内外有别：错误信念心理理论对学龄前儿童第三方干预的作用
Differentiating Ingroup from Outgroup: The Role of False-Belief Theory of Mind in Preschoolers’ Third-Party Intervention
摘要
第三方干预是维护公平规范的重要机制，但个体在执行规范时并非一视同仁，而是表现出显著的群体差异。本研究通过两个实验，探讨错误信念心理理论 (False Belief Theory of Mind, FB ToM) 如何影响4～6岁儿童 (n = 212, Mage = 5.57 ± 0.54岁, 107名男孩) 在分配双方来自同一群体 (分配者和接受者均为内群体成员，以及分配者和接受者均为外群体成员)，及分配双方来自不同群体情境下的第三方干预行为及其行为原因。结果发现：通过 FB ToM 任务的儿童表现出显著的规范边界敏感性，会减少对纯外群体情境下不公分配的第三方干预；在双方均为外群体情境中，通过 FB ToM 的儿童的第三方干预行为显著少于未通过 FB ToM 的儿童。当互动中存在内群体成员时，通过 FB ToM 的儿童的第三方干预显著多于其在不包含内群体成员情境中的第三方干预。原因分析表明，这种第三方干预的减少并非出于对外群体的冷漠或忽视公平，而是出于对规范适用范围的区分。研究表明，错误信念心理理论促使儿童形成情境敏感的规范边界意识：更严格维护涉及内群体成员的共享规范，更克制介入外群体内部情境。因此，心理理论的发展可能帮助儿童从应用普遍公平原则，转向基于群体边界的规范执行，从而更好地完成社会化进程。
Abstract
Third-party intervention is a key mechanism for upholding fairness norms, yet it is often applied selectively, depending on who is involved. Prior accounts frame this selectivity as a competition between fairness motives and ingroup bias. However, intervening also requires judging whether a norm applies to the relationship at hand and whether stepping in is warranted, judgments that may draw on theory of mind. The present research tested two competing hypotheses about how false-belief theory of mind (FB ToM) relates to preschoolers third-party intervention. The universal sensitivity hypothesis predicted that FB ToM passers would enforce fairness regardless of group membership, whereas the norm-boundary sensitivity hypothesis predicted that they would intervene whenever an ingroup member was involved but show restraint in purely outgroup interactions.In two experiments, 212 Chinese 4- to 6-year-olds (107 boys) completed an animated first-order false-belief task and were classified as passers or non-passers. Children then joined a yellow or blue team in a minimal group paradigm. In a touchscreen tablet game, they watched an allocator split four coins with a recipient, selfishly (3:1) or generously (1:3), and could accept each split or reject it at no personal cost, discarding all coins. In Experiment 1 (106 children), the allocator and recipient were both ingroup members (ingroup/ingroup) or both outgroup members (outgroup/outgroup). Experiment 2 (106 additional children) added two mixed contexts, outgroup/ingroup and ingroup/outgroup (allocator/recipient), to disentangle allocator and recipient identity. Children also chose one or more reasons for their decisions, coded as fairness-enforcement, indifference, or group-boundary reasons.In Experiment 1, FB ToM interacted with group context: passers intervened less in the outgroup/outgroup context than in the ingroup/ingroup context and less than non-passers in the same context, whereas non-passers intervened similarly in both. In Experiment 2, passers maintained high levels of intervention across both mixed contexts, showing no significant difference regardless of whether the outgroup member was the allocator or the recipient. Crucially, across the four contexts, passers intervened significantly more in each mixed context than in the outgroup/outgroup context, at levels comparable to the ingroup/ingroup context. Thus, neither an outgroup allocator nor an outgroup recipient alone accounted for their reduced intervention. When contexts were recoded by whether any ingroup member was involved, passers intervened significantly less when no ingroup member was involved, whereas non-passers showed no such context-dependent variation; this interaction held after controlling for age and gender, although older children intervened more overall. Finally, when declining to intervene in the outgroup/outgroup context, passers chose group-boundary reasons more often than non-passers did, whereas the groups did not differ on indifference or fairness-enforcement reasons.These findings favor the norm-boundary over the universal sensitivity hypothesis. Rather than uniformly strengthening fairness enforcement, FB ToM may foster a context-sensitive awareness of norm boundaries: stricter enforcement of shared norms involving ingroup members and greater restraint in purely outgroup interactions. This restraint appears to reflect judgments about where norms apply, not indifference toward outgroups or disregard for fairness. Theory of mind development may thus help children move from a universal fairness principle toward boundary-based norm enforcement, supporting their socialization. This work extends the social reasoning developmental model, framing selective norm enforcement as a reasoning process that integrates fairness evaluation, group relations, and norm boundaries.关键词
规范执行/心理理论/群体偏好/公平/错误信念Key words
norm enforcement/theory of mind/ingroup preference/fairness/false belief引用本文复制引用
王文心,凌嘉卿,伍珍.内外有别：错误信念心理理论对学龄前儿童第三方干预的作用[EB/OL].(2026-10-01)[2026-10-03].https://chinaxiv.org/abs/202610.00003.学科分类
教育
