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1
Relation Between Theory of Mind and the Use of
Social Stereotypes in Childrens Personality
JudgmentsCandace L. Lassiter Janet J.
BoseovskiUniversity of North Carolina at
Greensboro
Introduction
Results
Method
Discussion
As early as the preschool years, children engage
in social stereotyping (e.g., obesity, and
physical handicaps, Sigelman, 1991 accents and
speech impediments, Kinzler, Dejesus Spelke,
2009). Although a large body of research has
examined factors that influence stereotyping, the
majority of studies have focused on external
socialization processes that foster biases
against particular groups (e.g., labeling group
segregation see Bigler Liben, 2007). In
contrast, less is known about individual
difference variables that may serve as protective
factors against social stigmatization. We
examined the extent to which theory of mind
(i.e., mental state reasoning) ability is
associated with positive rather than negative
personality judgments about typically stigmatized
groups. Children who exhibit better perspective
taking skills may be able to overcome
perceptually salient features and the explicit
labeling of outgroup members, which should result
in less stigmatization of outgroup members.

• Logistic regression analyses were conducted to
  assess the contribution of age and ToM abilities
  to childrens trait attributions. Again, there
  were differential effects across stories.
• Overweight As ToM increased, the likelihood
  that children would make a positive or neutral
  attribution increased (ß .48, Wald ?2 2.72, p
  .09). Age was not significant (ß -.02, Wald
  ?2 0.56, p .46).
• Wheelchair As ToM increased, the likelihood
  that children would make a positive or neutral
  attribution increased (ß .67, Wald ?2 6.74, p
  .01). Age was not significant (ß -.01, Wald
  ?2 .23, p .63).
• Accent ToM was also a significant predictor of
  more positive or neutral attributions (ß .56,
  Wald ?2 3.24, p .07). Age was not significant
  (ß .01, Wald ?2 .04, p .85).
• Control Neither ToM (ß .29, Wald ?2 1.59,
  p .21) nor age (ß -.01, Wald ?2 .37, p
  .54) were significant predictors.

• Sample story
• This is Mandy. She is a chubby girl. She is
  much heavier than the other kids in class.
  Mandy is at school right now Lynn, another
  girl in the class, wants to put her things away
  in her cubby too, but Lynn cant reach her
  cubby. Lynn asks Mandy if she will help her
  put her things away.
• Children were asked the following questions,
  adapted from Boseovski and Lee (2006).
• Behavioral Prediction What do you think happens
  next in the story?
• Help was scored as 1, and Will not help was
  scored as 0.
• Trait attributions What kind of girl/boy is
  character?.
• Negative attributions (i.e., Mean) were scored
  as 0 and positive or neutral responses (i.e.,
  Nice or Not nice or mean) were scored as 1.

Overall, these findings indicate that advanced
ToM ability is associated with increased
positivity and fewer stereotyped judgments of
stigmatized groups. However, for the accent
story, ToM predicted more positive or neutral
trait attributions and yet was unassociated with
more positive behavioral predictions. This
suggests that in some cases, children may hold
discrepant beliefs about what a person will do
(i.e., behavioral predictions) and whether they
are a good person (i.e., trait attributions). In
the majority of cases, ToM added unique variance
in predicting children's judgments above and
beyond age. Perhaps children with advanced ToM
abilities are able to generate alternate ideas
about these groups and avoid reliance on
heuristics. Also, children with advanced ToM may
be able to better distinguish between physical
and mental states. Specifically, they may reason
that not all physical states (e.g., being
overweight) influence mental states (e.g.,
wanting to help a peer). As expected, judgments
about the control character were neutral and were
not influenced by ToM ability. These naturally
neutral or positive judgments of typical
characters may be related to childrens
positivity bias (Boseovski, 2010). Advanced ToM
ability may allow children to give stigmatized
characters this benefit of the doubt as they
naturally do for non-stigmatized characters.
This research has implications for the
development of stereotype-intervention programs.
Individual difference factors, such as ToM, may
serve as a buffer to counter socialization
processes that promote stereotyping. ToM ability
may be particularly useful for training and
intervention purposes because these reasoning
skills may be transferable to multiple contexts
and groups.
Results
Participants

• Logistic regression analyses were conducted to
  assess the contribution of age and ToM abilities
  to childrens behavioral predictions.
• Overweight As ToM abilities increased, the
  likelihood that children would make a Help
  prediction increased (ß .48, Wald ?2 4.31, p
  .04). Age was not significant (ß .02, Wald ?2
  1.15, p .28).
• Wheelchair As ToM abilities increased, the
  likelihood that children would make a Help
  prediction increased (ß .43, Wald ?2 3.66, p
  .05). Age was also significant (ß .05, Wald
  ?2 4.38, p .04).
• Accent ToM was not a significant predictor (ß
  .26, Wald ?2 1.15, p .28). As age
  increased, the likelihood that children would
  make a Help prediction increased (ß .06, Wald
  ?2 4.56, p .03).
• Control Neither ToM (ß .15, Wald ?2 .48, p
  .45) nor age (ß ..02, Wald ?2 .94, p .33)
  emerged as significant predictors.

There were 98 participants in the study 51 3-
and4-year-olds and 47 6- and 7-year-olds.
Figure 1. Percentage of Positive and Neutral
attributions by Theory of Mind Performance
Method
Theory of Mind (ToM) skills were assessed with
Happés (1994) strange stories. Participants
heard one story in which a child tells a joke and
one in which a child lies. In each case, the
story character made a statement that
contradicted their actual mental state (e.g.,
saying they love their Christmas present when
they actually hate it). After each story,
participants were asked Is it true what
character said? and Why did they say this?
To answer correctly, children must infer the
mental states of story characters and for doing
so, they received one point per correct answer.
Data for the two stories were combined, thus the
range of scores was 0-4 points. Participants
then heard three stories (adapted from Peterson
Boseovski, 2009) about characters with
stigmatized characteristics an overweight
character, a character with an accent and a
character in a wheelchair. The fourth story, in
which a characters clothing was described,
served as a control story.
Positive/Neutral Attributions
Total ToM Scores