Department of Psychology, King's College London, London, UK.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Aug 28;14(1):19432. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-67311-3.
Societies are becoming more polarised, driven in part by misconceptions about out-groups' beliefs. To understand these effects, one must examine the cognitive processes underlying how people think about others. Here, we investigate whether people are less prone to theorise about the minds of out-groups, or less able to do so. Participants (Study 1: n = 128; Study 2: n = 128) made inferences about social and political beliefs held by real in-group and out-group members, and could choose to receive further information to improve these inferences. Results show: (1) participants sought equivalent or greater information about out-groups relative to in-groups; but despite this, (2) made significantly less accurate inferences for out-groups; and (3) were significantly less aware of their reduced ability. This shows that poorer mental state inference is not underpinned by a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds, but instead by a worse representation of the minds of out-groups.
社会变得更加两极分化，部分原因是人们对外部群体的信仰存在误解。为了了解这些影响，人们必须研究人们思考他人的认知过程。在这里，我们调查人们是否不太倾向于对外部群体的思维进行理论化，或者不太能够进行这种理论化。参与者（研究 1：n=128；研究 2：n=128）对真实的内群体和外群体成员的社会和政治信仰进行了推断，并可以选择接收进一步的信息来改善这些推断。结果表明：（1）与内群体相比，参与者对外群体的信息寻求相等或更多；但尽管如此，（2）对外群体的推断准确性显著降低；（3）对外群体的能力下降明显认识不足。这表明较差的心理状态推断不是由考虑外部群体思维的倾向降低所驱动的，而是由外部群体思维的代表性更差所驱动的。
