Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp

How social status influences our understanding of others’ mental states ⇑ Michael T. Rizzo , Melanie Killen

Department of Development and Quantitative , University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA article info abstract

Article history: The current study investigated whether children’s relative social Received 29 August 2017 status within a context influences their ability to identify others’ Revised 7 December 2017 mental states. Across two experiments, 3- to 7-year-olds (N = 103) were randomly assigned to hold either an advantaged or disadvantaged social status and were assessed on their ability to Keywords: accurately identify others’ mental states (via false- and Social status Mental state understanding belief-emotion ‘‘theory of mind” assessments). When participants’ Theory of mind status was manipulated by a structural factor (; Experiment Social cognition 1), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely than Moral development participants with advantaged status to pass the false-belief and Contextualized perspective belief-emotion assessments. When status was manipulated by an individual factor (performance; Experiment 2), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely to pass the false-belief assessment but not the belief-emotion assessment. Results provide the first empirical evidence that an individual’s contextualized per- spective (i.e., his or her social status situated within a given con- text) influences the individual’s ability to identify others’ mental states. Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Understanding others’ mental states—their desires, beliefs, emotions, and intentions—is at the crux of nearly all social interactions (Tomasello, 2016; Wellman, 2014; Woodward, 2009). For example,

⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M.T. Rizzo). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.008 0022-0965/Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 31 understanding others’ intentions allows individuals to interpret their actions, and anticipating how others will feel is critical to guiding one’s own actions and ensuring the fair treatment of others (Killen, Mulvey, Richardson, Jampol, & Woodward, 2011; Smetana, Jambon, Conry-Murray, & Sturge-Apple, 2012; Sodian et al., 2016). Furthermore, mental state knowledge is an important evolu- tionary milestone that distinguishes from nonhuman primates (Tomasello, 2014). Ontogenetically, children’s ability to explicitly recognize that others have an internal representa- tion of the world based on their unique perspective, referred to as ‘‘theory of mind” (ToM) competence (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001), constitutes an important developmental achievement. Children’s ToM competence is related to numerous social and behavioral competencies, including social compe- tence (Dunn, Cutting, & Demetriou, 2000; Peterson & Siegal, 2002), intergroup attitudes (Chalik, Rivera, & Rhodes, 2014; McLoughlin & Over, 2017), and evaluations of morally relevant contexts (Killen et al., 2011; Li, Rizzo, Burkholder, & Killen, 2017). Children’s ToM capacities are also linked to their ability to resist harmful intergroup (Mulvey, Rizzo, & Killen, 2015; Rizzo & Killen, 2017). Implicit in much of this research, however, is the assumption that children’s mental state under- standing is a relatively stable fixed trait; children are either able to internally represent others’ desires, beliefs, or emotions or they are not. Comparatively little research has examined intra-individual dif- ferences in children’s performance on mental state assessments (Baker, Leslie, Gallistel, & Hood, 2016). Yet, broad conceptual changes in individuals’ thinking—as occurs when children develop a rep- resentational understanding of others’ minds (Rhodes & Wellman, 2013; Wellman et al., 2001)—occur over an extended period of time rather than as a sudden and consistent mastery (Baker et al., 2016; Siegler, 2006, 2007). That is, a child may have acquired the underlying competence to recognize the representational nature of others’ mental states but may still fail to apply that competence to a specific context, especially when the competence is first emerging, due to the complexity of multiple factors co-occurring in most social contexts. When contextual factors impinge on children’s ability to attend to the relevant , this makes the application more difficult. Furthermore, the ability to apply cognitive competencies to actual situations may require more effortful control and attentional resources when a competence is first emerging compared with when it is already deeply entrenched and routine. No study to our knowledge has directly examined how children’s contextual perspective—their immediate position or status situated within a social context—influences their understanding of the mental states of those around them. Thus, the current research investigated this novel question at an age when children’s ability to represent others’ mental states is just emerging.

