Bilingualism Enhances Reported Perspective Taking in Men, but Not in Women

Abstract

Bilingual speakers have often been found to be superior in taking the perspective of another person. Also, females are commonly found to have enhanced perspective taking (PT) abilities compared with males, with male PT being generally more easily affected by external factors. The present study investigated whether bilingualism improves PT in males more strongly than in females. In total, 108 bilingual and 108 matched monolingual adults, with equal numbers of males and females, filled in the PT subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity index. While monolinguals showed the typical result of females scoring higher on PT than males, scores of male and female bilinguals did not differ, with both bilingual groups scoring as high as female monolinguals. Thus, bilingualism enhanced self-reported PT only in males, suggesting that male PT can be enhanced through socialization.

Teoria da Mente e Empatia em Adultos Típicos: Uma Revisão de Escopo

“…Perspective taking é um conceito usado recorrentemente nessa área e também é empregado de maneiras distintas nos estudos de empatia e ToM, sendo apontado ora como 'ponto de intersecção' entre ToM e empatia, ou seja, perspective taking como uma dimensão da ToM e também como uma dimensão da empatia (Tarighat, & Krott, 2021;Vonk et al, 2013), ora como um elemento distinto tanto de ToM como de empatia, mas relacionado a eles (Olderbak, & Willhelm, 2017). Percebe-se, portanto, uma polifonia de sentidos ligada à compreensão da ToM, empatia e de como esses constructos se relacionam.…”

Social facilitation and bilingual cognitive advantage: Bridging social psychology and psycholinguistics

“…[ 71 ]). For example, women exhibit higher empathy, and show greater scores on perspective taking tests than men, and it was recently shown that bilingualism improves perspective taking abilities in a sex-dependent manner [ 72 ]. Other studies have reported that bilingualism promotes socialization by enhancing social cognition [ 73 , 74 ]; for recent reviews see Refs.…”

73% of the observed bilingual (dis)advantageous effects on cognition stem from sociolinguistic factors: A systematic review

“…Regarding the first research question, it was found that all 368 articles in our pool of data controlled for at least one sociodemographic factor: age, gender, and/or SES. While only four studies did not account for age in their sample, almost 30% of the articles did not report their participants' gender, despite the potential impact of this variable (Kormi-Nouri et al, 2003;Tarighat & Krott, 2021). With reference to SES, more than 60% of studies at least mentioned it, and more than 50% either measured it or used it as a matching variable in sample selection.…”