Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups

Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups Bryony Payne, Geoff Bird, Caroline Catmur This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 27 Aug, 2024 Read the published version in Scientific Reports → Version 1 posted 10 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Societies are becoming more polarised, driven in part by misconceptions about out-groups’ beliefs. To understand these effects, one must examine the cognitive processes underlying how people think about others. Here, we investigate whether people are less prone to theorise about the minds of out-groups, or less able to do so. Participants (Study 1: n=128; Study 2: n=128) made inferences about social and political beliefs held by real in-group and out-group members, and could choose to receive further information to improve these inferences. Results show: 1) participants sought equivalent or greater information about out-groups relative to in-groups; but despite this, 2) made significantly less accurate inferences for out-groups; and 3) were significantly less aware of their reduced ability. This shows that poorer mental state inference is not underpinned by a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds, but instead by a worse representation of the minds of out-groups. Biological sciences/Psychology Biological sciences/Psychology/Human behaviour Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 INTRODUCTION Societies are becoming increasingly divided, in part due to the growing political polarization that is evident in many large democracies (Boxwell et al., 2020). This polarization may lead to increased hatred (More in Common, 2020), as individuals become more emotionally negative about those with opposing views. However, this polarisation is fuelled by widely shared misconceptions about the views of out-group members (Iyengar et al., 2019 ; Parker et al., 2021 ). For instance, Americans who support the Republican party overestimated the extremity of Democrat views on taxes, abortion, gay rights, and racial policy (Ahler & Sood, 2018 ). Thus, predictions about the beliefs and attitudes of outgroups are frequently inaccurate, and this inaccuracy negatively impacts relations between members of different groups. To understand why people have such inaccurate estimates of out-groups, it is critical to examine the cognitive processes underlying “mentalising” or “theory of mind” (Wellman, 2004 ) – the process by which we attribute mental states to others. Although research suggests that individuals' mentalising ability differs depending on whether they are considering the mind of an in-group or out-group member, none has been able to explain why. This is, in part, because previous studies have not disentangled the multiple underlying cognitive processes that give rise to mentalising and, further, which of these processes differ – and how – when considering different minds. For example, some studies aim to measure an individual’s mentalizing ability , by measuring their accuracy in inferring the mental states of others. Perez-Zapata et al. ( 2016 ) tested Australian participants when mentalizing about either Chilean participants or other Australians. The authors claimed that participants' inferences were less accurate and slower for the Chilean out-group than for the Australian in-group, an effect which replicated in other samples (Adams et al. 2010 nültas et al. 2019). These studies therefore suggest that people have poorer theory of mind abilities when thinking about out-group members relative to in-group members. However, these studies – aiming to measure mentalising ability by assessing the accuracy of mental state inference - all suffer from common problems. First, they lack an objective ground truth to determine mental state inference accuracy (see Long et al., 2022 ). Studies frequently use fictional material as stimuli, requiring participants to infer the mental states of fictional characters who do not have them, and thus there is no true objective correct answer. Instead, the ’correct’ answer is determined by the creator of the stimulus material, or a group of raters, often from a single group (culture, age, neurotype, etc). The lack of a true correct answer makes determining the accuracy of mental state inference impossible, and is especially problematic for the question of determining the accuracy of mental state inferences for in- and out-groups. This is because the assumption of one correct answer may well itself be incorrect; it may be the case that individuals of different ages, cultures, neurotypes, truly do have different mental states in the same situation. Equally problematic is the fact that several studies have used tests of questionable validity, and which are inherently unsuitable for in- and out-group comparisons for other reasons. For example, several studies have used the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Task (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001 ) to assess theory of mind ability for in- and out-groups (e.g., Adams et al., 2010 , Baltazar, 2020). However, Oakley et al. ( 2016 ) have previously demonstrated that the RMET does not measure theory of mind, but the ability to recognise emotion from facial expressions. Further, studies demonstrate reliable differences between cultures (Jack et al., 2012 ) and neurotypes (Brewer et al., 2016 ) in the expression of emotion, meaning that if culture or neurotype was the basis of the in- and out-group distinction, then the assumption that there is one correct answer for each stimulus in the RMET is invalid. The third problem is that studies often conflate mentalising ability with propensity . That is, despite aiming to assess whether mental state inference is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ for in-groups and out-groups, several studies do so by measuring the extent to which individuals attribute mental states to others. Therefore, rather than mentalising ability , such studies are actually measuring the propensity to mentalise. For example, McClung and Reicher ( 2018 ) asked participants to converse with either an in-group or an out-group partner (based on an arbitrary minimal group assignment) and then provide a written description of their conversation partner. The authors found that individuals who spoke with an out-group partner referred to fewer and less complex mental states when describing them. Similarly, McLoughlin and Over ( 2017 ) found that 5- and 6-year-old children used fewer, less diverse mental states to describe the actions of interacting geometric shapes (i.e., Abell et al., 2000 ), when those shapes represented out-group members – children from a different geographic region or of a different gender – compared to in-group members. Both studies assess people’s propensity to make mental state inferences about others, regardless of the accuracy of those inferences. It remains unclear, therefore, whether 1) people’s inferences about the mental states of out-group members are truly less accurate than their inferences about the mental states of in-group members, and 2) whether any such inaccuracy is actually due to reduced propensity. In principle, any deficits for out-groups may be overcome if the mentalizer is aware of their group biases. Participants who are aware that they have reduced accuracy when making mental state inferences for out-groups can make fewer inferences, and instead directly ask out-group members about their mental states. In time, this feedback may lead to more accurate inferences about out-group members’ mental states. At present, however, the degree of awareness individuals have with respect to their group biases in mental state inference is unknown. 1.1 The current studies Here we aimed to answer three questions: First, is it the case that people are less accurate when inferring mental states of an out-group mind when performance is assessed against an objective ground-truth and with real out-groups? Second, is it differences in ability to infer mental states of out-groups or the propensity to do so that underpin any differences in out-group accuracy? Third, if people are less able, or less prone, to think about the minds of out-groups, are they aware of this? Study 1 assesses all three questions; Study 2 replicates these findings in a novel sample. GENERAL METHODS Here we report the general methods for Studies 1 and 2. Information specific to each study (e.g., participants, exclusion criteria) are reported for Study 1 (section 4.2 ) and Study 2 (section 5.2 ) separately. 2.1 Open Science Statement We conducted this study in accordance with open-science practices. Confirmatory analyses and exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework, with the full pre-registrations viewable at: Study 1 https://osf.io/ek8hj , Study 2 https://osf.io/urvg3 . 2.2 Participant recruitment All participants were recruited online via Prolific ( www.prolific.ac ), self-reported as neurotypical, with English as their primary language, and the US as both their country of birth and current place of residence. Participants reported no significant visual impairments, mild cognitive impairments, or dementia. Finally, participants had to have joined Prolific before 2020 and have a current approval rate of over 90% to ensure data quality. All participants were tested online using Gorilla (gorilla.sc, Anwyl-Irvine et al., 2019 ). None had taken part in any pilot studies associated with this project and, upon completion of the study, were paid for their participation. Ethical approval was obtained from the local Health Faculties Research Ethics Subcommittee, (removed for peer review), all research was performed in accordance with the regulations of the Declaration of Helsinki and, as such, informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to testing. 2.3 Stimuli Development A novel stimulus set was created based on the Survey of Beliefs and Opinions (Saucier, 2018 ), and responses to this survey constituted the ground-truth against which accuracy was assessed. The original survey included statements such as “We must ensure that women have access to legal abortions”, “I feel that people get what they deserve” and “Only adults who know how to read and write should be allowed to vote”. Thus, a person’s previous responses to these statements constitute their mental states, their propositional attitudes (Butterfill & Apperly, 2013; Leslie, 1987 ). In the current study, a subset of 168 statements was selected based on the correlation between previous responses across these statements in a sample of 703 American respondents (Saucier, 2018 ). Specifically, we selected 24 subsets of 7 statements (see Supplemental Materials for full list of statements), where each subset contained an initial "starting" statement, a correlated "target" statement ( r M =.34, r SD =.09), and 5 additional statements that were correlated to varying degrees with the target statement. For each subset, we selected a “target-mind” – a previous respondent whose responses across these statements were set as the ground-truth against which new participants in the current study would be assessed in terms of accuracy at inferring their responses. To ensure this ground truth was not idiosyncratic, we selected target-minds whose responses across all statements in their subset was the modal response for all the previous respondents. 2.4 Procedure 2.4.1 Task 1: Assessing Group Status The first task was completed to determine participants’ group status in relation to each of the target-minds they would be asked to make mental state inferences about. Participants were presented with 24 “starting” statements and were asked to state their agreement/disagreement with the statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Across all the trials and tasks, the scale was as follows: 1=“strongly disagree”, 2=“slightly disagree”; 3=“neither agree or disagree”; 4=“slightly agree” and; 5=“strongly agree”. This scale was chosen to broadly align with responses in the original sample (Saucier, 2018 ) from which these statements were selected. The participant’s response was compared to the target-mind’s response and the difference in agreement between the two was used to index group status (i.e., whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group with respect to the current participant). When the participant and target-mind had a difference in agreement score of 0 or 1 (i.e., the participant gave the same response to the target-mind or matched the target-mind on either agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, but with different strengths of conviction, e.g., slightly agree vs strongly agree) they were defined as in-group. Trials in which participants gave a neutral response (i.e., that they neither agreed nor disagreed) were not coded (see exclusion criteria). Finally, when the participant and target-mind had a difference in agreement score of either 2, 3, or 4, they were defined as out-group. On each trial, participants were not explicitly made aware of this in- or out-grouping, thus any effect of group status is a consequence of the participant’s own perception of differences between themselves and the target-mind. 2.4.2 Task 2: Predicting the views of in-group and out-group members This task measured participants’ propensity to consider the target-mind, their accuracy in inferring the mental states of that mind, and how aware participants were of their own ability to make accurate inferences. This latter measure was operationalised as the relationship between actual inference accuracy and confidence in the accuracy of that inference. On each of 24 trials, participants