Influence of status on mental state understanding

One factor that may influence children’s proclivity to think about others in terms of their mental states is children’s relative social status. For instance, Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, and Keltner (2012) suggested that, for adults, lower (e.g., as determined by income, , or ) spurs contextualist social cognitive tendencies—a system of knowledge that focuses on forces outside an individual’s control, including contextual factors and others’ beliefs, intentions, and emotions. By contrast, they stated that higher societal social status may spur solipsistic social cognitive tendencies—a system of knowledge that focuses on forces within an individual’s con- trol, including one’s own traits, goals, beliefs, and emotions, and prioritizes one’s own mental states over those of others. Supporting this proposition, Kraus, Côté, and Keltner (2010) documented that adults of a lower social status were more accurate in identifying emotions depicted in pictures than were adults of a higher . No study to date, however, has investigated the that social status plays in ToM competence during childhood. Accordingly, it remains unknown whether these ‘‘cognitive tendencies” are a result of prolonged experience with advantaged or disadvantaged social status or whether they can be attributed to a more immediate influence of an individual’s contextualized perspective (i.e., whether they hold an advantaged or disadvantaged status within a given context). The former suggests that individuals’ developing ToM competence is influenced by their broader developmental context (i.e., ToM compe- tence is influenced by one’s accumulated experiences with advantaged and disadvantaged status). 32 M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41

In contrast, the latter suggests that individuals’ ability to demonstrate their underlying ToM compe- tencies is influenced by their immediate status, perhaps due to differing motivational or attentional demands brought about by an individual’s contextualized perspective. For example, individuals with an advantaged status within a given context may be more focused on acting on their own goals, desires, and beliefs (given that they have the status to do so), whereas individuals with a disadvan- taged status may be more focused on attending to others’ goals, desires, and beliefs as a means of changing, or at least maintaining, their current status. Of course, it is also possible that both effects are present, in which case one might expect an interaction between individuals’ broader societal con- text and their immediate contextualized perspective. It is also important to note that social are maintained by both structural and individual factors. Structural forces constitute biases that are inherent within a social system that systematically oppresses or handicapps groups of individuals (Ridgeway, 2015). These structural biases occur as indi- viduals and groups become classified as more or less favorable due to characteristics and features that are largely beyond their control such as gender, race, ethnicity, and (Beeghley, 2004; Gilbert, 2002; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Killen, Rutland, & Yip, 2016; Kraus et al., 2012). At the same time, however, individual factors such as one’s motivations, goals, desires, and performance can also influ- ence social status (e.g., meritocracies reward personal effort and productivity). Thus, both structural and individual factors need to be considered when examining how individuals’ social status bears on their understanding of others’ mental states. Given that, from beginning early in childhood, individuals understand that disparities based on individuals’ merit are fair (Rizzo, Elenbaas, Cooley, & Killen, 2016; Schmidt, Svetlova, Johe, & Tomasello, 2016), whereas disparities based on structural factors such as gender and race are unfair (Elenbaas, Rizzo, Cooley, & Killen, 2016; Rizzo & Killen, 2017; Theimer, Killen, & Stangor, 2001), it is plausible that these different forms of status hierarchies may induce differing motivational or atten- tional concerns. For example, disadvantaged status that is brought about by differences in merit may lead individuals to preferentially attend to others’ beliefs in an attempt to understand how to maintain or improve on their previous performance. Alternatively, advantaged status that is brought about by structural factors (i.e., through intergroup discrimination and bias) may lead individuals to selectively avoid thinking about others’ beliefs and emotions so as to avoid needing to reckon with the fact that their status was unfairly achieved at someone else’s expense.

The current research

Using a between-participants experimental design, across two experiments, we examined how indi- viduals’ relative social status influences their ability to identify others’ mental states in individually and structurally based status contexts. In Experiment 1, we tested this in a context where relative social sta- tus was determined by a structural factor—participants’ gender. Consistent with the research discussed above, we hypothesized that participants assigned to hold a disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass both a false-belief assessment, which requires them to represent a third party’s false beliefs, and a belief-emotion assessment, which requires them to recognize that a third party’s emotions would be dependent on their beliefs, than would participants assigned to an advantaged status. In Experiment 2, we extended the findings of Experiment 1 by assessing how participants’ relative social status influences their mental state understanding when their relative social status was deter- mined by an individual factor—participants’ performance on a task. Similarly, we hypothesized that participants who were assigned to the disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass both the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments than would participants assigned to the advantaged status.

