Morally-relevant theory of mind mediates the relationship between group membership and moral judgments

The influence of in-groups and out-groups on the theory-of-mind processing: evidence from different ethnic college students

“…It was found that children who were evaluating the mental states of an in-group member were more accurate than children evaluating the mental states of an out-group member. Children’s group membership significantly affected their ability to consider out-group members’ mental states, even in a minimal group context (Glidden et al, 2021 ).…”

The role of theory of mind, group membership, and apology in intergroup forgiveness among children and adolescents.

“…Recent research has documented that ToM mediates the relationship between group membership and moral judgments (Glidden et al, 2021). Further, prior research has also documented that ToM is related to intergroup judgments, with findings suggesting that participants with more advanced ToM are more likely to recognize the unfair nature of unequal allocations to outgroup members than did participants without advanced ToM (Mulvey et al, 2016).…”

“…Further, individuals do not always deploy the ToM skills that they possess in every situation—we can be more or less motivated to use our mental-state reasoning skills in different situations (Carpenter et al, 2016) and may utilize our ToM abilities more easily when taking the perspective of ingroup than outgroup members (Gönültaş et al, 2020; McLoughlin & Over, 2017). Indeed, recent research suggests that ToM (specifically, morally relevant ToM) mediates the relationship between group membership and moral judgments in a study of children aged 4–10 years (Glidden et al, 2021). This suggests that, in intergroup contexts, children utilize their ToM abilities to make moral judgments.…”

Development and use of theory of mind in social and cultural context

“…For example, in a study on the frequency of mental state use, 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds in northern England attributed more mental states (e.g., desires, emotions, intentions) to culturally similar agents than to culturally dissimilar agents in a geographically based intergroup context (McLoughlin & Over, 2017); in addition, 6‐year‐olds used more diverse mental state terms while describing their own cultural group than when describing other cultural groups. In a study that used a minimal group paradigm, U.S. 4‐ to 10‐year‐olds' ToM accuracy was influenced by group membership in a morally relevant false‐belief understanding task (embedding salient moral information into a prototypic false‐belief scenario): Children had better ToM accuracy for their own group members than for other group members (Glidden et al, 2021).…”