were presented with a target-mind’s response to an initial “starting” statement. For instance: “Participant 437 [the target-mind] said that they strongly disagree that they believe in the superiority of their own gender.” Based on this information about one of their mental states, participants were asked to predict the target-mind’s response to a second target statement on a scale of 1–5, whereby 1 denoted “strongly disagreed” and 5 denoted “strongly agreed”. For instance, participants were asked how far they thought Participant 437 thought that ‘We should ensure that no one is denied a job due to prejudice’. No feedback was given. Participants were then asked how confident they were in their answer and could respond on a scale of 0-100, where 0=“Not confident at all” and 100=“Extremely confident”. Next, participants were told that they could buy up to 5 further pieces of information about the target-mind, where each piece of information was an additional statement and the target-mind’s response to it. Participants were advised to seek as sufficient an amount of information as they felt they required to make an accurate prediction. This opportunity to seek further information was utilised as a measure of participants’ propensity to seek further information about a person’s mental states. Once participants had selected how many pieces of information they wanted to buy (0–5 pieces), any sought additional information was revealed in a randomised but fixed order across participants. Thereafter, participants were asked to predict how the target-mind responded to the target statement for a second time, enabling the participant to update their original answer based on the new information. As before, participants were also asked to state how confident they felt in their updated answer. Still, no feedback was given. If participants opted to seek no additional information, they were still given the opportunity to update both their prediction and their confidence in the prediction. However, they were additionally asked to verify whether they had changed their prediction, despite having no further information and, if so, why. Participants could answer via a free-form text box and this measure was included as an attention check and informed the exclusion criteria below. 2.4.3 Task 3: AQ-28 & TAS-20 It has previously been demonstrated that autistic and/or alexithymic participants may perform differently on mentalising tasks relative to neurotypical individuals (Oakley et al., 2016 ; Pisani et al., 2021 ). Therefore, all participants completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test (AQ-28; Hoekstra et al., 2001), a 28-item questionnaire designed to measure the expression of autistic traits in an individual. Lastly, all participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Bagby, Parker & Taylor, 1994 ), a 20-item questionnaire designed to measure difficulty in identifying and describing emotions. These questionnaires were administered, despite recruiting only self-reported neurotypical participants, to further characterise the sample. The study lasted approximately 35 minutes on average and participants were debriefed at the end. 2.5 Design Both studies used a within-subjects design with 2 factors: group status, with two levels of in-group vs out-group; and timepoint, with two levels including before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) the opportunity to buy further information about the target-mind. 2.6 Measured variables We measured three variables. First, we examined participants’ propensity to consider the minds of others and whether this was affected by their perceived group status. This propensity was operationalised as the percentage of available information about the target-mind (i.e., the additional statements and the target-mind’s responses to those statements) that was bought. Second, we measured the accuracy of participants’ mental state inferences both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought. Accuracy was calculated as the percentage of correct responses, such that only cases where participants selected the target-mind’s exact response were coded as correct, while all other responses were coded as incorrect. Third, we measured participants’ awareness of their own ability to make accurate inference by measuring their confidence in their answer both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought, in order to relate this to their accuracy. PLANNED ANALYSIS The same three pre-registered analyses were run in Study 1 and Study 2. First, we ran mixed effect models using lme4 (Bates et al., 2014 ) to determine whether group status (in-group vs out-group) significantly modulated the percentage of available information participants bought about the target-mind’s mental states. The full model included the predictor of group status, and random intercepts of participant and, in Study 1 only, we additionally included TAS-20 scores as a random nested intercept (see section 4.2 ). Statistical significance of the effect of group status was established via likelihood ratio tests by dropping the effect from a second null model and comparing the two models. Post-hoc comparisons were conducted in emmeans (Lenth, 2016 ). lmer (Percentage of information bought ~ group status + (1 | participant/TAS-20 Scores), REML = FALSE) Second, to determine whether group status modulated participants’ accuracy scores and, further, modulated them differentially at the two prediction timepoints, we ran mixed effect models. The full model included two predictors, group status (in-group vs out-group) and prediction timepoint: before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought as well as the interaction between these two factors on participant accuracy. glmer (Accuracy ~ group status * timepoint + group status + timepoint + (1 | participant), family = "binomial") Again, statistical significance of the interaction between group status and prediction timepoint was established via likelihood ratio tests by dropping the interaction from a second reduced model – which included only main effects of group status and timepoint and the random intercept of participant – and comparing the two models. Statistical significance of the main effects of group status and prediction timepoint was also established via likelihood ratio tests. Each predictor was dropped in turn from a reduced model which included only the other main effect and the random intercept of participant. Third, to determine whether participants’ awareness of their own ability to make accurate mental state inferences differed as a function of group status: in-group vs out-group, we compared two correlations. Awareness was calculated according to how well participants’ confidence in their ability to predict others’ mental states correlated with their accuracy in doing so. Thus, we assessed whether each participant’s accuracy and confidence in their final prediction (i.e., at timepoint 2) were correlated – and differently so – for in-group minds and out-group minds. We ran point-biserial correlation tests on each participant’s accuracy and confidence scores on in-group, and separately on out-group, trials. Each set of coefficients was then r-to-z transformed and two one-sample t-tests were run to assess whether each significantly differed from zero. Finally, a paired samples t-test was run to assess the difference between the two sets of z-scores: in-group and out-group. STUDY 1 4.1 Participants In Study 1, we recruited a final sample of 128 participants (mean age = 46.82 years, SD = 12.51 years, age range = 24–78, 74 female and 54 male). This sample size was determined by an a priori G*Power calculation modelling a 2-way interaction between group status (in-group vs out-group) and prediction timepoint (before information vs after information sought) on accuracy scores, with participant as a covariate. The calculation determined that a final sample of 128 was necessary to obtain .80 power to detect a medium effect size of .25 at the standard .05 alpha error probability. 4.2 Pre-registered Exclusion Criteria All exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/ek8hj ). In Study 1, we excluded whole datasets for participants who: a) responded that they “neither agreed nor disagreed” towards more than 25% of the starting statements (10 participants). This was to ensure that participants could be classified as in-group or out-group to the target-mind on a sufficient number of trials; b) had fewer than 6 in-group or out-group trials based on their responses to the starting statements (12 participants); c) chose to buy no further information throughout the task (7 participants), as this suggested a lack of engagement; d) updated their prediction between timepoints 1 and 2 in more than 25% of the trials but reported that they did not (5 participants). This was included as an attention check to ensure that participants were engaged in the task. Finally, we pre-registered that whole datasets for participants who obtained scores indicating a high degree of autistic traits on the AQ-28 and scores indicating at least possible alexithymia on the TAS-20 would be excluded and their data replaced. However, despite recruiting only participants who self-reported as neurotypical and without autism, 45% of participants (n = 58) scored highly on the AQ-28 and 9 of these participants also obtained scores indicating possible Alexithymia on the TAS-20. As such, it was impractical to exclude and replace this unexpectedly high number of datasets so all were retained and participant scores on the AQ-28 and TAS-20 were controlled for in the subsequent analyses in which they were likely to have an effect (determined by exploratory analysis, see supplemental material). Overall, in Study 1, whole datasets for a total of 34 participants were excluded and replaced until a final sample size of 128 was achieved. 4.3 Results Descriptive statistics for Study 1, including the amount of information bought, as well as participants’ inference accuracy and confidence scores before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) additional information, are reported in Table 1 . Table 1 Mean (SD) percentage of information sought, participant accuracy, confidence and awareness in Study 1. Measure Group Status Information Sought (%) Accuracy [timepoint 1] (%) Accuracy [timepoint 2] (%) Confidence [timepoint 1] Confidence [timepoint 2] Accuracy- Confidence Awareness (z-scores) In-group 13.8 (12.6) 50.4 (13.3) 50.1 (14.2) 75.1 (11.9) 75.9 (12.1) 0.22 (0.29) Out-group 15.3 (13.3) 39.1 (20.2) 40.5 (18.7) 72.3 (14.3) 72.3 (13.9) -0.10 (0.53) 4.3.1 Does perceived group status affect propensity to consider another’s mind? The linear mixed model assessing whether the percentage of information participants bought about the target-mind’s mental states was modulated by group status showed that this main effect was significant (X2(1) = 4.465, p = .035), such that participants bought significantly more information for out-group minds than for in-group minds (see Fig. 1 ). However, the effect size was very small (Cohen's d = 0.08). When asked to infer the mental state of someone whom the participant perceived to be different from themselves – an out-group mind – they sought slightly more information about the out-group mind than for people they perceived to be more similar to themselves. 4.3.2 Does perceived group status affect the accuracy of mental state inferences? The generalised linear mixed model assessing whether there was an interaction between the timepoint of the prediction: before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) further information was bought, and who the prediction was about: an in-group mind or out-group mind – was not significant. That is, participants’ accuracy did not change between timepoint 1 and timepoint 2 differentially, according to whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group to the participant. Further models were then run to assess the main effects of timepoint and, secondly, the main effect of group status. The main effect of timepoint was also not significant, showing that participants did not significantly update their inferences after receiving more information about the target. However, the main effect of group status was significant (X2(1) = 48.85, p < .001), revealing that participants were significantly more accurate when their prediction was about an in-group target-mind relative to an out-group target-mind (see Fig. 2 ). This shows that participants had a significantly better ability to predict the beliefs of in-group members than out-group members, even though participants sought – and received – more information about out-group minds than in-group minds. 