Experiment 1

In Experiment 1, we manipulated participants’ relative social status based on gender group mem- bership and tested whether this manipulation influenced their performance on false-belief and belief- emotion ToM assessments. M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 33

Method

Participants

Participants were 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 52; 27 girls; Mage = 5.10 years, SD = 0.97, range = 3. 63–7.40) recruited from preschools and elementary schools serving low- to middle-income families in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Specifically, 5 three-year-olds, 21 four-year-olds, 18 five- year-olds, 5 six-year-olds, and 3 seven-year-olds participated in the experiment. All children in the target age range were invited to participate. Written parental and children’s verbal assent were obtained for all participants. Participants’ race/ethnicity was representative of the sampling pop- ulation: 70% European American, 16% African American, 10% Latino/a, and 4% Asian American. One additional participant was interviewed but was excluded from the sample due to experimenter error. Power analyses determined that N = 50 was an appropriate sample size to detect medium to large effects at .80 power for all analyses.

Procedure Trained research assistants conducted interviews with participants in a quiet space at their school. Participants were seated in front of a laptop computer and were informed that they would, ‘‘hear some stories and play some games” on the laptop. The study was administered using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2013. Interviews were video-recorded for participants with consent to video-record, although not all participants provided consent to be video-recorded. Interviewers recorded participant responses on a paper protocol. The experimental session took approximately 15 min to complete, after which children were escorted back to their classrooms.

Puzzle activities. Participants were first told that they had been selected to join a special online puzzle club where they could complete puzzles to win prizes. Participants were then shown a silhouette of a female or male child with a star on it (to represent themselves) and were told that they would com- plete the puzzles in groups of two based on their gender. Participants were then introduced to their hypothetical ingroup and outgroup members (depicted by illustrations of age-matched children). Specifically, participants were introduced to one gender ingroup peer who would be their teammate and two gender outgroup peers who were in the other group. A group-based competition was used to ensure that participants recognized that the group leader’s allocation was explicitly based on the structural factor (gender group membership) rather than a sim- ple preference for the participants or the other characters. Gender was chosen as a group membership based on past research indicating that young children view gender as a salient social category (Bigler & Liben, 2006; Horn & Sinno, 2014; Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006). Participants were then told that everyone was going to complete the exact same puzzles and that they could earn prizes based on how well they did at the puzzles. Participants completed a ‘‘Find the Difference” puzzle—a puzzle where two nearly identical pictures are presented simultaneously and participants need to indicate the differences between the two pictures (see Fig. 1). To control for par- ticipants’ actual performance on the puzzle, research assistants ended the trial after participants iden- tified three differences and told participants ‘‘Great !” Participants were then told that everyone tied on the puzzles: ‘‘It’s a tie! You and [Tammy/Tommy] found just as many differences as [Sally/Ste- ven] and [Chloe/Collin] did!” To illustrate this, participants were shown a graphic of ‘‘Winners!” above both groups and stars encircling both groups.

Status manipulation. After hearing how everyone did on the puzzle, participants were then introduced to the group leader in charge of giving out the prizes and were told that the group leader intends to give more prizes to their gender ingroup regardless of the ingroup members’ performance; ‘‘Alex says that [she/he] doesn’t think the prizes should be given out based on how everyone does on the puzzles. [She/He] says that [she/he] is a [girl/boy], so [she’ll/he’ll] probably just give more to the [girls/boys].” Participants were randomly assigned to one of two relative status conditions (gender-matched): Advantaged or Disadvantaged. In the Advantaged condition, the group leader was participants’ gender ingroup member; thus, the group leader allocated more prizes to participants and their ingroup teammate (3 prizes each) than to 34 M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41

