AUTHOR=Wacker Renata , Bölte Sven , Dziobek Isabel 

TITLE=Women Know Better What Other Women Think and Feel: Gender Effects on Mindreading across the Adult Life Span

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2017

YEAR=2017

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01324

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01324

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Research recurrently shows that females perform better than males on various mindreading tasks. The present study contributes to this growing body of literature by being the first to demonstrate a female own-gender mindreading bias using a naturalistic social cognition paradigm including female and male targets. We found that women performed better at reading others´ minds, and that they were specifically more capable to read female targets, an own-gender target effect absent in men. Furthermore, a non-linear negative effect of perceiver age on mindreading performance was examined within a sample covering the age range of 17-70 years, as indicated by a stronger performance decrease setting on by the age of 30 years and continuing throughout middle and old age. These findings add to a more comprehensive understanding of the contextual factors influencing mindreading performance in typically developing adults.