4.3.3 Does perceived group status affect awareness of mental state inference accuracy? Finally, we assessed whether the correlation between participants’ inference accuracy and their confidence in their accuracy differed depending on whether they were inferring the mind of an in-group or an out-group member (see Fig. 3). A one-sample t-test revealed that confidence and accuracy were significantly, positively, correlated for in-group predictions (t(127) = 8.55, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 0.76). This suggests that participants’ confidence was significantly aligned with their accuracy and, therefore, that they were aware of their ability to predict the beliefs of in-group minds. In comparison, confidence and accuracy were significantly negatively correlated for out-group predictions (t(122)=-2.22, p = .03, Cohen’s d =-0.2), showing that higher confidence was associated with lower accuracy, and suggesting participants had relatively poor awareness of their own (in)ability to predict the beliefs of out-group minds. Finally, a paired samples t-test assessing the difference between the two sets of z-transformed coefficients was significant, t(122) = 5.86, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 0.78, showing that the relationship between people’s confidence in their ability to predict others’ mental states, and their accuracy in doing so, differed for in-groups and out-groups. This finding suggests that people’s confidence in their ability to predict the minds of out-group members is misplaced: people have poor awareness of their (in)ability to predict the minds of out-group members. STUDY 2 The stimuli used in Study 1 were designed to be 50% politically left-leaning and 50% right-leaning to ensure a sufficient number of in-group and out-group trials for each participant. However, the political leaning of the participants was not explicitly measured. In Study 2, therefore, we not only aimed to replicate Study 1’s effects but also to ensure that the effects hold when the sample was equally split by left and right-leaning participants (recruiting 50% of participants as being affiliated with the Republican Party, 50% affiliated with the Democratic party). Unless specified below, all other methods and analyses remain identical to Study 1. 5.1 Participants In Study 2, we recruited a final sample of 128 participants (mean age = 43.86 years, SD = 13.23 years, age range = 20–80, 63 female and 65 male, 64 Democrat, 64 Republican). 5.2 Pre-registered Exclusion Criteria All exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (Study 2: https://osf.io/urvg3 ). In Study 2, we excluded whole datasets for participants who: a) responded that they “neither agreed nor disagreed” towards more than 25% of the starting statements (6 participants); b) had fewer than 6 in-group or out-group trials based on their responses to the starting statements (27 participants); c) chose to buy no further information throughout the task, accounting for 10 participants. Overall, in Study 2, whole datasets for a total of 43 participants were excluded and replaced until a final sample size of 128 was achieved. 5.3 Results Descriptive statistics for Study 2 are reported in Table 2 , including the amount of information bought, participants’ inference accuracy and confidence scores both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) additional information, as well as their awareness scores. 5.3.1 Does perceived group status affect propensity to consider another’s mind? The main effect of group was not significant, although the effect was in the same direction as in Study 1: numerically at least, participants bought more information about out-group minds than in-group minds. This indicates that people do not show less propensity to consider out-group than in-group minds. Table 2 Mean (SD) percentage of information sought, participant accuracy, confidence and awareness in Study 2. Measure Group Status Information Sought (%) Accuracy [timepoint 1] (%) Accuracy [timepoint 2] (%) Confidence [timepoint 1] Confidence [timepoint 2] Accuracy- Confidence Awareness (z-scores) In-group 14.4 (17.9) 50.7 (14.6) 48.7 (13.8) 73.5 (11.1) 75.5 (11.5) 0.18 (0.33) Out-group 15.0 (18.0) 39.1 (18.4) 36.8 (18.3) 71.9 (12.6) 74.2 (12.7) -0.07 (0.53) 5.3.2 Does group status affect the accuracy of mental state inferences? The model including interaction between timepoint and group was non-significant. Thus, participants’ accuracy did not change between timepoint 1 and timepoint 2 differentially, according to whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group. Further models demonstrated that the main effect of timepoint was also not significant, showing that participants did not significantly update their inferences after receiving more information about the target. The main effect of group was significant (X2(1) = 69.68, p < .001), revealing that participants were significantly more accurate for in-group compared to out-group target-minds (see Fig. 4 ). These findings replicate the results of Study 1. 5.3.3. Does perceived group status affect awareness of own ability for mental state inferences? We assessed whether the correlation between participants’ inference accuracy and their confidence in their accuracy differed depending on whether they were inferring the mind of an in-group or an out-group member. A one-sample t-test revealed that confidence and accuracy were significantly, positively, correlated for in-group predictions (t(126) = 6.199, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 0.55). This suggests that participants’ confidence was significantly aligned with their accuracy and, therefore, that they were aware of their ability to predict the beliefs of in-group minds. In comparison, confidence and accuracy were not significantly correlated for out-group predictions, showing that higher confidence was not associated with higher accuracy, and suggesting participants had relatively poorer awareness of their own (in)ability to predict the beliefs of out-group minds (see Fig. 5 ). Finally, a paired samples t-test assessing the difference between the two sets of z-transformed coefficients was significant, t(117) = 4.28, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 0.59, showing that the relationship between people’s confidence in their ability to predict others’ mental states, and their accuracy in doing so, differed for in-groups and out-groups. This finding suggests that people have poorer awareness of their (in)ability to predict the minds of out-group, compared to in-group, members. DISCUSSION While previous studies have suggested reduced mentalising performance when considering out-groups, this is the first study to utilise an objective ground-truth against which we can assess participants’ accuracy. Further, it remains the first study to separately assess participants’ propensity to consider the minds of others from their ability to accurately infer their mental states, whilst using real out-groups (i.e., those whom the participant themselves acknowledge they disagree with). There were three key findings. First, participants sought an equivalent – or greater – amount of information about out-groups’ mental states relative to in-groups when asked to make mental state inferences. This suggest that people were no less prone to consider the minds of out-groups. Previous studies found that people ascribe fewer and less complex mental and emotional states to out-groups (McClung & Reicher, 2018 ; McLoughlin & Over, 2017 ). This has led to the assumption that people are either less prone to consider out-group minds, or believe out-group minds to be less complex, such that the attribution of less complex mental states reflects the inference of reduced complexity of the mind giving rise to those mental states. In contrast, the current result suggests that, if anything, participants perceived themselves to have a relative deficit of information about out-group minds, and more information was needed to make their inferences accurate. Different processes may be used to infer the beliefs of in- and out-group minds. For in-group minds, people can use their own minds to facilitate accurate inferences of a target-mind, if the target is perceived to be similar and if this perception is accurate. However, when the target-mind is dissimilar, the self is not a good model to base inferences on and one needs to build a model of the target’s mind by – in this task - buying more information. The second possible explanation is that the task may have highlighted that out-group members’ views on a variety of issues could vary, whereas in daily life people consider out-groups to be more homogenous than they are (see Ostrom & Sedikides, 1992 ; Boldry et al., 2007 ). The impact of becoming aware of the complexity of an out-group mind has previously been demonstrated to result in ascription of more emotional states to them (Prati et al., 2016 ). It is possible then that being presented with target’s views prompted people to represent out-groups as capable of having complex minds since they were complex enough to be differentiated from the self on multiple dimensions. Finally, people’s propensity to consider out-group minds may, realistically, be gated by social motivation. It remains to be seen whether the motivation to seek more information about the minds of out-group members remains in more ecologically valid situations, when there is a less salient, immediate, benefit to the self for making an accurate inference. Yet, the presence of this effect in the context of our second finding highlights that, even when people do engage in effortful mental state inference about out-groups, their ability to make accurate inferences is still worse for out-groups. Our second key finding was that people have significantly reduced accuracy in mental state inference for out-group relative to in-group minds. It is important to consider why – if not a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds – people may have reduced ability to make accurate mental state inferences about them. We suggest that it may be because the underlying representation people have of out-group minds is poorer than their representation of in-group minds. The presence of polarisation itself means that individuals are less likely to engage with out-group members. This reduced contact would be expected to lead to a reduced ability to build a model of out-group minds, to understand how they vary, and result in a limited representation of out-group views. From an information sampling approach, a smaller number of out-group observations gives rise to lesser perceived variability amongst those mental state observations (Konovalova & Le Mens, 2020 ), with a greater degree of extremity. As a consequence, people overestimate the extremity of out-group views (Ahler & Sood, 2018 ), modelling only the extremes of the out-group without the variability. All of these factors would lead to less accurate mental state inferences for out-groups. Finally, the current study examined participants’ awareness of their own ability to make accurate inferences, determined by how confident they were in the accuracy of their inferences. Our third key finding demonstrates that participants’ awareness differs as a function of group status. Specifically, when people inferred the mental state of an in-group member, they had good awareness of their own ability; in contrast, they showed misplaced confidence in their ability to understand out-group members. In Study 1, as participants’ confidence increased, their accuracy decreased, while in Study 2, increases in confidence were unrelated to changes in accuracy. This shows that people had relatively poorer awareness of their (in)ability to understand out-group minds. Future work will need to determine whether increasing participants’ awareness of their misplaced confidence – or receiving feedback on their misperceptions – may change their inferences and/or the confidence with which they make those inferences. The current study shows for the first time that people are less able to accurately infer the mental states of out-group members compared to in-group members, even in light of evidence suggesting greater propensity to gather information about out-groups. Further, people have poorer awareness of their relative inability, leading to misplaced confidence in the accuracy of their judgements. Further studies examining how we represent the minds of others and, moreover, how such representations might be updated to allow more veridical inferences about outgroup mental states are of prime importance. Critically, such studies can now progress in the knowledge that we really do have a worse ability to mentalise about out-groups, not because we are less prone to consider their minds but because we are less able to represent them. Declarations Author Contribution B.P., G.B., and C.C. conceptualised the work. B.P. was responsible for design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of the data. B.P. drafted the manuscript and B.P., G.B., and C.C. subsequently revised it. Data Availability Materials, data, and analysis scripts are publicly available for each study at: Study 1: https://osf.io/ek8hj; Study 2: https://osf.io/urvg3. References Abell, F., Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2000). Do triangles play tricks? attribution of mental states to animated shapes in normal and abnormal development. Cognitive Development, 15 (1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0885-2014(00)00014-9 Adams, R. B., Rule, N. O., Franklin, R. G., Wang, E., Stevenson, M. T., Yoshikawa, S., Nomura, M., Sato, W., Kveraga, K., & Ambady, N. (2010). Cross-cultural reading the mind in The eyes: An fmri investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22 (1), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2009.21187 Ahler, D. J., & Sood, G. (2018). The parties in our heads: Misperceptions about party composition and their consequences. The Journal of Politics, 80 (3), 964–981. https://doi.org/10.1086/697253 Anwyl-Irvine, A.L., Massonié, J., Flitton, A., Kirkham, N.Z., Evershed, J.K. (2019). Gorilla in our midst: an online behavioural experiment builder Behavior Research Methods . Butterfil, S. A., & Apperly, I. A. (2013). How to construct a minimal theory of mind. Mind & Language, 28 (5), 606–637. