Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span

Copyright © 2017 Wacker, Bolte and Dziobek. 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 soc...

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Main Authors: Wacker, R., Bolte, Sven, Dziobek, I.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Frontiers Research Foundation 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/63533
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author Wacker, R.
Bolte, Sven
Dziobek, I.
author_facet Wacker, R.
Bolte, Sven
Dziobek, I.
author_sort Wacker, R.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Copyright © 2017 Wacker, Bolte and Dziobek. 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.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-635332018-03-28T05:41:17Z Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span Wacker, R. Bolte, Sven Dziobek, I. Copyright © 2017 Wacker, Bolte and Dziobek. 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. 2017 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/63533 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01324 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers Research Foundation fulltext
spellingShingle Wacker, R.
Bolte, Sven
Dziobek, I.
Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title_full Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title_fullStr Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title_full_unstemmed Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title_short Women know better what other women think and feel: Gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
title_sort women know better what other women think and feel: gender effects on mindreading across the adult life span
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/63533