Predicting current beliefs and future feelings: A model of mindreading judgment.

How do individuals represent others' current thoughts or future feelings? Five studies examined individuals' mindreading judgments. Across 4 yearly measurement occasions, 3,457 adolescents in Study I inferred parents' value beliefs by judging the importance their parents place on the adolescent doing well in math or English. Parents and adolescents reported their own value beliefs in these same two domains. Analytic interest centered on the relationships among the progression of attributions and the progressions of personal beliefs. Individual growth curves were estimated for these inferences and beliefs. The present model regressed an actor's mindreading trajectories on the belief trajectories of the actor and partner. Results revealed that the linear progression of adolescents' own value beliefs predicted the linear rate of change in their mindreading inferences more than did parents' trajectories. Study 2 extended the phenomenon to a non-academic belief (popularity) and to an affective forecast (predicted upset feelings). Study 3 replicated the phenomenon with 1,070 children in both academic (math, reading) and non-academic (popularity) belief domains. Results indicated changes in children's own beliefs predicted their mindreading inferences more than did changes in parents' own beliefs. Study 4 examined adults' mindreading accuracy across belief domains. Whereas adults demonstrated the same trend children did for popularity, both changes in parents' and changes in children's' own beliefs predicted parents' math and reading attributions. Study 5 examined income and education as moderators of belief predictions and affective forecasts.Ph.D.Cognitive psychologyDevelopmental psychologyPsychologySocial psychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126321/2/3238112.pd