the aggressor attribution, as well as escalated peer conflict and aggression as outcome expectancies, whereas individualism was linked to the blaming the victim attribution. Findings of this study enriched our knowledge about the cultural construal of adolescents’ attribution and outcome expectancy regarding relational aggression.

scholarly journals Mask Up: Exploring Cross-Cultural Influences on Mask-Making Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 0887302X2110127
Author(s):  
Kim H. Y. Hahn ◽  
Gargi Bhaduri
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Self Construal ◽  
The World ◽  
India And China

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people from around the world made numerous homemade masks for themselves and their community due to shortage of medical masks as well as to stop the spread of COVID-19. The purpose of the current study was to conduct cross cultural exploration of the reasons for making masks, self-construal and wellbeing associated with masks making by collecting data from residents across US, India, and China. The finding of this study presented different reasons for making masks as well as self-construal, and wellbeing in people who made masks versus those who did not. Differences were also observed among three different cultural groups. This study offers a unique contribution to the public health research engaging in craft making related activities to gain a better perspective of the state of health of a population and the understanding of cross-cultural study of craft making behavior during the pandemic.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of theory-of-mind are associated with variation in children’s everyday social cognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 579-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cora E Mukerji ◽  
Sarah Hope Lincoln ◽  
David Dodell-Feder ◽  
Charles A Nelson ◽  
Christine I Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Cognitive Behavior ◽  
School Age ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
False Belief Reasoning

ABSTRACT Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to reason about others’ mental states, is central to healthy social development. Neural mechanisms supporting ToM may contribute to individual differences in children’s social cognitive behavior. Employing a false belief functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we identified patterns of neural activity and connectivity elicited by ToM reasoning in school-age children (N = 32, ages 9–13). Next, we tested relations between these neural ToM correlates and children’s everyday social cognition. Several key nodes of the neural ToM network showed greater activity when reasoning about false beliefs (ToM condition) vs non-mentalistic false content (control condition), including the bilateral temporoparietal junction (RTPJ and LTPJ), precuneus (PC) and right superior temporal sulcus. In addition, children demonstrated task-modulated changes in connectivity among these regions to support ToM relative to the control condition. ToM-related activity in the PC was negatively associated with variation in multiple aspects of children’s social cognitive behavior. Together, these findings elucidate how nodes of the ToM network act and interact to support false belief reasoning in school-age children and suggest that neural ToM mechanisms are linked to variation in everyday social cognition.

scholarly journals What is the expected human childhood? Insights from evolutionary anthropology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Willem E. Frankenhuis ◽  
Dorsa Amir
Keyword(s):  
Phenotypic Plasticity ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Adverse Experiences ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
High Degree

Abstract In psychological research, there are often assumptions about the conditions that children expect to encounter during their development. These assumptions shape prevailing ideas about the experiences that children are capable of adjusting to, and whether their responses are viewed as impairments or adaptations. Specifically, the expected childhood is often depicted as nurturing and safe, and characterized by high levels of caregiver investment. Here, we synthesize evidence from history, anthropology, and primatology to challenge this view. We integrate the findings of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and cross-cultural investigations on three forms of threat (infanticide, violent conflict, and predation) and three forms of deprivation (social, cognitive, and nutritional) that children have faced throughout human evolution. Our results show that mean levels of threat and deprivation were higher than is typical in industrialized societies, and that our species has experienced much variation in the levels of these adversities across space and time. These conditions likely favored a high degree of phenotypic plasticity, or the ability to tailor development to different conditions. This body of evidence has implications for recognizing developmental adaptations to adversity, for cultural variation in responses to adverse experiences, and for definitions of adversity and deprivation as deviation from the expected human childhood.

scholarly journals The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Leisterer-Peoples ◽  
Susanne Hardecker ◽  
Joseph Watts ◽  
Simon J. Greenhill ◽  
Cody T. Ross ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Competitive Interactions ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Goal Structure ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Findings

