Bilingualism Enhances Reported Perspective Taking in Men, but Not in Women

Abstract

Bilingual speakers have often been found to be superior in taking the perspective of another person. Also, females are commonly found to have enhanced perspective taking (PT) abilities compared with males, with male PT being generally more easily affected by external factors. The present study investigated whether bilingualism improves PT in males more strongly than in females. In total, 108 bilingual and 108 matched monolingual adults, with equal numbers of males and females, filled in the PT subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity index. While monolinguals showed the typical result of females scoring higher on PT than males, scores of male and female bilinguals did not differ, with both bilingual groups scoring as high as female monolinguals. Thus, bilingualism enhanced self-reported PT only in males, suggesting that male PT can be enhanced through socialization.

Keywords: Theory of Mind; bilingual advantage; bilingualism; gender differences; perspective taking.

FIGURE 1

Effect of gender (male vs. female) and bilingualism (bilingual vs. monolingual) on PT scores (range 0–28). Error bars represent standard errors.