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12036 Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D. A., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale—I. item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38 (1), 23–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-3999(94)90005-1 Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with asperger syndrome or high‐functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42 (2), 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00715 Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01 Boldry, J. G., Gaertner, L., & Quinn, J. (2007). Measuring the measures. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10 (2), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430207075153 Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. (2020). Cross-country trends in affective polarization. https://doi.org/10.3386/w26669 Brewer, R., Biotti, F., Catmur, C., Press, C., Happé, F., Cook, R., & Bird, G. (2016). Can neurotypical individuals read autistic facial expressions? atypical production of emotional facial expressions in autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research, 9 (2), 262–271. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1508 Britain's choice, more in common's new report on the UK . More in Common UK Microsite. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2023, from https://www.britainschoice.uk/ Gönültaş, S., Selçuk, B., Slaughter, V., Hunter, J. A., & Ruffman, T. (2019). The capricious nature of theory of mind: Does mental state understanding depend on the characteristics of the target? Child Development, 91 (2). https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13223 Hoekstra, R. A., Vinkhuyzen, A. A., Wheelwright, S., Bartels, M., Boomsma, D. I., Baron-Cohen, S., Posthuma, D., & van der Sluis, S. (2010). The construction and validation of an abridged version of the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ-short). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41 (5), 589–596. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-1073-0 Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22 (1), 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034 Jack, R. E., Garrod, O. G., Yu, H., Caldara, R., & Schyns, P. G. (2012). Facial expressions of emotion are not culturally universal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 109 (19), 7241–7244. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1200155109 Konovalova, E., & Le Mens, G. (2020). An information sampling explanation for the in-group heterogeneity effect. Psychological Review, 127 (1), 47–73. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000160 Lenth, R. (2016). Least-squares means: the R package lsmeans. Journal of Statistical Software, 69(1), 1– 33. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v069.i01 Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind." Psychological Review, 94 (4), 412–426. Long, E. L., Cuve, H. C., Conway, J., Catmur, C., & Bird, G. (2022). Novel theory of mind task demonstrates representation of minds in mental state inference. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7kgu4 McClung, J. S., & Reicher, S. D. (2018). Representing other minds: Mental state reference is moderated by Group membership. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76 , 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.11.013 McLoughlin, N., & Over, H. (2017). Young children are more likely to spontaneously attribute mental states to members of their own group. Psychological Science, 28 (10), 1503–1509. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617710724 McLoughlin, N., Tipper, S. P., & Over, H. (2017). Young children perceive less humanness in outgroup faces. Developmental Science, 21 (2). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12539 Oakley, B. F., Brewer, R., Bird, G., & Catmur, C. (2016). Theory of mind is not theory of emotion: A cautionary note on the reading the mind in the eyes test. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125 (6), 818–823. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000182 Ostrom, T. M., & Sedikides, C. (1992). Out-group homogeneity effects in natural and minimal groups. Psychological Bulletin, 112 (3), 536–552. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.3.536 Parker, V. A., Feinberg, M., Tullett, A. M., & Wilson, A. E. (2021). The ties that blind: Misperceptions of the opponent fringe and the miscalibration of political contempt. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cr23g Perez-Zapata, D., Slaughter, V., & Henry, J. D. (2016). Cultural effects on mindreading. Cognition, 146 , 410–414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.018 Pisani, S., Murphy, J., Conway, J., Millgate, E., Catmur, C., & Bird, G. (2021). The relationship between alexithymia and theory of mind: A systematic review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 131 , 497–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.09.036 Prati F., Crisp R.J., Meleady R., Rubini M. Humanizing outgroups through multiple categorization: The roles of individuation and threat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2016;42(4):526–539 Saucier, G. (2018). Survey of Beliefs and Opinions (SBO). https://doi.org/10.7910/1DVN/WV55BYC, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:6BSBTPItRnlqZ1H8w8Ypog==[fileUNF] Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development, 75 (2), 523–541. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00691.x Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-4364745","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":304147059,"identity":"a00cb823-af70-4c86-b2d8-89976924467e","order_by":0,"name":"Bryony Payne","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA9ElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACAxTehwMMMhDWASK1MM44wMBDmhZmHmK0mEufMXxc2MaQxz8j9+BjmzN2PAzshx8w85zBrcWyL8fYeGYbQ7HEjbxk45wbyTwMPGkGzDw38DjsDI+ZNG8bQ2LDjRwz6ZwPB4AOywG68AMRWubfyDH/bQHSwv+GSC0bgLYwM9wAapEA2YLHYZY9bMXGPOckig3PvDGW7DmTzMMm8czg4Bw83jfnYd74mKfMJk/ueI7hhx/H7OT4+ZMfPnhzDLcWBgYOAwZGNokEBoEECJ+NAW+sgAD7AwaGPwwJDPwE1I2CUTAKRsHIBQB2REzguYjV/QAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"King’s College London","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Bryony","middleName":"","lastName":"Payne","suffix":""},{"id":304147061,"identity":"ba025448-584b-4365-9e59-1179eb801021","order_by":1,"name":"Geoff Bird","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Oxford","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Geoff","middleName":"","lastName":"Bird","suffix":""},{"id":304147063,"identity":"247972f1-7382-4136-bb21-3b4aad22d5f7","order_by":2,"name":"Caroline Catmur","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"King’s College London","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Caroline","middleName":"","lastName":"Catmur","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2024-05-03 14:42:13","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[{"content":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67311-3","type":"published","date":"2024-08-28T00:00:00+00:00"}],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":57290024,"identity":"d0c141eb-bc4f-48a6-99b6-2feb11897267","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-05-28 17:54:12","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":90502,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eMean percentage of available information sought for in-group minds vs out-group minds. Coloured segments show smoothed density curves for the full data distribution, while individual dots indicate mean percentage per participant. Horizontal bars show post-hoc comparisons with asterisks denoting significance as determined via likelihood ratio tests (see Results).\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/2bc9383def42ba6558e79860.png"},{"id":57290027,"identity":"d1948c1e-24f2-4452-8c8a-a92728bce829","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-05-28 17:54:12","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":95371,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eMean accuracy of mental state inference for in-group minds vs out-group minds, averaged over timepoints 1 and 2 in Study 1. Coloured segments show smoothed density curves for the full data distribution, while individual dots indicate mean accuracy per participant. Horizontal bars show post-hoc comparisons with asterisks denoting significance as determined via likelihood ratio tests (see Results).\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/9305abb284090e87faa336ca.png"},{"id":57292246,"identity":"1fe3791d-5bd2-4836-88d0-4dcebc6b4c68","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-05-28 18:02:12","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":66384,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eAwareness of mental state inference ability for in-group minds vs out-group minds in Study 1 at timepoint 2. The graph displays the distribution of Z-scores representing participants’ awareness of their mental state inference ability. The boxplots illustrate the spread of data, while the points show individual participant data. The dotted orange line represents 0, i.e., no correlation between accuracy and confidence.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/93b35be04b156ccd7f292fa5.png"},{"id":57290029,"identity":"062d28d8-4603-456a-abf5-0eac2528fa9b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-05-28 17:54:12","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":117549,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eMean accuracy of mental state inference for in-group minds vs out-group minds, averaged over timepoints 1 and 2 in Study 2. Coloured segments show smoothed density curves for the full data distribution, while individual dots indicate mean accuracy per participant. Horizontal bars show post-hoc comparisons with asterisks denoting significance as determined via likelihood ratio tests (see Results).\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/0238c29adc2ddcb998fc2073.png"},{"id":63480976,"identity":"7fa4492f-212e-402f-a3ec-d5a41ed2468c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-08-28 14:57:17","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":956332,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/6799a3c7-3f54-4f56-ad51-ccbef7224323.pdf"},{"id":57290026,"identity":"a3690d5d-5809-4164-9ad8-72a1da28adbf","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-05-28 17:54:12","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":24785,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"PRSupplementalMaterialSciRep2024.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-4364745/v1/46db6c1b84e3d4b86fb6a1c3.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups","fulltext":[{"header":"INTRODUCTION","content":"\u003cp\u003eSocieties are becoming increasingly divided, in part due to the growing political polarization that is evident in many large democracies (Boxwell et al., 2020). This polarization may lead to increased hatred (More in Common, 2020), as individuals become more emotionally negative about those with opposing views. However, this polarisation is fuelled by widely shared misconceptions about the views of out-group members (Iyengar et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Parker et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). For instance, Americans who support the Republican party overestimated the extremity of Democrat views on taxes, abortion, gay rights, and racial policy (Ahler \u0026amp; Sood, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). Thus, predictions about the beliefs and attitudes of outgroups are frequently inaccurate, and this inaccuracy negatively impacts relations between members of different groups.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo understand why people have such inaccurate estimates of out-groups, it is critical to examine the cognitive processes underlying \u0026ldquo;mentalising\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;theory of mind\u0026rdquo; (Wellman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e) \u0026ndash; the process by which we attribute mental states to others. Although research suggests that individuals' mentalising ability differs depending on whether they are considering the mind of an in-group or out-group member, none has been able to explain why. This is, in part, because previous studies have not disentangled the multiple underlying cognitive processes that give rise to mentalising and, further, which of these processes differ \u0026ndash; and how \u0026ndash; when considering different minds. For example, some studies aim to measure an individual\u0026rsquo;s mentalizing \u003cem\u003eability\u003c/em\u003e, by measuring their accuracy in inferring the mental states of others. Perez-Zapata et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) tested Australian participants when mentalizing about either Chilean participants or other Australians. The authors claimed that participants' inferences were less accurate and slower for the Chilean out-group than for the Australian in-group, an effect which replicated in other samples (Adams et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003en\u0026uuml;ltas et al. 2019). These studies therefore suggest that people have poorer theory of mind abilities when thinking about out-group members relative to in-group members.