Socio-demographic and political predictors of Theory of Mind in adulthood

Abstract

Individual differences in Theory of Mind (ToM)–the ability to understand the mental states of others–are theorised to be predicted by socio-demographic and political factors. However, inconsistent findings on the relationships between various socio-demographic predictors and ToM, as well as a paucity of research on political predictors of ToM, have left a gap in the literature. Using a recently validated self-report measure of ToM in a large sample (N = 4202) we investigated the unique contributions of age, sex, socio-economic status, and political beliefs to ToM in adults. Except for age, all variables were correlated with ToM, but when accounting for the variance of other predictors in statistical analyses, political beliefs was no longer associated with ToM. Dominance analysis revealed that participant sex was the most important predictor of ToM. These findings help to address theoretical discrepancies in the existing literature and inform future methods and directions in social cognition research.

German translation of the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI-G)

“…These findings on age and sex agree with Clutterbuck et al 's (2021) findings for the original English FIMI. The sex differences found in the present study are also in line with very recent findings of Clutterbuck et al (2023) who found that women reported higher FIMI scores than men. Moreover, controlling for sex did not change how the FIMI-G was related to the other applied measures.…”