Anti-social learning: The impact of language on mentalizing

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Cultural Evolution

Background:

• Cultural evolution theories propose that humans learn to represent others' minds via cultural practices like verbal instruction.
• Previous research indicates less sophisticated mental state vocabulary is used for out-group members compared to in-group members.
• The impact of this linguistic difference on the representation of out-group minds remains undetermined.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether media language describing out-groups, particularly mental state terms, influences how recipients represent out-group minds.
• To determine if exposure to mental state language shapes the perception of out-group members as individuals with distinct minds.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted to explore the influence of media language on the representation of out-group minds.
• Experiment 1 analyzed language differences between left-leaning and right-leaning UK news sources.
• Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated the inclusion, omission, or quantity of mental state and first-person language used to describe out-groups.

Main Results:

• Participants were more likely to consider individual out-group members' distinct minds when mental state language was used in their introduction.
• The use of mental state language in media descriptions of out-groups enhances the representation of their individual mental states.

Conclusions:

• Cultural learning, influenced by media language, plays a significant role in shaping how individuals perceive and represent the minds of out-group members.
• The findings highlight the power of language in fostering more nuanced and individualized representations of social out-groups.