Theory of Mind and Self-Concept

Abstract

Preschool participants from Korea ( N = 56, mean age = 5 years, 4 months) and the United States ( N = 56, mean age = 5 years, 1 month) responded to tasks assessing self-concept and understanding of false belief. Korean children scored higher on the self-dimension of Traditionalism and lower on the dimension of Social Potency than did American children, a finding in accord with the hypothesis that the Korean culture fosters a relatively interdependent conception of the self. Korean children also outperformed American children on the measure of false belief. In contrast to previous research with Western samples, the nature of the false belief problem (inanimate object, voluntary person movement, involuntary person movement) did not significantly affect performance in either culture. Finally, variations in self-concept showed some but limited relations to false belief performance; in general, relatively interdependent self-responses were predictive of good false belief performance.