Empathy, sex and fluid intelligence as predictors of theory of mind

By Agustín Ibáñez, David Huepe, René Gempp, Virna Vaneza Gutiérrez, Álvaro Rivera-Rei, M. Toledo. 2013

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) are affected by a variety of factors. We investigated the relationship between empathy, sex and fluid intelligence (FI) as predictors of ToM in a random probabilistic sample of secondary students. First, we explored whether sex, as well as high, average or low levels of empathy and FI affect ToM performance. Furthermore, we assessed the contribution of empathy, sex and FI in predicting ToM by using a path analysis. This method allows testing of causal models of directed dependencies among a set of variables. The causal dependencies of empathy, sex and fluid intelligence were confirmed and identified. In addition, the model confirmed the direct effect of empathy, sex and fluid intelligence on ToM; and the indirect effect of sex mediated by empathy. Thus, individual differences in ToM levels are partially attributable to sex, empathy and fluid intelligence variability, raising important considerations for clinical research as well as ToM’s theoretical models of domain specificity.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5aa9e5bf470eda92a84a31e58ee728327f2e6ae0

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In Clinical Psychology

Marco Iacoboni

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Psychiatry and Mental health

Marco Iacoboni

Citations in the corpus

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior (2014, background): “While there are a number of studies in children that report female advantages in ToM, reviewed below, there are fewer studies in adults examining ToM, in general, as it is assumed that adults already have mature ToM abilities.”