Poster #134 - Children’s Theory of Mind Competence in a Competitive Intergroup Peer Context

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

The goal of this research was to test the relationship between morally relevant theory of mind (MoToM) and group identity in a peer competitive context. Previous research has shown that children use group membership to attribute more positive intentions to in-group members, than to out-group members, particularly when the situation is ambiguous. However, what has not been examined is whether this biased attribution of intentions is related to theory of mind (ToM) comprehension. We propose that group identity is directly related to children’s ToM competence, particularly in a competitive peer context where group identity is made salient. Investigating this issue, we hypothesized that participants would be more likely to identify the mental states of a character on their own team than members of the other team.
A group of ethnically diverse children, equally divided by gender (4–10 years; N=121), were told three short vignettes about pumpkin growing contests. Before the vignettes were told, the participants were assigned to one of two competing teams. Each vignette featured a character who provided his or her team with an advantage by feeding his or her team’s pumpkins a larger amount of plant food than the other team’s pumpkins received, referred to as the advantage-creator. Vignettes varied as to whether the advantage was an unintentional transgression, an intentional transgression, or a fair advantage. Participants were asked after each vignette about the beliefs of the character who created the advantage in these three scenarios. These responses formed the MoToM assessment of participant’s knowledge about the advantage-creator’s beliefs prior to their acts which resulted in an advantage. Following completion of all three stories, participants were assessed on their prototypic false-belief ToM utilizing the Sally-Anne task.
A hierarchical linear regression was used in order to determine the unique predictive ability of team membership above and beyond age and prototypic ToM. This was done by entering age as a continuous variable in step 1, prototypic ToM performance entered in step 2, and team membership entered in step 3.
The results show that age did significantly predict MoToM performance (R2 =.223 p < .001) and that adding prototypic ToM performance further increased the predictability of the model (ΔR2 = .106 p < .001). However, when adding in adding team membership during step three the model explained a significantly greater amount of variance in MoToM performance, (ΔR2 = .033 p = .015). This means that team membership predicted MoToM performance even above and beyond the ability of age and prototypic ToM performance. Planned post-hoc t-tests revealed that participants who shared team membership with the advantage-creator performed significantly better on the MoToM assessment than did those on the other team (F(1,119) = -2.026, p = .045).
Children demonstrated a higher level of knowledge about the advantage-creator’s beliefs when they were a member of the advantage-creator’s team than a member of the other team. These novel findings shed light on the intersection of ToM and intergroup attitudes and have implications for reducing misunderstandings and promoting positive social interactions between peers.

Authors

• Bonnie Woodward, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Alexander D'Esterre, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hiba Ahmed, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jacquelyn Glidden, University of San Francisco
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melanie Killen, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author