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHowever, these studies \u0026ndash; aiming to measure mentalising ability by assessing the accuracy of mental state inference - all suffer from common problems. First, they lack an objective ground truth to determine mental state inference accuracy (see Long et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Studies frequently use fictional material as stimuli, requiring participants to infer the mental states of fictional characters who do not have them, and thus there is no true objective correct answer. Instead, the \u0026rsquo;correct\u0026rsquo; answer is determined by the creator of the stimulus material, or a group of raters, often from a single group (culture, age, neurotype, etc). The lack of a true correct answer makes determining the accuracy of mental state inference impossible, and is especially problematic for the question of determining the accuracy of mental state inferences for in- and out-groups. This is because the assumption of one correct answer may well itself be incorrect; it may be the case that individuals of different ages, cultures, neurotypes, truly \u003cem\u003edo\u003c/em\u003e have different mental states in the same situation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEqually problematic is the fact that several studies have used tests of questionable validity, and which are inherently unsuitable for in- and out-group comparisons for other reasons. For example, several studies have used the \u0026ldquo;Reading the Mind in the Eyes\u0026rdquo; Task (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e) to assess theory of mind ability for in- and out-groups (e.g., Adams et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e, Baltazar, 2020). However, Oakley et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) have previously demonstrated that the RMET does not measure theory of mind, but the ability to recognise emotion from facial expressions. Further, studies demonstrate reliable differences between cultures (Jack et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) and neurotypes (Brewer et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) in the expression of emotion, meaning that if culture or neurotype was the basis of the in- and out-group distinction, then the assumption that there is one correct answer for each stimulus in the RMET is invalid.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe third problem is that studies often conflate mentalising \u003cem\u003eability\u003c/em\u003e with \u003cem\u003epropensity\u003c/em\u003e. That is, despite aiming to assess whether mental state inference is \u0026lsquo;better\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;worse\u0026rsquo; for in-groups and out-groups, several studies do so by measuring the \u003cem\u003eextent\u003c/em\u003e to which individuals attribute mental states to others. Therefore, rather than mentalising \u003cem\u003eability\u003c/em\u003e, such studies are actually measuring the \u003cem\u003epropensity\u003c/em\u003e to mentalise. For example, McClung and Reicher (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) asked participants to converse with either an in-group or an out-group partner (based on an arbitrary minimal group assignment) and then provide a written description of their conversation partner. The authors found that individuals who spoke with an out-group partner referred to fewer and less complex mental states when describing them. Similarly, McLoughlin and Over (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) found that 5- and 6-year-old children used fewer, less diverse mental states to describe the actions of interacting geometric shapes (i.e., Abell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2000\u003c/span\u003e), when those shapes represented out-group members \u0026ndash; children from a different geographic region or of a different gender \u0026ndash; compared to in-group members. Both studies assess people\u0026rsquo;s propensity to make mental state inferences about others, regardless of the accuracy of those inferences. It remains unclear, therefore, whether 1) people\u0026rsquo;s inferences about the mental states of out-group members are truly less accurate than their inferences about the mental states of in-group members, and 2) whether any such inaccuracy is actually due to reduced propensity.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn principle, any deficits for out-groups may be overcome if the mentalizer is aware of their group biases. Participants who are aware that they have reduced accuracy when making mental state inferences for out-groups can make fewer inferences, and instead directly ask out-group members about their mental states. In time, this feedback may lead to more accurate inferences about out-group members\u0026rsquo; mental states. At present, however, the degree of awareness individuals have with respect to their group biases in mental state inference is unknown.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e1.1 The current studies\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere we aimed to answer three questions: First, is it the case that people are less accurate when inferring mental states of an out-group mind when performance is assessed against an objective ground-truth and with real out-groups? Second, is it differences in ability to infer mental states of out-groups or the propensity to do so that underpin any differences in out-group accuracy? Third, if people are less able, or less prone, to think about the minds of out-groups, are they aware of this? Study 1 assesses all three questions; Study 2 replicates these findings in a novel sample.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"GENERAL METHODS","content":"\u003cp\u003eHere we report the general methods for Studies 1 and 2. Information specific to each study (e.g., participants, exclusion criteria) are reported for Study 1 (section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec17\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.2\u003c/span\u003e) and Study 2 (section \u003cspan refid=\"Sec24\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5.2\u003c/span\u003e) separately.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e2.1 Open Science Statement\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe conducted this study in accordance with open-science practices. Confirmatory analyses and exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework, with the full pre-registrations viewable at: Study 1 \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://osf.io/ek8hj\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://osf.io/ek8hj\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e, Study 2 \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://osf.io/urvg3\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://osf.io/urvg3\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e2.2 Participant recruitment\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll participants were recruited online via Prolific (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://osf.io/ek8hj\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewww.prolific.ac\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://www.prolific.ac\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e), self-reported as neurotypical, with English as their primary language, and the US as both their country of birth and current place of residence. Participants reported no significant visual impairments, mild cognitive impairments, or dementia. Finally, participants had to have joined Prolific before 2020 and have a current approval rate of over 90% to ensure data quality. All participants were tested online using Gorilla (gorilla.sc, Anwyl-Irvine et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). None had taken part in any pilot studies associated with this project and, upon completion of the study, were paid for their participation. Ethical approval was obtained from the local Health Faculties Research Ethics Subcommittee, (removed for peer review), all research was performed in accordance with the regulations of the Declaration of Helsinki and, as such, informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to testing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e2.3 Stimuli Development\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA novel stimulus set was created based on the Survey of Beliefs and Opinions (Saucier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e), and responses to this survey constituted the ground-truth against which accuracy was assessed. The original survey included statements such as \u0026ldquo;We must ensure that women have access to legal abortions\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;I feel that people get what they deserve\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Only adults who know how to read and write should be allowed to vote\u0026rdquo;. Thus, a person\u0026rsquo;s previous responses to these statements constitute their mental states, their propositional attitudes (Butterfill \u0026amp; Apperly, 2013; Leslie, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1987\u003c/span\u003e). In the current study, a subset of 168 statements was selected based on the correlation between previous responses across these statements in a sample of 703 American respondents (Saucier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). Specifically, we selected 24 subsets of 7 statements (see Supplemental Materials for full list of statements), where each subset contained an initial \"starting\" statement, a correlated \"target\" statement (\u003cem\u003er\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eM\u003c/sub\u003e=.34, \u003cem\u003er\u003c/em\u003e\u003csub\u003eSD\u003c/sub\u003e=.09), and 5 additional statements that were correlated to varying degrees with the target statement. For each subset, we selected a \u0026ldquo;target-mind\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; a previous respondent whose responses across these statements were set as the ground-truth against which new participants in the current study would be assessed in terms of accuracy at inferring their responses. To ensure this ground truth was not idiosyncratic, we selected target-minds whose responses across all statements in their subset was the modal response for all the previous respondents.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e2.4 Procedure\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.4.1 Task 1: Assessing Group Status\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003e The first task was completed to determine participants\u0026rsquo; group status in relation to each of the target-minds they would be asked to make mental state inferences about. Participants were presented with 24 \u0026ldquo;starting\u0026rdquo; statements and were asked to state their agreement/disagreement with the statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Across all the trials and tasks, the scale was as follows: 1=\u0026ldquo;strongly disagree\u0026rdquo;, 2=\u0026ldquo;slightly disagree\u0026rdquo;; 3=\u0026ldquo;neither agree or disagree\u0026rdquo;; 4=\u0026ldquo;slightly agree\u0026rdquo; and; 5=\u0026ldquo;strongly agree\u0026rdquo;. This scale was chosen to broadly align with responses in the original sample (Saucier, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) from which these statements were selected. The participant\u0026rsquo;s response was compared to the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s response and the difference in agreement between the two was used to index group status (i.e., whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group with respect to the current participant). When the participant and target-mind had a difference in agreement score of 0 or 1 (i.e., the participant gave the same response to the target-mind or matched the target-mind on either agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, but with different strengths of conviction, e.g., slightly agree vs strongly agree) they were defined as in-group. Trials in which participants gave a neutral response (i.e., that they neither agreed nor disagreed) were not coded (see exclusion criteria). Finally, when the participant and target-mind had a difference in agreement score of either 2, 3, or 4, they were defined as out-group.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOn each trial, participants were not explicitly made aware of this in- or out-grouping, thus any effect of group status is a consequence of the participant\u0026rsquo;s own perception of differences between themselves and the target-mind.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e2.4.2 Task 2: Predicting the views of in-group and out-group members\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e This task measured participants\u0026rsquo; propensity to consider the target-mind, their accuracy in inferring the mental states of that mind, and how aware participants were of their own ability to make accurate inferences. This latter measure was operationalised as the relationship between actual inference accuracy and confidence in the accuracy of that inference. On each of 24 trials, participants were presented with a target-mind\u0026rsquo;s response to an initial \u0026ldquo;starting\u0026rdquo; statement. For instance: \u0026ldquo;Participant 437 [the target-mind] said that they \u003cem\u003estrongly disagree\u003c/em\u003e that they believe in the superiority of their own gender.