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How accurately can other people infer your thoughts - And does culture matter?
Valanides, C. Sheppard, E. Mitchell, Peter
Valanides, C.
Sheppard, E.
Mitchell, Peter
Publication Date
2017-11
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© 2017 Valanides et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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2017-10-23
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Abstract
This research investigated how accurately people infer what others are thinking after observing a brief sample of their behaviour and whether culture/similarity is a relevant factor. Target participants (14 British and 14 Mediterraneans) were cued to think about either positive or negative events they had experienced. Subsequently, perceiver participants (16 British and 16 Mediterraneans) watched videos of the targets thinking about these things. Perceivers (both groups) were significantly accurate in judging when targets had been cued to think of something positive versus something negative, indicating notable inferential ability. Additionally, Mediterranean perceivers were better than British perceivers in making such inferences, irrespective of nationality of the targets, something that was statistically accounted for by corresponding group differences in levels of independently measured collectivism. The results point to the need for further research to investigate the possibility that being reared in a collectivist culture fosters ability in interpreting others’ behaviour.
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Valanides C, Sheppard E and Mitchell P (2017) How accurately can other people infer your thoughts - And does culture matter? PLoS ONE. 12(11): e0187586.
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