4.2 Article

Does Culture Shape Our Understanding of Others' Thoughts and Emotions? An Investigation Across 12 Countries

Journal

NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
Volume 36, Issue 7, Pages 664-682

Publisher

AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/neu0000817

Keywords

social cognition; emotion recognition; mentalizing; theory of mind; culture

Funding

  1. Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation from Colombia [COLCIENCIAS 1106-744-55314]
  2. Takeda Grant [CW2680521]
  3. CONICET
  4. FONCYT-PICT [2017-1818, 2017-1820]
  5. ANID/FONDAP [15150012]
  6. AANILLOS [ACT210096]
  7. ANID/FONDECYT [1140423, 1100975]
  8. GBHI ALZ [UK-20-639295]
  9. Alzheimer's Association GBHI ALZ [UK-22865742]
  10. ANID/FONDECYT REGULAR [1210176, 1210195, 1220995]
  11. Programa Interdisciplinario de Investigacion Experimental en Comunicacion y Cognicion (PIIECC)
  12. Facultad de Humanidades
  13. USACH
  14. NIH NIA [R01 AG057234]
  15. Reseau quebecois de recherche sur le vieillissement
  16. National Natural Science Foundation of China [81100797, 81530036]
  17. Beijing high-level health talents training project [2015-3-068]
  18. Russian Foundation for Basic Research [20-013-00600]
  19. CNPq, Brazil [402853/2012-1]
  20. Projet Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique (PHRC) interregional [IDRCB 2012-A00992-41, 5330]
  21. Alzheimer's Research U.K [ARUK_PPG2014B-3, ARUK-DT2016-1]
  22. Alzheimer's Society U.K [AS-SF-14-003]
  23. Deutsche Telekom
  24. Sao Paulo Research Foundation [FAPESP-2016/07967-2]
  25. National Institutes of Aging of the National Institutes of Health [R01AG057234,]
  26. Alzheimer's Association grant [SG-20-725707-ReDLat]
  27. Rainwater Foundation
  28. Global Brain Health Institute

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Measures of social cognition are essential in neuropsychology for diagnoses and rehabilitation. International collaborations help tackle global mental health challenges, but differences between countries should not be ignored.
Measures of social cognition have now become central in neuropsychology, being essential for early and differential diagnoses, follow-up, and rehabilitation in a wide range of conditions. With the scientific world becoming increasingly interconnected, international neuropsychological and medical collaborations are burgeoning to tackle the global challenges that are mental health conditions. These initiatives commonly merge data across a diversity of populations and countries, while ignoring their specificity. Objective: In this context, we aimed to estimate the influence of participants' nationality on social cognition evaluation. This issue is of particular importance as most cognitive tasks are developed in highly specific contexts, not representative of that encountered by the world's population. Method: Through a large international study across 18 sites, neuropsychologists assessed core aspects of social cognition in 587 participants from 12 countries using traditional and widely used tasks. Results: Age, gender, and education were found to impact measures of mentalizing and emotion recognition. After controlling for these factors, differences between countries accounted for more than 20% of the variance on both measures. Importantly, it was possible to isolate participants' nationality from potential translation issues, which classically constitute a major limitation. Conclusions: Overall, these findings highlight the need for important methodological shifts to better represent social cognition in both fundamental research and clinical practice, especially within emerging international networks and consortia.

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