Women Know Better What Other Women Think and Feel: Gender Effects on Mindreading across the Adult Life Span.

Renata Wacker,Isabel Dziobek,Sven Bölte

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01324

Renata Wacker, Isabel Dziobek + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01324

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Abstract

Research recurrently shows that females perform better than males on various mindreading tasks. The present study contributes to this growing body of literature by being the first to demonstrate a female own-gender mindreading bias using a naturalistic social cognition paradigm including female and male targets. We found that women performed better at reading others’ minds, and that they were specifically more capable to read female targets, an own-gender target effect absent in men. Furthermore, a non-linear negative effect of perceiver age on mindreading performance was examined within a sample covering the age range of 17–70 years, as indicated by a stronger performance decrease setting on by the age of 30 years and continuing throughout middle and old age. These findings add to a more comprehensive understanding of the contextual factors influencing mindreading performance in typically developing adults.

Highlights

Much of social interaction occurs “in silence,” as people exchange information about emotions, thoughts, and intentions in implicit ways
We propose various mechanisms of the female own-gender bias in mindreading: Women are better at understanding other females’ feelings and thoughts because interactions with other women might offer them higher reciprocity of mindreading skills, a realization of their relationship motives, self-reflection with a superior mindreader, and a more stimulating, emotionally expressive target of mindreading
The non-linear negative effect of age on mindreading performance found in the present study extends the existing literature on age and social cognition by providing a more differentiated picture of mindreading across the adult life span

Summary

Introduction

Much of social interaction occurs “in silence,” as people exchange information about emotions, thoughts, and intentions in implicit ways. Everyday social life requires us to hypothesize based on our interaction partners’ non-verbal expressions and behaviors, implicit or ambiguous verbal messages, and actions conveying thoughts and intentions indirectly. This social-cognitive capacity to infer others’ emotional, cognitive, or motivational mental states is referred to as mindreading. It relies on various visual, verbal and symbolic cues (e.g., facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movements) occurring in social interaction. Social psychological research increasingly recognizes the crucial role of contextual factors, e.g., perceiver characteristics or perceiver-target interactions, for a better understanding of the interpersonal functions of mindreading beyond its intrapersonal mechanisms and neural correlates (Thomas and Fletcher, 2003; Zaki and Ochsner, 2011)

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