scholarly journals How Cultural Models of Mind Affect Actor Director Task Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Agnew

<p>The actor director task (DT) has been used extensively to assess differences in perspective taking ability. Previous studies have found that individuals from collectivist cultures outperform those from individualist cultures in the DT. The current study uses an online form of the DT to assess individuals from European, New Zealand Pasifika and Māori cultural groups. Pasifika and Māori cultures tend to be categorised as collectivist, but have theory of mind norms that differ from previously assessed collectivist cultures. It is hypothesised that these norms will advantage Pasifika in the DT but not Māori. No significant differences are found in performance on the DT across all three cultural groups. All three groups replicated general performance on the DT in previous studies.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Agnew

<p>The actor director task (DT) has been used extensively to assess differences in perspective taking ability. Previous studies have found that individuals from collectivist cultures outperform those from individualist cultures in the DT. The current study uses an online form of the DT to assess individuals from European, New Zealand Pasifika and Māori cultural groups. Pasifika and Māori cultures tend to be categorised as collectivist, but have theory of mind norms that differ from previously assessed collectivist cultures. It is hypothesised that these norms will advantage Pasifika in the DT but not Māori. No significant differences are found in performance on the DT across all three cultural groups. All three groups replicated general performance on the DT in previous studies.</p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Schneider ◽  
Anne Grigutsch ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Romi Zäske ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic Theory of Mind mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of ´what´ someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether different social categories of an agent (e.g., gender, race, nationality) influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic nationality appearances. A group of self-identified Turkish and German participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical Turkish or German agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects - altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. When making other-judgments, German participants showed increased egocentric interferences for Turkish compared to German agents. Turkish participants showed no ethnic group influence for egocentric interferences and reported feeling associated with the German and Turkish nationality to a similar extent. For self-judgments, altercentric interferences were of similar magnitude for both ethnic agents in both participant groups. Overall this indicates that in level-1 visual perspective-taking, other-judgments and related egocentric interferences are sensitive to social categories and are better described as a flexible, controlled and deliberate mental state ascription mechanism. In contrast, self-judgments and related altercentric interference effects are better described as automatic, efficient and unconscious mental state ascription mechanisms. In a broader sense the current results suggest that we should stop considering automaticity an all-or-none principle when it comes theory of mind processes.


Antiquity ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 78 (300) ◽  
pp. 404-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurajane Smith

The editor’s question “who do human skeletons belong to?” (Antiquity 78: 5) can be answered positively, but it must be answered in context. The question was prompted by reports from the Working Group on Human Remains established by the British government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in 2001 to review the current legal status of human remains held in all publicly funded museums and galleries, and to consider and review submissions on the issue of the return of non-UK human remains to their descendent communities (DCMS 2003: 1-8). In effect, the report was primarily concerned with human remains from Indigenous communities, using a definition which follows the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as “distinct cultural groups having a historical continuity with pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories” (DCMS 2003:7). Consequently, the report deals primarily with the Indigenous communities of Australia, New Zealand and North America.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 204
Author(s):  
Hawon Lee ◽  
Sujeong You ◽  
Sanghoon Ji ◽  
Hye Kyung Cho

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. Royzman ◽  
Kimberly Wright Cassidy ◽  
Jonathan Baron

This article reviews the evidence and theory pertaining to a form of perspective-taking failure—a difficulty in setting aside the privileged information that one knows to be unavailable to another party. The authors argue that this bias (epistemic egocentrism, or EE) is a general feature of human cognition and has been tapped by 2 independent and largely uncommunicating research traditions: the theory-of-mind tradition in developmental psychology and, with more sensitive probes, the “heuristics and biases” tradition in the psychology of human judgment. This article sets the stage for facilitating communication between these traditions as well as for the recognition of EE's breadth and potential interdisciplinary significance: The authors propose a life-span account and a tentative taxonomy of EE; and they highlight the interdisciplinary significance of EE by discussing its implications for normative ethics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document