"The illusion of the mind-body divide is attenuated in males."
Hmm that's weird. This research wasn't originally motivated by interest in difference between males and females, it was motivated by testing a theory about Dualism -- whether Dualism is innate or learned.
"People are intuitive Dualists -- they tend to consider the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. For example, people believe that one's psychological traits (e.g., thinking about one's wife) can persist in the afterlife, without one's body. Conversely, if one's body were to be duplicated, the replica, people state, would preserve one's physical characteristics (e.g., a scar), but not one's knowledge and beliefs."
The hypothesis to be tested is that intuitive Dualism is natural for humans because "it arises from two core principles that lie deep within human cognition. One such principle is intuitive physics; the other is theory of mind."
"Per intuitive physics, people consider objects as cohesive entities that can only move by immediate contact, and this knowledge manifests in early infancy. For example, upon seeing one moving ball contact another (stationary) ball, infants expect the stationary ball to launch immediately. So, if the launch is delayed, infants are surprised -- a response evident already in newborn."
"Theory of mind, however, leads us to attribute the actions of agents to their mental states -- to their beliefs, knowledge, desires and goals. Thus, upon seeing a person reach their hand towards a water bottle, one would spontaneously infer that the person believes there is water in the bottle, and it is this belief that caused their hand to move. This inference, however, blatantly violates intuitive physics, as it presumes that the agent's hand (a physical object) can move spontaneously, in the absence of contact with another physical objects. And that violation of intuitive physics is bound to elicit cognitive tension. To resolve the dissonance, people might presume that mental states -- the causes of the agents' movement -- aren't physical. Thus, the tension between intuitive theory of mind and intuitive physics can explain how intuitive Dualism arises naturally."
"The hypothesis that Dualism is natural also generates a testable prediction. If Dualism arises (in part) from theory of mind, then if theory of mind were to be attenuated, then so should intuitive Dualism."
They recount previous research showing autistic people are less adept at reading the minds of others.
"If autism attenuates theory of mind, and theory of mind begets Dualism, then in people with autism, the mind -- body divide ought to be attenuated. Moreover, Dualist intuitions ought to correlate with sensitivity to theory of mind. This, is exactly what was found."
Here's where they decided to make this a gender experiment.
"To further evaluate the origins of Dualism, and its link to theory of mind, here, we explore systematic gradations in theory of mind occurring within the neurotypical population -- differences between females and males. Numerous studies have found that males underperform females in theory of mind tasks."
In Experiment 1, participants are invited to imagine if a replica of their body would have their traits. Experiment 2 does the reverse, and ask people to imagine the afterlife, after the demise of the body, and what traits would continue. Half of the traits were about actions and emotions (e.g., walking, anger) -- traits that people readily anchor in the body (e.g., legs, face), and the other half were about knowledge and beliefs, traits not linked to any particular bodily organ (e.g., having a concept of a person, forming sentences). There were 80 such traits on the list.
In Experiment 3, participants were simply asked whether each trait was "inborn", yes or no. "Inborn traits are ones that develop in humans spontaneously. Some of these traits (e.g., having five fingers) are present at birth, but others (e.g., facial hair in men) can appear later in development. All inborn traits, however, emerge in the typical course of development, even if an individual has never had the opportunity to witness these behaviors in other people."
The hypothesis to be tested in Experiment 3 was the idea that Dualism promotes Empiricism -- but here "Empiricism" has a funny definition, which is "the belief that psychological traits cannot be innate."
"Males, in this sample, considered the psyche as more strongly embodied than females: they believed that epistemic states are more likely to emerge in a replica of one's body (in Experiment 1) and that psychological traits are less likely to persist upon the body's demise, in the afterlife (in Experiment 2). Experiment 3 further showed that males are also more likely to consider psychological traits as innate... suggesting that Dualism begets Empiricism."
They said they followed this up with theory of mind tests and males in this sample scored lower than females on theory of mind, and their theory of mind scores correlated with their Dualist intuitions.
Also possibly of note, this was done at Northeastern University and Northeastern University has so many female psychology students that the researchers had to use an outside company to recruit male participants. A total of 242 people participated in the experiment.
The illusion of the mind–body divide is attenuated in males
#discoveries #psychology #dualism
