False Belief Reasoning Ability and Empathy: Evidence of a Relationship From the N400

Interpreting others’ actions

relies on an understanding of their current mental state. Here

we report a false belief study using ERPs where participants

(N=28) read contexts that described a character having a true

(TB) or false belief (FB) about an object’s location. A target

sentence described where that character would look for

the object - including a sentence-final noun that was either

consistent or inconsistent with the character’s belief. When

the character held a TB about the object’s location, the N400

waveform was more negative-going for belief inconsistent

vs. consistent critical words [t=2.79, p<.01]. However, the

opposite pattern was found when the character held a FB

about the object’s location [t=-2.39, p<.03]. Intriguingly,

analyses between the N400 inconsistency effect and empathy

scores showed a significant correlation for FB (r=-.51, p<.003)

but not TB, indicating that high empathisers successfully

interpreted events according to the character’s FB, while low

empathisers interpreted events egocentrically.