Fig. 1. Slide shown to female participants in the Disadvantaged condition of Experiment 1, illustrating the final allocation of prizes and a depiction of the two puzzle games. their outgroup (1 prize each). In the Disadvantaged condition, the group leader was participants’ gen- der outgroup member; thus, the group leader allocated more prizes to participants’ outgroup (3 prizes each) than to participants and their ingroup teammate (1 prize each). To ensure that participants viewed the allocation as a systematic strategy rather than a one-time allocation, participants completed two puzzles and the group leader allocated prizes identically fol- lowing both puzzles (giving more to their gender ingroup members than to their gender outgroup members). Thus, participants (and their ingroup peer) in the Advantaged condition received 6 prizes each while their outgroup peers received 2 prizes each, whereas participants (and their ingroup peer) in the Disadvantaged condition received 2 prizes each while their outgroup peers received 6 prizes each (see Fig. 1).

Assessments Following the status manipulation, participants then completed two ToM assessments taken from past research (Wellman & Liu, 2004). Participants first completed a contents false-belief (FB ToM) assessment and then completed a belief-emotion (BE ToM) assessment (see online supplementary material for full vignettes). In the FB ToM assessment, participants were told about a crayon box that, unbeknownst to another child, actually contained crackers. To pass the assessment, participants needed to indicate that the other child would think that there were crayons—not crackers—in the box. In the BE ToM assessment, participants were told about a Legos box that, unbeknownst to another child, actually contained rocks. To pass the assessment, participants needed to indicate that the other child would be happy when they first received the box but then become sad once they opened the box and saw the rocks. The standard memory checks were included in each assessment. To be scored as passing the full assessment, participants needed to correctly answer both memory questions and indi- cate that the target character would hold the correct mental state (see Wellman & Liu, 2004). Multiple ToM assessments were chosen to allow for a broader assessment of children’s ToM competence. M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 35

Results

Data analytic plan To examine whether children’s relative status was related to their performance on the subsequent FB and BE ToM assessments, generalized linear models with a binomial probability distribution and a logit link function were conducted for each of the ToM assessments with relative status as the predic- tor variable and age (calculated as a continuous variable) as a covariate. These models were employed for this study because they are appropriate for assessing a binary outcome variable while controlling for a continuous variable (age). Wald chi-square values are reported for significant effects. In all mod- els, Disadvantaged status was coded as 0 and Advantaged status was coded as 1. Preliminary analyses revealed that participant gender was not a significant predictor of performance on either of the ToM assessments; thus, participant gender was dropped from the analyses.

False belief The first model tested the hypothesis that when participants’ status was determined by a structural factor, participants with disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass the FB ToM assessment than would participants with advantaged status while controlling for age. The overall model was sig- nificant, likelihood ratio v2(2, N = 52) = 12.12, p = .002 (see Fig. 2). Consistent with our hypothesis, results indicated a significant main effect for relative status, Wald v2 = 5.27, df =1,p = .022; B = À 2 .54, 95% confidence interval (CI) [À4.72, À0.37], odds ratio = 12.73. Participants with disadvantaged status (M = .96) were more likely to pass the FB ToM assessment than were participants with advan- taged status (M = .63). The covariate (age) was not significant in the full model (p = .14).

Belief emotion The second model tested the hypothesis that when participants’ status was determined by a struc- tural factor, participants with disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass the BE ToM assess- ment than would participants with advantaged status while controlling for age. Again, the overall model was significant, likelihood ratio v2(2, N = 52) = 8.58, p = .014 (see Fig. 2). Consistent with our hypothesis, results indicated a significant main effect for relative status, Wald v2 = 4.40, df =1,p = .036; B = À1.36, 95% CI [À2.63, À0.09], odds ratio = 3.88. Participants with disadvantaged status (M = .80) were more likely to pass the BE ToM assessment than were participants with advantaged status (M = .48). The covariate (age) was not significant in the full model (p = .11).

* Advantaged 1.00 * Disadvantaged

0.80

0.60

0.40

0.20

0.63 0.960.48 0.80

Proportion of children passing assessment 0.00 False-Belief Belief-Emotion

Fig. 2. Proportions of children passing the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments by relative social status when status is established by gender group membership. *p < .05. 36 M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41

Discussion

The current results suggest that individuals’ social status is related to their proclivity to think about others in terms of their mental states. When status was manipulated by a structural factor (i.e., gender-based discrimination), participants with disadvantaged status were more likely than those with advantaged status to pass both the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments. Given that even young children recognize the wrongfulness of gender-based discrimination (Theimer et al., 2001), we argue that the experience of being in a disadvantaged or advantaged state increased (disadvantaged) or decreased (advantaged) their focus on others’ beliefs and emotions.

