1. % Positive/Neutral Attributions
Relation Between Theory of Mind and the Use of Social Stereotypes in Children’s Personality Judgments Candace L. Lassiter & Janet J. Boseovski University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Introduction
Method
Results
Discussion
As early as the preschool years, children engage in social stereotyping (e.g., obesity, and physical handicaps, Sigelman, 1991; accents and speech impediments, Kinzler, Dejesus & Spelke, 2009). Although a large body of research has examined factors that influence stereotyping, the majority of studies have focused on external socialization processes that foster biases against particular groups (e.g., labeling; group segregation; see Bigler & Liben, 2007).
In contrast, less is known about individual difference variables that may serve as protective factors against social stigmatization. We examined the extent to which theory of mind (i.e., mental state reasoning) ability is associated with positive rather than negative personality judgments about typically stigmatized groups. Children who exhibit better perspective taking skills may be able to overcome perceptually salient features and the explicit labeling of outgroup members, which should result in less stigmatization of outgroup members.
Sample story:
“This is Mandy. She is a chubby girl. She is much heavier than the other kids in class. Mandy is at school right now… Lynn, another girl in the class, wants to put her things away in her cubby too, but Lynn can’t reach her cubby. Lynn asks Mandy if she will help her put her things away.”
Children were asked the following questions, adapted from Boseovski and Lee (2006).
Behavioral Prediction: “What do you think happens next in the story?”
“Help” was scored as 1, and “Will not help” was scored as 0.
Trait attributions: “What kind of girl/boy is [character]?”.
Negative attributions (i.e., “Mean”) were scored as 0 and positive or neutral responses (i.e., “Nice” or “Not nice or mean”) were scored as 1.
Logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the contribution of age and ToM abilities to children’s trait attributions. Again, there were differential effects across stories.
Overweight: As ToM increased, the likelihood that children would make a positive or neutral attribution increased (β = .48, Wald χ2 = 2.72, p = .09). Age was not significant (β = -.02, Wald χ2 = 0.56, p = .46).
Wheelchair: As ToM increased, the likelihood that children would make a positive or neutral attribution increased (β = .67, Wald χ2 = 6.74, p = .01). Age was not significant (β = -.01, Wald χ2 = .23, p = .63).
Accent: ToM was also a significant predictor of more positive or neutral attributions (β = .56, Wald χ2 = 3.24, p = .07). Age was not significant (β = .01, Wald χ2 = .04, p = .85).
Control: Neither ToM (β = .29, Wald χ2 = 1.59, p = .21) nor age (β = -.01, Wald χ2 = .37, p = .54) were significant predictors.
Overall, these findings indicate that advanced ToM ability is associated with increased positivity and fewer stereotyped judgments of stigmatized groups. However, for the accent story, ToM predicted more positive or neutral trait attributions and yet was unassociated with more positive behavioral predictions. This suggests that in some cases, children may hold discrepant beliefs about what a person will do (i.e., behavioral predictions) and whether they are a good person (i.e., trait attributions).
In the majority of cases, ToM added unique variance in predicting children's judgments above and beyond age. Perhaps children with advanced ToM abilities are able to generate alternate ideas about these groups and avoid reliance on heuristics. Also, children with advanced ToM may be able to better distinguish between physical and mental states. Specifically, they may reason that not all physical states (e.g., being overweight) influence mental states (e.g., wanting to help a peer).
As expected, judgments about the control character were neutral and were not influenced by ToM ability. These naturally neutral or positive judgments of typical characters may be related to children’s positivity bias (Boseovski, 2010). Advanced ToM ability may allow children to give stigmatized characters this “benefit of the doubt” as they naturally do for non-stigmatized characters.
This research has implications for the development of stereotype-intervention programs. Individual difference factors, such as ToM, may serve as a buffer to counter socialization processes that promote stereotyping. ToM ability may be particularly useful for training and intervention purposes because these reasoning skills may be transferable to multiple contexts and groups.
Results
Participants
Logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the contribution of age and ToM abilities to children’s behavioral predictions.
Overweight: As ToM abilities increased, the likelihood that children would make a “Help” prediction increased (β = .48, Wald χ2 = 4.31, p = .04). Age was not significant (β = .02, Wald χ2 = 1.15, p = .28).
Wheelchair: As ToM abilities increased, the likelihood that children would make a “Help” prediction increased (β = .43, Wald χ2 = 3.66, p = .05). Age was also significant (β = .05, Wald χ2 = 4.38, p = .04).
Accent: ToM was not a significant predictor (β = .26, Wald χ2 = 1.15, p = .28). As age increased, the likelihood that children would make a “Help” prediction increased (β = .06, Wald χ2 = 4.56, p = .03).
Control: Neither ToM (β = .15, Wald χ2 = .48, p = .45) nor age (β = ..02, Wald χ2 = .94, p = .33) emerged as significant predictors.
There were 98 participants in the study: and 4-year-olds and and 7-year-olds.
Figure 1. Percentage of Positive and Neutral attributions by Theory of Mind Performance
Method
Theory of Mind (ToM) skills were assessed with Happé’s (1994) strange stories. Participants heard one story in which a child tells a joke and one in which a child lies. In each case, the story character made a statement that contradicted their actual mental state (e.g., saying they love their Christmas present when they actually hate it). After each story, participants were asked “Is it true what [character] said?” and “Why did they say this?” To answer correctly, children must infer the mental states of story characters and for doing so, they received one point per correct answer. Data for the two stories were combined, thus the range of scores was 0-4 points.
Participants then heard three stories (adapted from Peterson & Boseovski, 2009) about characters with stigmatized characteristics: an overweight character, a character with an accent and a character in a wheelchair. The fourth story, in which a character’s clothing was described, served as a control story.
% Positive/Neutral Attributions
Total ToM Scores