The Effects Of Ingroup And Outgroup On The Processing Of Theory Of Mind In Han And Uyghur Adults

Theory of Mind(ToM)refers to the ability to infer others' thoughts,intentions,and feelings to ourselves and other people,comprises overlapping cognitive and affective components.Due to this ability is influenced by culture,people of different countries showed the difference of ToM ability,and the processing of affective ToM to of different cultural members was different.Under the unique social and cultural background of China,whether the ToM ability of different nationalities be influenced by culture,and whether the processing of cognitive ToM show the advantage of internal group as the processing of affective ToM.These questions are not clear.Based on this,in order to explore the influence of groups on the ToM of the Uighurs and the Hans through two experiments,to examine whether the individual cognitive ToM and affective ToM were affected by the social environment and show differences under the subcultural background.In experiment 1,we used self/others discrimination task,a computerized classical false belief task to investigate the ability of cognitive ToM for 49 Uighur college students and 49 Han college students,and to examine the performance and differences of cognitive ToM between the Uighurs and the Hans and the effect of other people's group identity on the processing of cognitive ToM.The results showed that:(1)Whether the Uighurs or the Hans,task condition effected the processing of cognitive ToM,compared with the non-false belief-condition,under the false belief task condition to process of other's mental state was slower and more inaccuracy.(2)The processing of other's cognitive mental state will be affected by the group identity of others.The processing about members of ingroup was faster than members of outgroup.(3)There were significant differences in cognitive ToM between the Uighurs and the Hans,and the Hans was faster and more accurate than the Uighurs.Based on the results of experiment 1,in experiment 2,we used Yoni task to investigate the ability of cognitive ToM and affective ToM for 52 Uighur college students and 52 Han college students,and to examine the performance and differences of cognitive ToM and affective ToM between the Uighurs and the Hans and the effect of other people's group identity on the processing of cognitive ToM and affective ToM.The results showed that:(1)Whether the Uighurs or the Hans,task condition effected the processing of ToM for the Uighurs and the Hans,compared with the cognitive condition,under the effective condition to process of other's mental state was slower and more inaccuracy.(2)Due to the influence of social culture,the processing of other's mental state was affected by the group identity of others.The processing about members of ingroup was faster and accurate than members of outgroup.(3)There were significant differences in cognitive ToM and affective ToM between the Uighurs and the Hans,and the Hans were faster and more accurate than the Uighurs.This study reached following conclusions:(1)Whether the Uighurs or the Hans,the processing of ToM was affected by the type of task,and the processing in false belief condition is more difficult than non-false belief condition,and the processing of effective condition was more difficult than cognitive condition.At the same time,the processing of ToM was significant differences between the Uighurs and the Hans.(2)There were differences of processing of cognitive ToM and the affective ToM between the Uighurs and the Hans.(3)The processing of cognitive ToM and the affective ToM to ingroup members for Uygur and Han adults were significantly better than outgroup members.