AbstractHumans in most cultures around the world play rule-based games, yet research on the content and structure of these games is limited. Previous studies investigating rule-based games across cultures have either focused on a small handful of cultures, thus limiting the generalizability of findings, or used cross-cultural databases from which the raw data are not accessible, thus limiting the transparency, applicability, and replicability of research findings. Furthermore, games have long been defined as competitive interactions, thereby blinding researchers to the cross-cultural variation in the cooperativeness of rule-based games. The current dataset provides ethnographic, historic information on games played in cultural groups in the Austronesian language family. These game descriptions (Ngames = 907) are available and codeable for researchers interested in games. We also develop a unique typology of the cooperativeness of the goal structure of games and apply this typology to the dataset. Researchers are encouraged to use this dataset to examine cross-cultural variation in the cooperativeness of games and further our understanding of human cultural behaviour on a larger scale.

scholarly journals Animals, Superman, Fairy and God: Children’s Attributions of Nonhuman Agent Beliefs in Madrid and London

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
Virginia L. Lam ◽  
Silvia Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
False Belief ◽  
God Concepts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Beliefs And Practice ◽  
Muslim Majority

Abstract There have been major developments in the understanding of children’s nonhuman concepts, particularly God concepts, within the past two decades, with a body of cross-cultural studies accumulating. Relatively less research has studied those of non-Christian faiths or children’s concepts of popular occult characters. This paper describes two studies, one in Spain and one in England, examining 5- to 10-year-olds’ human and nonhuman agent beliefs. Both settings were secular, but the latter comprised a Muslim majority. Children were given a false-belief (unexpected contents) task in which they were asked to infer about three humans (mother, classmate, teacher), three animals (dog, bear, bird) and three supernatural beings (Superman, fairy, God). Similar false beliefs about humans, with subtle differences in inferences about animals and supernatural beings, were found between the two locations. In London different patterns for God between participants with a family religion, in particular Muslims, and non-affiliates, were identified as well as an association between religious beliefs and practice and inferences about God. Findings are discussed in the light of theory and research on the role of sociocultural inputs in children’s theory of mind development and understanding of agency.

Cognitive Differences Accounting for Cross-cultural Variation in Perceptions of Healthy Eating

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 116-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariya Voytyuk ◽  
Daniel Hruschka
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Holistic Thinking ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Basic Cognition

What counts as healthy eating varies both within and across cultures. While people often focus on specific foods and nutrients, the timing and style of eating (eating context) can also be an important consideration, and one that appears to vary across cultures. One possible explanation for this variation is differences in basic cognition, with holistic thinking in collectivist cultures favouring contextual factors. We assess this hypothesis by examining perceptions between two cultural groups that vary in collectivism. In study 1, we investigate whether residents of Ukraine place more importance on considerations of eating context than residents of the usa. In study 2, we test whether this between-country difference is due to the mediating effect of individual differences in collectivism. Ukrainian participants consistently placed more importance on context (Cohen’s d = 0.71–0.84; p < 0.01) and were more collectivist (Cohen’s d = 0.95, p < 0.001). A mediation analysis shows that collectivism significantly mediates the effect of nationality on context endorsement, and renders the effect of nationality non-significant (p > 0.05). These results suggest that the holistic pattern of attention might extend to the domain of nutrition and may account for some cross-cultural differences in perceptions of healthy eating. We briefly discuss the benefits of perception focused on the context of eating, such as decreased burden of self-regulation in a food-rich environment.

Traveling from the Past into the Future of Cross-Cultural Psychology

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Harris Bond
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Psychological Measures ◽  
Personality Differences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Individual Functioning

This chapter is a personal synthesis of the past five decades of research efforts to understand cultural influences on individual social-personality processes and outcomes. The author identifies four developmental stages in refining our conceptualization of how culture impacts upon individual functioning and discusses problems associated with each stage: in the Eureka Stage, cross-cultural researchers documented average differences between samples from two or occasionally more cultural groups and speculated about reasons for these differences. In the Mercator Stage, psychological measures taken from many cultural groups were averaged then factor analyzed to provide culture-level mappings of groups. In the Psychological Unpackaging Stage, cultural differences in psychological measures were shown to be associated with personality differences distinguishing the cultural groups. In the Cross-Level Stage, sufficient numbers of cultural groups have been assessed to enable empirical evidence to indicate what features of the cultures involved might influence the psychological processes and outcomes examined. Increasingly, individuals are treated as polycultural, introducing further complexity into research on culture’s influence.

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