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2, we extended the findings from Experiment 1 by investigating how individuals’ status related to their recognition of others’ mental states when status was established through indi- vidual performance. By 3–5 years of age, children evaluate merit-based allocations to be fair (Rizzo et al., 2016; Schmidt et al., 2016) but also reject allocations where they receive fewer resources than a peer (Blake et al., 2015; Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012). Thus, Experiment 2 examined how chil- dren’s ability to identify others’ beliefs and emotions was influenced by their status in a context where status was established through merit.

Method

Participants

Participants were 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 51; 33 girls; Mage = 5.21 years, SD = 1.33, range = 3. 00–7.99) recruited from the same sampling population as in Experiment 1. Specifically, 7 3-year-olds, 21 4-year-olds, 9 5-year-olds, 7 6-year-olds, and 7 7-year-olds completed the experiment. All children in the target age range were invited to participate; however, no participants who completed Experi- ment 1 were included in Experiment 2. Written parental consent and children’s verbal assent were obtained for all participants. Participant race/ethnicity was representative of the sampling population: 70% European American, 16% African American, 10% Latino/a, and 4% Asian American.

Procedure All procedures and materials in Experiment 2 were identical to those in Experiment 1 except that social status was determined by an individual factor rather than a structural factor (see below). The puzzle activities were also the same activities used in Experiment 1, and the procedure for controlling for participants’ performance was the same; research assistants ended the trial after participants iden- tified three differences and told participants ‘‘Great job!”.

Status manipulation. As in Experiment 1, participants were told that they would complete the puzzles in groups of two to win prizes. Critically, however, in Experiment 2 participants were then told that one of the two groups did a better job on the puzzle. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two relative status conditions: Advantaged or Disadvantaged. In the Advantaged condition, partici- pants were told, ‘‘Your group won! You and [Tammy/Tommy] found more differences than [Sally/Ste- ven] and [Chloe/Collin] did.” In the Disadvantaged condition, participants were told, ‘‘The [girls’/boys’] group won! [Sally/Steven] and [Chloe/Collin] found more differences than you and [Tammy/Tommy] did.” To illustrate which group won, participants were shown a graphic of ‘‘Winners!” above the advantaged group and stars encircling the advantaged group; nothing was shown above or encircling the disadvantaged group. After hearing how everyone did on the puzzle, participants were introduced to the group leader in charge of giving out the prizes and were told that the group leader intends to give more prizes to the group that won the puzzle activity regardless of their gender; ‘‘Alex says that [she/he] doesn’t think it should matter whether you’re in the girls’ group or the boys’ group. [She/He] says that [she/he] is going to give more prizes to the winners.” Participants were then shown an animation of the group M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 37 leader allocating more prizes to the advantaged group. In the Advantaged condition the group leader allocated more prizes to participants and their ingroup teammate (3 prizes each) than to their out- group (1 prize each), whereas in the Disadvantaged condition the group leader allocated more prizes to participants’ outgroup (3 prizes each) than to participants and their ingroup teammate (1 prize each). Similar to Experiment 1, to ensure that participants viewed the allocation as a systematic strategy rather than a one-time allocation, participants completed two puzzles and the group leader allocated prizes identically following both puzzles (giving more to the advantaged group). Thus, participants (and their ingroup peer) in the Advantaged condition received 6 prizes each while their outgroup peers received 2 prizes each, whereas participants (and their ingroup peer) in the Disadvantaged con- dition received 2 prizes each while their outgroup peers received 6 prizes each (see Fig. 3).

Assessments Following the status manipulation, participants then completed a contents false-belief assessment and a belief-emotion assessment (Wellman & Liu, 2004; see supplementary material). The assess- ments and scoring were the same as in Experiment 1.

