Social Understanding beyond the Familiar: Disparity in Visual Abilities Does Not Impede Empathy and Theory of Mind

Abstract

Feeling with our conspecifics and understanding their sentiments and intentions is a crucial part of our lives. What is the basis for these forms of social understanding? If individuals ground their understanding of others’ thoughts and feelings in their own perceptual and factual experiences, it could present a challenge to empathize and mentalize with those whose reality of life is significantly different. This preregistered study compared two groups of participants who differed in a central perceptual feature, their visual abilities (visually impaired vs. unimpaired; total N = 56), concerning their social understanding of others who were themselves either visually impaired or unimpaired. Employing an adjusted version of the EmpaToM task, participants heard short, autobiographic narrations by visually impaired or unimpaired individuals, and we assessed their empathic responding and mentalizing performance. Our findings did not reveal heightened empathy and mentalizing proclivities when the narrator’s visual abilities aligned with those of the participant. However, in some circumstances, cognitive understanding of others’ narrations benefitted from familiarity with the situation. Overall, our findings suggest that social understanding does not mainly rely on perceptual familiarity with concrete situations but is likely grounded in sharing emotions and experiences on a more fundamental level.