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ERIC Number: EJ1467601
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Mar
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0165-0254
EISSN: EISSN-1464-0651
Available Date: 0000-00-00
What She Believes or What She Says? The Relation between Maternal Social Dominance Orientation, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Mental State Talk, and Children's Theory of Mind
Qiuyi Kong1,2; Harry Fraser3; Felicia Crysta Elwina3; Ted Ruffman3
International Journal of Behavioral Development, v49 n2 p135-145 2025
The present study provided a novel examination of how children's theory of mind (ToM) might be related to two maternal beliefs: (1) social dominance orientation (SDO: the belief that inequalities in society are justified) and (2) right-wing authoritarianism (RWA: a belief in following established authorities). We reasoned that these beliefs could affect maternal talk in that mothers with high SDO and RWA would be less likely to use mental state (MS) talk to explore peoples' desires and feelings, particularly when talking about individuals of an outgroup (e.g., of a different ethnicity). As a consequence, there might be links between maternal beliefs and children's ToM. We measured SDO and RWA in mothers, gave children theory-of-mind tasks, and measured the MS talk of 79 New Zealand mothers when asked to describe pictures to their 2- to 5-year-olds. Mothers with high SDO and RWA provided less MS talk when describing individuals of a different ethnicity, and mothers with high SDO and RWA had children with a worse ToM. The present findings provide unique information regarding the role of parent beliefs in children's ToM.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Zealand
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://osf.io/nhxu2/
Author Affiliations: 1Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai, China; 2Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), China; 3University of Otago, New Zealand