\u0026rdquo; Based on this information about one of their mental states, participants were asked to predict the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s response to a second target statement on a scale of 1\u0026ndash;5, whereby 1 denoted \u0026ldquo;strongly disagreed\u0026rdquo; and 5 denoted \u0026ldquo;strongly agreed\u0026rdquo;. For instance, participants were asked how far they thought Participant 437 thought that \u0026lsquo;We should ensure that no one is denied a job due to prejudice\u0026rsquo;. No feedback was given. Participants were then asked how confident they were in their answer and could respond on a scale of 0-100, where 0=\u0026ldquo;Not confident at all\u0026rdquo; and 100=\u0026ldquo;Extremely confident\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNext, participants were told that they could buy up to 5 further pieces of information about the target-mind, where each piece of information was an additional statement and the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s response to it. Participants were advised to seek as sufficient an amount of information as they felt they required to make an accurate prediction. This opportunity to seek further information was utilised as a measure of participants\u0026rsquo; propensity to seek further information about a person\u0026rsquo;s mental states. Once participants had selected how many pieces of information they wanted to buy (0\u0026ndash;5 pieces), any sought additional information was revealed in a randomised but fixed order across participants.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThereafter, participants were asked to predict how the target-mind responded to the target statement for a second time, enabling the participant to update their original answer based on the new information. As before, participants were also asked to state how confident they felt in their updated answer. Still, no feedback was given. If participants opted to seek no additional information, they were still given the opportunity to update both their prediction and their confidence in the prediction. However, they were additionally asked to verify whether they had changed their prediction, despite having no further information and, if so, why. Participants could answer via a free-form text box and this measure was included as an attention check and informed the exclusion criteria below.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.4.3 Task 3: AQ-28 \u0026amp; TAS-20\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eIt has previously been demonstrated that autistic and/or alexithymic participants may perform differently on mentalising tasks relative to neurotypical individuals (Oakley et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Pisani et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Therefore, all participants completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test (AQ-28; Hoekstra et al., 2001), a 28-item questionnaire designed to measure the expression of autistic traits in an individual. Lastly, all participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Bagby, Parker \u0026amp; Taylor, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1994\u003c/span\u003e), a 20-item questionnaire designed to measure difficulty in identifying and describing emotions. These questionnaires were administered, despite recruiting only self-reported neurotypical participants, to further characterise the sample.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe study lasted approximately 35 minutes on average and participants were debriefed at the end.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.5 Design\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eBoth studies used a within-subjects design with 2 factors: group status, with two levels of in-group vs out-group; and timepoint, with two levels including before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) the opportunity to buy further information about the target-mind.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec13\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e2.6 Measured variables\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe measured three variables. First, we examined participants\u0026rsquo; propensity to consider the minds of others and whether this was affected by their perceived group status. This propensity was operationalised as the percentage of available information about the target-mind (i.e., the additional statements and the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s responses to those statements) that was bought. Second, we measured the accuracy of participants\u0026rsquo; mental state inferences both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought. Accuracy was calculated as the percentage of correct responses, such that only cases where participants selected the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s exact response were coded as correct, while all other responses were coded as incorrect. Third, we measured participants\u0026rsquo; awareness of their own ability to make accurate inference by measuring their confidence in their answer both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought, in order to relate this to their accuracy.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e "},{"header":"PLANNED ANALYSIS","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe same three pre-registered analyses were run in Study 1 and Study 2. First, we ran mixed effect models using lme4 (Bates et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e) to determine whether group status (in-group vs out-group) significantly modulated the percentage of available information participants bought about the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s mental states. The full model included the predictor of group status, and random intercepts of participant and, in Study 1 only, we additionally included TAS-20 scores as a random nested intercept (see section \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.2\u003c/span\u003e). Statistical significance of the effect of group status was established via likelihood ratio tests by dropping the effect from a second null model and comparing the two models. Post-hoc comparisons were conducted in emmeans (Lenth, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003elmer (Percentage of information bought\u0026thinsp;~\u0026thinsp;group status + (1 | participant/TAS-20 Scores), REML\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;FALSE)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecond, to determine whether group status modulated participants\u0026rsquo; accuracy scores and, further, modulated them differentially at the two prediction timepoints, we ran mixed effect models. The full model included two predictors, group status (in-group vs out-group) and prediction timepoint: before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) any further information was bought as well as the interaction between these two factors on participant accuracy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eglmer (Accuracy\u0026thinsp;~\u0026thinsp;group status * timepoint\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;group status\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;timepoint + (1 | participant), family = \"binomial\")\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAgain, statistical significance of the interaction between group status and prediction timepoint was established via likelihood ratio tests by dropping the interaction from a second reduced model \u0026ndash; which included only main effects of group status and timepoint and the random intercept of participant \u0026ndash; and comparing the two models. Statistical significance of the main effects of group status and prediction timepoint was also established via likelihood ratio tests. Each predictor was dropped in turn from a reduced model which included only the other main effect and the random intercept of participant.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThird, to determine whether participants\u0026rsquo; awareness of their own ability to make accurate mental state inferences differed as a function of group status: in-group vs out-group, we compared two correlations. Awareness was calculated according to how well participants\u0026rsquo; confidence in their ability to predict others\u0026rsquo; mental states correlated with their accuracy in doing so. Thus, we assessed whether each participant\u0026rsquo;s accuracy and confidence in their final prediction (i.e., at timepoint 2) were correlated \u0026ndash; and differently so \u0026ndash; for in-group minds and out-group minds. We ran point-biserial correlation tests on each participant\u0026rsquo;s accuracy and confidence scores on in-group, and separately on out-group, trials. Each set of coefficients was then r-to-z transformed and two one-sample t-tests were run to assess whether each significantly differed from zero. Finally, a paired samples t-test was run to assess the difference between the two sets of z-scores: in-group and out-group.\u003c/p\u003e\n"},{"header":"STUDY 1","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec16\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.1 Participants\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Study 1, we recruited a final sample of 128 participants (mean age\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;46.82 years, SD\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;12.51 years, age range\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;24\u0026ndash;78, 74 female and 54 male). This sample size was determined by an a priori G*Power calculation modelling a 2-way interaction between group status (in-group vs out-group) and prediction timepoint (before information vs after information sought) on accuracy scores, with participant as a covariate. The calculation determined that a final sample of 128 was necessary to obtain .80 power to detect a medium effect size of .25 at the standard .05 alpha error probability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec17\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.2 Pre-registered Exclusion Criteria\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (\u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://osf.io/ek8hj\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e). In Study 1, we excluded whole datasets for participants who:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea) responded that they \u0026ldquo;neither agreed nor disagreed\u0026rdquo; towards more than 25% of the starting statements (10 participants). This was to ensure that participants could be classified as in-group or out-group to the target-mind on a sufficient number of trials;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb) had fewer than 6 in-group or out-group trials based on their responses to the starting statements (12 participants);\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec) chose to buy no further information throughout the task (7 participants), as this suggested a lack of engagement;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ed) updated their prediction between timepoints 1 and 2 in more than 25% of the trials but reported that they did not (5 participants). This was included as an attention check to ensure that participants were engaged in the task.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, we pre-registered that whole datasets for participants who obtained scores indicating a high degree of autistic traits on the AQ-28 and scores indicating at least possible alexithymia on the TAS-20 would be excluded and their data replaced. However, despite recruiting only participants who self-reported as neurotypical and without autism, 45% of participants (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;58) scored highly on the AQ-28 and 9 of these participants also obtained scores indicating possible Alexithymia on the TAS-20. As such, it was impractical to exclude and replace this unexpectedly high number of datasets so all were retained and participant scores on the AQ-28 and TAS-20 were controlled for in the subsequent analyses in which they were likely to have an effect (determined by exploratory analysis, see supplemental material).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, in Study 1, whole datasets for a total of 34 participants were excluded and replaced until a final sample size of 128 was achieved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec18\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.3 Results\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDescriptive statistics for Study 1, including the amount of information bought, as well as participants\u0026rsquo; inference accuracy and confidence scores before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) additional information, are reported in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMean (SD) percentage of information sought, participant accuracy, confidence and awareness in Study 1.