Results

Data analytic plan The same data analytic plan was used as in Experiment 1.

False belief The first model tested the hypothesis that when participants’ status was determined by an individ- ual factor, participants with disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass the FB ToM assessment

Fig. 3. Slide shown to female participants in the Disadvantaged condition of Experiment 2, illustrating the final allocation of prizes and a depiction of the two puzzle games. 38 M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 than would participants with advantaged status while controlling for age. The overall model was sig- nificant, likelihood ratio v2(2, N = 51) = 17.89, p < .001 (see Fig. 4). Consistent with our hypothesis, results indicated a significant main effect for relative status, Wald v2 = 3.77, df =1,p = .05; B = À1.4 0, 95% CI [À2.82, 0.01], odds ratio = 4.06. Participants with disadvantaged status (M = .70) were more likely to pass the FB ToM assessment than were participants with advantaged status (M = .46). The covariate (age) was also significant in the full model (p = .002).

Belief emotion The second model tested the hypothesis that when participants’ status was determined by an indi- vidual factor, participants with disadvantaged status would be more likely to pass the BE ToM assess- ment than would participants with advantaged status while controlling for age. The overall model was not significant, likelihood ratio v2(2, N = 51) = 5.48, p = .06. Counter to hypotheses, relative status was not significant (p = .62). Participants with disadvantaged status (M = .61) did not differ from those with advantaged status (M = .68) in their performance on the BE ToM assessment. The covariate (age) was significant in the full model (p = .037).

Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 provide further evidence that children’s social status is related to their proclivity to think about others’ mental states. When participants’ status was manipulated by their own ‘‘performance,” participants with disadvantaged status were more likely than those with advan- taged status to pass the false-belief assessment. Interestingly, different from Experiment 1, no differ- ences were found for the belief-emotion assessment. We propose that the difference across experiments was due to the reduced perceived wrongfulness of the status when it was established based on individual performance rather than gender-based discrimination. That is, the sta- tus hierarchy itself may promote individuals to be more or less likely to think about others’ beliefs, whereas the perceived wrongfulness of the status hierarchy may play a particular role in individuals’ proclivity to think about others’ emotions, especially given the link between group-based discrimina- tion and mental and emotional (Brown & Bigler, 2004, 2005; Schmitt, Branscombe, Postmes, & Garcia, 2014).

General discussion

The ability to identify others’ mental states plays a fundamental role in how we interact in social contexts. Recognizing how our actions, or the actions of those around us, will affect others is critical to

1.00 Advantaged

Disadvantaged * 0.80 n.s.

0.60

0.40

0.20

0.46 0.70 0.68 0.61 Proportion of children passing assessment 0.00 False-Belief Belief-Emotion

