Authoritarianism in parents may hinder a key cognitive skill in their children

Children develop the ability to understand what others think and feel—an ability known as theory of mind—through early social interactions, especially with caregivers. A new study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development suggests that parents’ beliefs about social hierarchy and obedience to authority may shape the development of this socio-cognitive ability.

The researchers set out to explore how broader social and political attitudes held by parents might be linked to their children’s ability to understand others’ perspectives. Previous studies had already shown that children’s theory of mind can be supported by hearing language that refers to thoughts, feelings, desires, and beliefs—what is often called mental state talk.

However, less was known about how parental attitudes toward authority and inequality might influence this kind of talk, especially when discussing people from groups perceived as different. The new study aimed to fill that gap by examining two belief systems: social dominance orientation—the belief that some groups deserve to be dominant over others—and right-wing authoritarianism, or the belief that people should submit to established authorities and social norms.

“I’ve always been interested in social sensitivity and human interactions, but I fell into the topic by virtue of knowing I wanted to work with children, and there being two professors I could work with. One, David R. Olson, was exceptionally nice and happened to be studying theory of mind. I wanted to work with him because I liked him,” said study author Ted Ruffman, a professor of psychology at the University of Otago.

The research team recruited 79 mother-child pairs in New Zealand. All participants were of European ethnicity and spoke English. The children ranged in age from two to nearly six years old, with an average age of about 3.7 years. The researchers assessed the mothers’ social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism using standard psychological questionnaires.

They also measured the children’s language ability and their theory of mind skills using well-established tasks. These included activities like identifying when a character in a story held a false belief or had different desires from others—tasks commonly used in developmental psychology to assess children’s social understanding.

In addition to these assessments, the mothers participated in a picture description task. Each mother was randomly assigned to view a series of images showing either European or Chinese children and asked to describe the pictures to their child “as if reading a storybook.” The photos depicted children expressing different emotions or reaching for objects, and the mothers’ descriptions were recorded and analyzed. The researchers focused on how often the mothers used mental state words like “think,” “feel,” “want,” or “hope,” and categorized them by type, such as cognition, emotion, or desire.

The researchers found that mothers who scored higher in social dominance orientation or right-wing authoritarianism used fewer mental state words when describing the Chinese children, who were considered an outgroup. However, this relationship was not seen when they described pictures of European children, who were considered part of their ingroup. This suggests that the mothers’ attitudes influenced their willingness—or perhaps their ability—to engage in perspective-taking when the target of discussion belonged to a different ethnic group.

Importantly, the researchers also found a broader link between these maternal attitudes and children’s theory of mind scores. Regardless of which set of pictures the mother described, children whose mothers scored higher on social dominance orientation or right-wing authoritarianism performed worse on the theory of mind tasks.

This held true even after accounting for the children’s age, language ability, and the mother’s education level. These results suggest that a parent’s social and political attitudes may influence a child’s social development in more general ways—not just through moment-to-moment interactions, but possibly through broader patterns in parenting and communication.

The study’s findings highlight a potentially important link between a parent’s worldview and a child’s social-cognitive development. If parents who see the world through a lens of hierarchy or strict obedience tend to talk less about thoughts and feelings—especially when discussing people from different backgrounds—children may miss out on opportunities to practice understanding others’ minds. Over time, this could hinder the development of empathy and perspective-taking.

“There are things you can say to your child, talk to them about the mental states and feelings of others, that will help the child become a cooperative and insightful human being,” Ruffman told PsyPost.

As with all research, there are limitations to consider. One is that the study was cross-sectional, meaning it cannot establish cause and effect. It’s possible—though less likely—that children with lower theory of mind somehow influence their parents’ beliefs, or that both are shaped by a third factor like shared temperament or household dynamics. Additionally, the study only included mothers of European ethnicity in New Zealand, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other cultural and demographic groups.

Looking ahead, the researchers suggest that longitudinal studies could provide stronger evidence about the direction of the relationship between parental beliefs and children’s theory of mind. Such studies could also explore whether other factors, like parental empathy or subtle nonverbal behaviors, help explain how these beliefs are transmitted. Given that both social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism have been linked to prejudice and reduced empathy in adults, the idea that they could shape children’s ability to understand others is worth further investigation.

“Don’t fear the truth,” Ruffman added. “Infants might not actually know very much, so let’s not work so hard to show that they do. ‘Big’ journals shouldn’t have a bias to publish early-onset findings (which they clearly do).”

The study, “What she believes or what she says? The relation between maternal social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, mental state talk, and children’s theory of mind,” was authored by Qiuyi Kong, Harry Fraser, Felicia Crysta Elwina, and Ted Ruffman.