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"6\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeasure\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGroup Status\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInformation Sought (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy [timepoint 1] (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy [timepoint 2] (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[timepoint 1]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[timepoint 2]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy- Confidence Awareness\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(z-scores)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn-group\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e13.8\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(12.6)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e50.4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(13.3)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e50.1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(14.2)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e75.1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(11.9)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e75.9\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(12.1)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.22\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(0.29)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOut-group\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e15.3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(13.3)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e39.1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(20.2)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e40.5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(18.7)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e72.3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(14.3)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e72.3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(13.9)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-0.10\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(0.53)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec19\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.3.1 Does perceived group status affect propensity to consider another\u0026rsquo;s mind?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe linear mixed model assessing whether the percentage of information participants bought about the target-mind\u0026rsquo;s mental states was modulated by group status showed that this main effect was significant (X2(1)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;4.465, p\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.035), such that participants bought significantly more information for out-group minds than for in-group minds (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e). However, the effect size was very small (Cohen's d\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.08). When asked to infer the mental state of someone whom the participant perceived to be different from themselves \u0026ndash; an out-group mind \u0026ndash; they sought slightly more information about the out-group mind than for people they perceived to be more similar to themselves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec20\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.3.2 Does perceived group status affect the accuracy of mental state inferences?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe generalised linear mixed model assessing whether there was an interaction between the timepoint of the prediction: before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) further information was bought, and who the prediction was about: an in-group mind or out-group mind \u0026ndash; was not significant. That is, participants\u0026rsquo; accuracy did not change between timepoint 1 and timepoint 2 differentially, according to whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group to the participant. Further models were then run to assess the main effects of timepoint and, secondly, the main effect of group status. The main effect of timepoint was also not significant, showing that participants did not significantly update their inferences after receiving more information about the target. However, the main effect of group status was significant (X2(1)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;48.85, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001), revealing that participants were significantly more accurate when their prediction was about an in-group target-mind relative to an out-group target-mind (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e). This shows that participants had a significantly better ability to predict the beliefs of in-group members than out-group members, even though participants sought \u0026ndash; and received \u0026ndash; more information about out-group minds than in-group minds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec21\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e4.3.3 Does perceived group status affect awareness of mental state inference accuracy?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, we assessed whether the correlation between participants\u0026rsquo; inference accuracy and their confidence in their accuracy differed depending on whether they were inferring the mind of an in-group or an out-group member (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;3). A one-sample t-test revealed that confidence and accuracy were significantly, positively, correlated for in-group predictions (t(127)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;8.55, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001, Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003ed\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.76). This suggests that participants\u0026rsquo; confidence was significantly aligned with their accuracy and, therefore, that they were aware of their ability to predict the beliefs of in-group minds. In comparison, confidence and accuracy were significantly negatively correlated for out-group predictions (t(122)=-2.22, p\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.03, Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003ed\u003c/em\u003e=-0.2), showing that higher confidence was associated with lower accuracy, and suggesting participants had relatively poor awareness of their own (in)ability to predict the beliefs of out-group minds. Finally, a paired samples t-test assessing the difference between the two sets of z-transformed coefficients was significant, t(122)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;5.86, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001, Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003ed\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.78, showing that the relationship between people\u0026rsquo;s confidence in their ability to predict others\u0026rsquo; mental states, and their accuracy in doing so, differed for in-groups and out-groups. This finding suggests that people\u0026rsquo;s confidence in their ability to predict the minds of out-group members is misplaced: people have poor awareness of their (in)ability to predict the minds of out-group members.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec22\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec24\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"STUDY 2","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec22\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe stimuli used in Study 1 were designed to be 50% politically left-leaning and 50% right-leaning to ensure a sufficient number of in-group and out-group trials for each participant. However, the political leaning of the participants was not explicitly measured. In Study 2, therefore, we not only aimed to replicate Study 1\u0026rsquo;s effects but also to ensure that the effects hold when the sample was equally split by left and right-leaning participants (recruiting 50% of participants as being affiliated with the Republican Party, 50% affiliated with the Democratic party). Unless specified below, all other methods and analyses remain identical to Study 1.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec23\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e5.1 Participants\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Study 2, we recruited a final sample of 128 participants (mean age\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;43.86 years, SD\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;13.23 years, age range\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;20\u0026ndash;80, 63 female and 65 male, 64 Democrat, 64 Republican).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec24\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e5.2 Pre-registered Exclusion Criteria\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll exclusion criteria were pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (Study 2: \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://osf.io/urvg3\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e). In Study 2, we excluded whole datasets for participants who:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea) responded that they \u0026ldquo;neither agreed nor disagreed\u0026rdquo; towards more than 25% of the starting statements (6 participants);\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eb) had fewer than 6 in-group or out-group trials based on their responses to the starting statements (27 participants);\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ec) chose to buy no further information throughout the task, accounting for 10 participants.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, in Study 2, whole datasets for a total of 43 participants were excluded and replaced until a final sample size of 128 was achieved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec25\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e5.3 Results\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDescriptive statistics for Study 2 are reported in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e, including the amount of information bought, participants\u0026rsquo; inference accuracy and confidence scores both before (timepoint 1) and after (timepoint 2) additional information, as well as their awareness scores.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec26\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e5.3.1 Does perceived group status affect propensity to consider another\u0026rsquo;s mind?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe main effect of group was not significant, although the effect was in the same direction as in Study 1: numerically at least, participants bought more information about out-group minds than in-group minds. This indicates that people do not show less propensity to consider out-group than in-group minds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMean (SD) percentage of information sought, participant accuracy, confidence and awareness in Study 2.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"7\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeasure\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"1\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGroup Status\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInformation Sought (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy [timepoint 1] (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy [timepoint 2] (%)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[timepoint 1]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[timepoint 2]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccuracy- Confidence Awareness\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(z-scores)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn-group\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e14.4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(17.9)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e50.7\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(14.6)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e48.7\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(13.8)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e73.5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(11.1)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e75.5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(11.5)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.18\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(0.33)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOut-group\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e15.0\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(18.0)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e39.1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(18.4)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e36.8\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(18.3)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e71.9\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(12.6)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e74.2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(12.7)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-0.07\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(0.53)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e5.3.2 Does group status affect the accuracy of mental state inferences?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe model including interaction between timepoint and group was non-significant. Thus, participants\u0026rsquo; accuracy did not change between timepoint 1 and timepoint 2 differentially, according to whether the target-mind was in-group or out-group. Further models demonstrated that the main effect of timepoint was also not significant, showing that participants did not significantly update their inferences after receiving more information about the target. The main effect of group was significant (X2(1)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;69.68, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001), revealing that participants were significantly more accurate for in-group compared to out-group target-minds (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e). These findings replicate the results of Study 1.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec27\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e5.3.3. Does perceived group status affect awareness of own ability for mental state inferences?