Young Children Are More Likely to Spontaneously Attribute Mental States to Members of Their Own Group

We investigated whether young children were more likely to spontaneously attribute mentalstates to members of their own social group than to members of an outgroup. We asked 5-and 6-year-old children to describe the actions of interacting geometric shapes andmanipulated whether children believed these shapes represented their own group or anothergroup. Children of both ages spontaneously used mental state words more often in theirdescription of ingroup members compared with outgroup members. Furthermore, 6-year-oldsproduced a greater diversity of mental state terms when talking about their own social group.These effects held across two different social categories (based on gender and geographicallocation). This research has important implications for understanding a broad range of socialphenomena including dehumanisation, intergroup bias and theory of mind.