Social mindfulness in intergroup context: The role of socio-cognitive skills

Social mindfulness is a form of prosocial behavior that expresses the ability to act by considering the wishes and preferences of others before making a decision in the present moment. The aim of this study was to examine the contextual and socio-cognitive factors that affect the development of social mindfulness skills in school-aged children. In this context, it was investigated whether the child's social mindfulness skills differed for the ingroup and outgroup. In addition, the role of theory of mind and inhibitory control skills, which are thought to contribute to the child's social mindfulness skills, were examined. The sample of the study consisted of 100 children (ngirls = 48) between the ages of 7 and 9 and their mothers. During the data collection process of the study, the mothers were asked to fill the Consent Form and Demographic Information Form. In addition, the Social Mindfulness Task was used to assess children's social mindfulness skills, the Arrow Task to measure inhibitory control skills, finally, two Second-Order False Belief Tasks were used to examine the theory of mind. Data were collected face to face at the schools where the children continued their education. Results showed that the children demonstrated equal levels of social mindfulness toward the ingroup and outgroup members. Children's general social mindfulness skills were positively related with their age, inhibitory control and theory of mind. In hierarchical regression analysis, the child's age and theory of mind skills predicted the child's general social mindfulness skills. Moreover, while the child's age, theory of mind and inhibitory control skills predicted the child's social mindfulness skills towards the ingroup, theory of mind skill predicted the child's social mindfulness towards the outgroup. Overall, although children showed equal levels of social mindfulness toward the ingroup and outgroup, children's social mindfulness toward the ingroup increased with age and higher theory of mind and inhibitory control skills. However, only theory of mind skill contributed to the social mindfulness toward the outgroup. In conclusion, these findings showed that theory of mind has an critical role in displaying social mindfulness toward both ingroup and outgroup. Keywords: social mindfulness, ingroup, outgroup, theory of mind, inhibitory control.