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe assessed whether the correlation between participants\u0026rsquo; inference accuracy and their confidence in their accuracy differed depending on whether they were inferring the mind of an in-group or an out-group member. A one-sample t-test revealed that confidence and accuracy were significantly, positively, correlated for in-group predictions (t(126)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;6.199, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001, Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003ed\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.55). This suggests that participants\u0026rsquo; confidence was significantly aligned with their accuracy and, therefore, that they were aware of their ability to predict the beliefs of in-group minds. In comparison, confidence and accuracy were not significantly correlated for out-group predictions, showing that higher confidence was not associated with higher accuracy, and suggesting participants had relatively poorer awareness of their own (in)ability to predict the beliefs of out-group minds (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, a paired samples t-test assessing the difference between the two sets of z-transformed coefficients was significant, t(117)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;4.28, p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.001, Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003ed\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.59, showing that the relationship between people\u0026rsquo;s confidence in their ability to predict others\u0026rsquo; mental states, and their accuracy in doing so, differed for in-groups and out-groups. This finding suggests that people have poorer awareness of their (in)ability to predict the minds of out-group, compared to in-group, members.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"DISCUSSION","content":"\u003cp\u003eWhile previous studies have suggested reduced mentalising performance when considering out-groups, this is the first study to utilise an objective ground-truth against which we can assess participants\u0026rsquo; accuracy. Further, it remains the first study to separately assess participants\u0026rsquo; propensity to consider the minds of others from their ability to accurately infer their mental states, whilst using real out-groups (i.e., those whom the participant themselves acknowledge they disagree with). There were three key findings.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFirst, participants sought an equivalent \u0026ndash; or greater \u0026ndash; amount of information about out-groups\u0026rsquo; mental states relative to in-groups when asked to make mental state inferences. This suggest that people were no less prone to consider the minds of out-groups. Previous studies found that people ascribe fewer and less complex mental and emotional states to out-groups (McClung \u0026amp; Reicher, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; McLoughlin \u0026amp; Over, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). This has led to the assumption that people are either less prone to consider out-group minds, or believe out-group minds to be less complex, such that the attribution of less complex mental states reflects the inference of reduced complexity of the mind giving rise to those mental states. In contrast, the current result suggests that, if anything, participants perceived themselves to have a relative deficit of information about out-group minds, and more information was needed to make their inferences accurate.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDifferent processes may be used to infer the beliefs of in- and out-group minds. For in-group minds, people can use their own minds to facilitate accurate inferences of a target-mind, if the target is perceived to be similar and if this perception is accurate. However, when the target-mind is dissimilar, the self is not a good model to base inferences on and one needs to build a model of the target\u0026rsquo;s mind by \u0026ndash; in this task - buying more information.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe second possible explanation is that the task may have highlighted that out-group members\u0026rsquo; views on a variety of issues could vary, whereas in daily life people consider out-groups to be more homogenous than they are (see Ostrom \u0026amp; Sedikides, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e; Boldry et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e). The impact of becoming aware of the complexity of an out-group mind has previously been demonstrated to result in ascription of more emotional states to them (Prati et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). It is possible then that being presented with target\u0026rsquo;s views prompted people to represent out-groups as capable of having complex minds since they were complex enough to be differentiated from the self on multiple dimensions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, people\u0026rsquo;s propensity to consider out-group minds may, realistically, be gated by social motivation. It remains to be seen whether the motivation to seek more information about the minds of out-group members remains in more ecologically valid situations, when there is a less salient, immediate, benefit to the self for making an accurate inference. Yet, the presence of this effect in the context of our second finding highlights that, even when people do engage in effortful mental state inference about out-groups, their ability to make accurate inferences is still worse for out-groups.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOur second key finding was that people have significantly reduced accuracy in mental state inference for out-group relative to in-group minds. It is important to consider why \u0026ndash; if not a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds \u0026ndash; people may have reduced ability to make accurate mental state inferences about them. We suggest that it may be because the underlying representation people have of out-group minds is poorer than their representation of in-group minds. The presence of polarisation itself means that individuals are less likely to engage with out-group members. This reduced contact would be expected to lead to a reduced ability to build a model of out-group minds, to understand how they vary, and result in a limited representation of out-group views. From an information sampling approach, a smaller number of out-group observations gives rise to lesser perceived variability amongst those mental state observations (Konovalova \u0026amp; Le Mens, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e), with a greater degree of extremity. As a consequence, people overestimate the extremity of out-group views (Ahler \u0026amp; Sood, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e), modelling only the extremes of the out-group without the variability. All of these factors would lead to less accurate mental state inferences for out-groups.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, the current study examined participants\u0026rsquo; awareness of their own ability to make accurate inferences, determined by how confident they were in the accuracy of their inferences. Our third key finding demonstrates that participants\u0026rsquo; awareness differs as a function of group status. Specifically, when people inferred the mental state of an in-group member, they had good awareness of their own ability; in contrast, they showed misplaced confidence in their ability to understand out-group members. In Study 1, as participants\u0026rsquo; confidence increased, their accuracy decreased, while in Study 2, increases in confidence were unrelated to changes in accuracy. This shows that people had relatively poorer awareness of their (in)ability to understand out-group minds. Future work will need to determine whether increasing participants\u0026rsquo; awareness of their misplaced confidence \u0026ndash; or receiving feedback on their misperceptions \u0026ndash; may change their inferences and/or the confidence with which they make those inferences.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe current study shows for the first time that people are less able to accurately infer the mental states of out-group members compared to in-group members, even in light of evidence suggesting greater propensity to gather information about out-groups. Further, people have poorer awareness of their relative inability, leading to misplaced confidence in the accuracy of their judgements. Further studies examining how we represent the minds of others and, moreover, how such representations might be updated to allow more veridical inferences about outgroup mental states are of prime importance. Critically, such studies can now progress in the knowledge that we really do have a worse ability to mentalise about out-groups, not because we are less prone to consider their minds but because we are less able to represent them.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eB.P., G.B., and C.C. conceptualised the work. B.P. was responsible for design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of the data. B.P. drafted the manuscript and B.P., G.B., and C.C. subsequently revised it.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaterials, data, and analysis scripts are publicly available for each study at: Study 1: https://osf.io/ek8hj; Study 2: https://osf.io/urvg3.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAbell, F., Happ\u0026eacute;, F., \u0026amp; Frith, U. (2000). 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Child Development, \u003cem\u003e75\u003c/em\u003e(2), 523\u0026ndash;541. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00691.x\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00691.x\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":true,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"scientific-reports","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"scirep","sideBox":"Learn more about [Scientific Reports](http://www.nature.com/srep/)","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"","title":"Scientific Reports","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Scientific Reports","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"Societies are becoming more polarised, driven in part by misconceptions about out-groups’ beliefs. To understand these effects, one must examine the cognitive processes underlying how people think about others. Here, we investigate whether people are less prone to theorise about the minds of out-groups, or less able to do so. Participants (Study 1: n=128; Study 2: n=128) made inferences about social and political beliefs held by real in-group and out-group members, and could choose to receive further information to improve these inferences. Results show: 1) participants sought equivalent or greater information about out-groups relative to in-groups; but despite this, 2) made significantly less accurate inferences for out-groups; and 3) were significantly less aware of their reduced ability. This shows that poorer mental state inference is not underpinned by a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds, but instead by a worse representation of the minds of out-groups.","manuscriptTitle":"Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2024-05-28 17:54:07","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2024-05-31T04:48:10+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2024-05-29T18:21:14+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2024-05-29T10:50:04+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"202075364947026703616279412836044547970","date":"2024-05-15T16:47:40+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"269366887250584111253445975060248161008","date":"2024-05-14T13:22:43+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2024-05-14T08:55:38+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2024-05-13T15:34:02+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2024-05-10T15:06:39+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2024-05-10T11:12:40+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Scientific Reports","date":"2024-05-03T14:40:59+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"scientific-reports","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"scirep","sideBox":"Learn more about [Scientific Reports](http://www.nature.com/srep/)","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"","title":"Scientific Reports","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Scientific Reports","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"cc3a4f49-dd79-431f-a07d-b6902efc2e92","owner":[],"postedDate":"May 28th, 2024","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"published-in-journal","subjectAreas":[{"id":32108637,"name":"Biological sciences/Psychology"},{"id":32108638,"name":"Biological sciences/Psychology/Human behaviour"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2024-08-28T14:57:12+00:00","versionOfRecord":{"articleIdentity":"rs-4364745","link":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67311-3","journal":{"identity":"scientific-reports","isVorOnly":false,"title":"Scientific Reports"},"publishedOn":"2024-08-28 00:00:00","publishedOnDateReadable":"August 28th, 2024"},"versionCreatedAt":"2024-05-28 17:54:07","video":"","vorDoi":"10.1038/s41598-024-67311-3","vorDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67311-3","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-4364745","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-4364745","identity":"rs-4364745","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"qtupq5eGEP_6zYnWcrvyt","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}