Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 17:12:679524.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.679524. eCollection 2021.

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

Samaneh Tarighat  1 , Andrea Krott  2
Affiliations

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

Samaneh Tarighat et al. Front Psychol. .

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Effect of gender (male vs. female) and bilingualism (bilingual vs. monolingual) on PT scores (range 0–28). Error bars represent standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adenzato M., Brambilla M., Manenti R., De Lucia L., Trojano L., Garofalo S., et al. (2017). Gender differences in cognitive Theory of Mind revealed by transcranial direct current stimulation on medial prefrontal cortex. Sci. Rep. 7:41219. 10.1038/srep41219 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alterman A. I., McDermott P. A., Cacciola J. S., Rutherford M. J. (2003). Latent structure of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index in methadone maintenance patients. J. Psychopathol. Behav. Assess. 25 257–265. 10.1023/A:1025936213110 - DOI
    1. Babchuk W. A., Hames R. B., Thompson R. A. (1985). Sex differences in the recognition of infant facial expressions of emotion: the primary caretaker hypothesis. Ethol. Sociobiol. 6 89–101. 10.1016/0162-3095(85)90002-0 - DOI
    1. Barnes-Holmes Y., McHugh L., Barnes-Holmes D. (2004). Perspective taking and theory of mind: a relational frame account. Behav. Anal. Today 5 15–25. 10.1037/h0100133 - DOI
    1. Baron-Cohen S., Knickmeyer R. C., Belmonte M. K. (2005). Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science 310 819–823. 10.1126/science.1115455 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources