title: Cultural effects on mindreading.
abstract: People from other cultural backgrounds sometimes seem inscrutable. We identified a potential cause of this phenomenon in two experiments demonstrating that adults' mental state inferences are influenced by the cultural identity of the target. We adapted White, Hill, Happé, and Frith's (2009) Strange Stories to create matched intra-cultural and cross-cultural mindreading and control conditions. Experiment 1 showed that Australian participants were faster to respond and received higher scores in the intra-cultural mindreading condition relative to the cross-cultural mindreading condition, but performance in the control conditions was equivalent. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern in independent samples of Australian and Chilean participants. These findings have important implications for cross-cultural communication and understanding.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia; Universidad de Tarapacá, Escuela de Psicología y Filosofía, Arica, Chile. Electronic address: daniel.perez.zapata@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Perez-Zapata
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Slaughter
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Julie D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Henry
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001315:Australia; D002677:Chile; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cross-cultural research; Mindreading; Social cognition