Journal article
Bridging People and Perspectives: General and Language-Specific Social Network Structure Predict Mentalizing Across Diverse Sociolinguistic Contexts
Canadian journal of experimental psychology, Vol.76(4), pp.235-250
12/01/2022
DOI: 10.1037/cep0000273
PMID: 35191715
Abstract
Mentalizing, or reasoning about others' mental states, is a dynamic social cognitive process that aids in communication and navigating complex social interactions. We examined whether exposure to diverse perspectives, afforded by occupying influential social network positions, predicted bilingual adults' performances on a behavioral mentalizing rating task in regions of high and low linguistic diversity. We calculated the degree to which respondents' social network position generally bridged unconnected others (i.e., general betweenness) and specifically bridged language communities (i.e., language betweenness). General betweenness predicted mentalizing performance regardless of region, whereas language betweenness only predicted mentalizing in a high linguistic diversity region, where bilingualism is ubiquitous and mentalizing to resolve perspective differences on the basis of language may be an adaptive cognitive strategy. These results indicate that human cognition is sensitive to social context and adaptive to the sociolinguistic demands of the broader environment.
Public Significance Statement Opportunities in social network structure to bridge diverse perspectives patterned with higher mentalizing capacities across two distinct sociolinguistic regions, whereas bridging between language communities patterned with higher mentalizing capacities only in a linguistically diverse region. These results suggest that mentalizing, or understanding others' mental states, is sensitive to social context and may be adaptive to the sociolinguistic demands of the environment.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Bridging People and Perspectives: General and Language-Specific Social Network Structure Predict Mentalizing Across Diverse Sociolinguistic Contexts
- Creators
- Mehrgol Tiv - McGill UniversityEthan Kutlu - Univ Iowa, Dept Psychol & Brain Sci, Iowa City, IA 52242 USAElisabeth O'Regan - McGill UniversityDebra Titone - McGill University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Canadian journal of experimental psychology, Vol.76(4), pp.235-250
- Publisher
- Canadian Psychological Assoc
- DOI
- 10.1037/cep0000273
- PMID
- 35191715
- ISSN
- 1196-1961
- eISSN
- 1878-7290
- Number of pages
- 16
- Grant note
- Fonds de Recherche du Quebec: Societe et Culture Canada Research Chairs program; Canada Research Chairs 261769-13 / Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); CGIAR
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/01/2022
- Academic Unit
- Linguistics; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9984446549302771
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