Fig. 4. Proportions of children passing the false-belief and belief-emotion assessments by relative social status when status is established by individual performance. *p < .05, n.s. indicates a nonsignificant effect. M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 39 ensuring the fair treatment of others. The results from the current experiments are the first to demon- strate how children’s social status influences their ability to accurately identify others’ mental states. Past research has largely discussed mental state understanding as a stable fixed competence that one either does or does not possess. Specifically, in many instances, past research has assessed how participants’ performance on a ToM assessment in one context predicts other aspects of their social-cognitive competencies or behaviors, arguing that children’s performance on a ToM assessment is indicative of their ability to represent others’ mental states and that this ability (which children either do or do not possess) is linked to other social competencies (e.g., Chalik et al., 2014; Dunn et al., 2000; Killen et al., 2011; Li et al., 2017; McLoughlin & Over, 2017; Mulvey et al., 2015; Peterson & Siegal, 2002; Rizzo & Killen, 2017). In the current study, however, we randomly assigned participants to hold either an advantaged or disadvantaged status and found that the assigned status influenced their ability to correctly identify others’ mental states. Thus, the current results suggest that participants’ awareness of others’ mental states vary based on their contextualized perspective (i.e., their status situated within a given context). We argue that whereas children may (or may not) possess the underlying competence to demonstrate their representational understanding of others’ mental states in one experimental context, their ability to demonstrate that competence may differ in another context based on their contextualized perspective. One explanation for these results is that participants who were assigned the disadvantaged status were more motivated to think and reason about the potential causes of the status differences (Brown & Bigler, 2004, 2005; Kraus et al., 2010, 2012). Alternatively, participants who were assigned the advantaged status may have been more likely to avoid thinking about others’ mental states so as to ignore (implicitly or explicitly) acknowledging the fact that they were unfairly advantaged at someone else’s expense. This hypothesis is consistent with research linking outgroup dehumanization to decreases in individuals’ attributions of mental states to outgroup members (Haslam, 2006; McLoughlin & Over, 2017). Taken together, the current results are consistent with the argument that individuals’ contextualized perspective plays a role in determining their proclivity to think and reason about others’ mental states. The results of the current study also provide an important insight into studies investigating chil- dren’s aversion to inequities (Blake et al., 2015; Shaw & Olson, 2012). For example, Blake et al. (2015) documented that children rectify disadvantageous inequalities developmentally earlier than they rectify advantageous inequalities. Researchers have indicated that children’s selfish desires may explain these results (Smith, Blake, & Harris, 2013); however, the current results suggest that children may also struggle cognitively to recognize the harmful consequences of advantageous inequalities given that their advantaged status hinders their ability to think about others’ mental states (see also Mulvey, Buchheister, & McGrath, 2016). Thus, children’s own desires for additional resources and their hindered ability to consider how the inequality may affect the disadvantaged group both may play an important role in children’s early inability to reject advantageous inequalities. Furthermore, the current experiments provide partial support for the theory that individuals’ soci- etal social status influences the way in which they perceive the world (Kraus et al., 2012). Consistent with the hypothesis that lower status gives rise to contextualist social cognitive tendencies and higher status gives rise to solipsistic social cognitive tendencies, the results of the current experiments doc- umented, across structurally and individually based status contexts, that individuals assigned to a lower status position were better able to reason about others’ mental states than were individuals assigned to higher status. Importantly, however, the current experiments used an experimental design that randomly assigned participants to their relative status within the experimental context. The current study cannot address how status on a societal level influences individuals’ social-cognitive capacities. It remains equally plausible that individuals’ from high and low societal status backgrounds develop their social-cognitive capacities at comparable rates but demonstrate more or less advanced social- cognitive abilities in contexts that emphasize their societal status. The directionality of the effect found in the current experiments is an important avenue for future research to investigate. Understanding whether disadvantaged social status promotes individuals to focus more on others’ mental states or whether advantaged social status reduces individuals’ focus on others’ mental states—or both—is a critical question with implications for research on the impact 40 M.T. Rizzo, M. Killen / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 169 (2018) 30–41 of social status on cognition and behavior. To test this directly, future research could implement a within-participants approach to assess how participants’ ToM competencies at various time points differ based on their relative social status during those time points. Interestingly, the current study also did not document an effect for gender, or an interaction between gender and relative status, on participants’ ability to identify others’ mental states. Although gender differences are not typically found for ToM performance (Wellman & Liu, 2004), an interaction between gender and relative social status would have provided tentative evidence that participants’ broader societal status may also play a role in their understanding of others’ mental states (see Kraus et al., 2012). Given that children pick up on status differences between men and women by early childhood (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017; Bigler & Liben, 2006; Horn & Sinno, 2014; Rizzo & Killen, 2017; Ruble et al., 2006), it is important for future research to continue to investigate this research question. Overall, the data reflect a new approach to conceptualizing the social-cognitive ability to identify others’ mental states. As with other cognitive abilities, understanding others’ mental states is influ- enced by the social context and, importantly, by the social status that one holds in a given situation. Future research should continue to investigate how social status influences social cognitive abilities in a range of social contexts.

Acknowledgments

The first author is supported by the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School at the University of Maryland. We thank the members of the Social and Moral Development Labora- tory for their contributions to this project, Laura Elenbaas for feedback on the design, Adam Hartstone- Rose for the illustrations, and Lucas Butler for invaluable feedback on the manuscript. We are very appreciative to the schools, students, and parents who participated in this study.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.008.

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