Abstract
Theory of Mind is a construct closely related to the cognitive aspect of human empathy, which refers to the ability to represent and interpret mental states in others. The term Emotion Regulation includes all processes aimed to modulate the intensity and duration of different aspects of emotional experience. Clinical evidence suggests that theory of mind alterations and emotion regulation difficulties co-occur in several psychiatric disorders. In addition, it has been suggested that both abilities might be developmentally related, with theory of mind deficits leading to emotional dysregulation. The present study is the first to examine the associations between performance in a theory of mind experimental task (the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale scores, in a non-clinical sample of argentinean adults. We found small, but significant associations between Theory of Mind and Emotion Regulation, indicating that those subjects with higher Theory of Mind scores were better at inhibiting impulsive reactions and identifying their own emotions. In addition, these associations were indepedent of sex, age and education level. These results are congruent (although they do not confirm) with the hypothesis of a developmental link between Theory of Mind and Emotion Regulation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baron-Cohen, S. (2002). The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 248–254. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01904-6.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the mind in the eyes” test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00715.
Barrett, L. F., Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2007). On the automaticity of emotion. In J. Bargh (Ed.), Social psychology and the unconscious: The automaticity of higher mental processes (pp. 173–217). New York: Psychology Press.
Blair, R. (2005). Responding to the emotions of others: Dissociating forms of empathy through the study of typical and psychiatric populations. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 698–718. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2005.06.004.
Bodden, M., Kübler, D., Knake, S., Menzler, K., Heverhagen, J., Sommer, J., et al. (2013). Comparing the neural correlates of affective and cognitive theory of mind using fMRI: Involvement of the basal ganglia in affective theory of mind. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 9(1), 32–43. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0129-6.
Brooks-Gunn, J., Duncan, G. J., Leventhal, T., & Aber, J. L. (1997). Lessons learned and future directions for research on the neighborhoods in which children live. Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, GJ, and Aber, JL (eds.). Neighborhood Poverty, 1, 279–297.
Bzdok, D., Langner, R., Schilbach, L., Engemann, D. A., Laird, A. R., Fox, P. T., & Eickhoff, S. (2013). Segregation of the human medial prefrontal cortex in social cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 232. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00232.
Cai, R. Y., Richdale, A. L., Uljarević, M., Dissanayake, C., & Samson, A. C. (2018). Emotion regulation in autism spectrum disorder: Where we are and where we need to go. Autism Research, 11(7), 962–978. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1968.
Calkins, S. D., & Marcovitch, S. (2010). Emotion regulation and executive functioning in early development: Integrated mechanisms of control supporting adaptive functioning. In S. D. Calkins & M. A. Bell (Eds.), Child development at the intersection of emotion and cognition (pp. 37–58). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Gallant, C., & Good, C. (2019). Examining the “reading the mind in the eyes test” as an assessment of subtle differences in affective theory of mind after concussion. The Clinical Neuropsychologist. https://doi.org/10.1080/13854046.2019.1612946.
Campbell, R., Elgar, K., Kuntsi, J., Akers, R., Terstegge, J., Coleman, M. y Skuse, D. (2002). The recognition of ‘fear’ from faces is associated with face recognition skill in women. Neuropsychologia, 40 (6), 575–584. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(01)00164-6.
Carlson, S. M., Mandell, D. J., & Williams, L. (2004). Executive function and theory of mind: Stability and prediction from ages 2 to 3. Developmental Psychology, 40(6), 1105–1122.
Contardi, A., Imperatori, C., Penzo, I., Del Gatto, C., & Farina, B. (2016). The association among difficulties in emotion regulation, hostility, and empathy in a sample of young Italian adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1068. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01068.
Cusi, A., Nazarov, A., Holshausen, K., MacQueen, G., & McKinnon, M. (2012). Systematic review of the neural basis of social cognition in patients with mood disorders. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 37(3), 154–169. https://doi.org/10.1503/jpn.100179.
Davis, M. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85–102. Recuperado de http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.462.7754&rep=rep1SHARP&type=pdf
Davis, M. (1994). Empathy: A social psychological approach. USA: Brown & Benchmark Publishers.
Decety, J. (2010). The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental Neuroscience, 32, 257–267. https://doi.org/10.1159/000317771.
Decety, J. y Jackson, P. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3, 71–100. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1534582304267187.
Dvash, J., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2014). Theory of mind and empathy as multidimensional constructs: Neurological foundations. Topics in Language Disorders, 34(4), 282–295. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000040.
Dziobek, I., Fleck, S., Kalbe, E., Rogers, K., Hassenstab, J., Brand, M., Kessler, J., Woike, J. K., Wolf, O. T., & Convit, A. (2006). Introducing MASC: A movie for the assessment of social cognition. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(5), 623–636. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0107-0.
Eisenberg, N., & Eggum, N. D. (2009). Empathic responding: Sympathy and personal distress. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 71–83). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Eisenberg, N., & Spinrad, T. (2004). Emotion-related regulation: Sharpening the definition. Child Development, 75(2), 334–339. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00674.x.
Ferrier, D. E., Bassett, H. H., & Denham, S. A. (2014). Relations between executive function and emotionality in preschoolers: Exploring a transitive cognition–emotion linkage. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 487. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00487.
Filipetti, V., López, M., & Richaud, M. (2012). Aproximación neuropsicológica al constructo de empatía: aspectos cognitivos y neuroanatómicos. Cuadernos de Neuropsicología, 6(1), 63–83. https://doi.org/10.7714/cnps/6.1.204.
Fischer, A. L., O’Rourke, N., & Loken Thornton, W. (2017). Age differences in cognitive and affective theory of mind: Concurrent contributions of neurocognitive performance, sex, and pulse pressure. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 72(1), 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbw088.
Frith, U., & Frith, C. D. (2003). Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London Biological Sciences, 358, 459–473.
Fossati, A., Feeney, J., Maffei, C., & Borroni, S. (2014). Thinking about feelings: Affective state mentalization, attachment styles, and borderline personality disorder features among italian nonclinical adolescents. Psychoanalitic psychology, 31(1), 41–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033960.
Gallo, L. C., & Mathews, K. A. (2003). Understanding the association between socioeconomic status and physical health: Do negative emotions play a role? Psychological Bulletin, 129, 10–51.
Ghiasi, H., Mohammadi, A. & Zarrinfar, P. (2016). An investigation into the roles of Theory of Mind, Emotion Regulation, and Attachment Styles in predicting the traits of Borderline Personality Disorder. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry, 11 (4), 206–213. Recuperado de https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5206322/
Gosling, S. D., Vazire, S., Srivastava, S., & John, O. P. (2004). Should we trust web-based studies? A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about internet questionnaires. American Psychologist, 59(2), 93–104.
Gross, J. J. (1998a). Antecedent- and response focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 224–237.
Gross, J. (1998b). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Rev. Gen. Psychology, 2, 271–299.
Gross, J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39, 281–291. DOI: 10.1017.S0048577201393198.
Gross, J. (2011). Emotion regulation in adulthood: Timing is everything. Sage journals, 10(6), 214–219. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00152.
Gross, J. (2014). Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004.
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.34.
Gross, J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Regulación Emocional: fundamentos conceptuales. Manual de regulación emocional, 3–24.
Harrison, A., Sullivan, S., Tchanturia, K., & Treasure, J. (2009). Emotion recognition and regulation in anorexia nervosa. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 16, 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.628.
Haviland, J. M., & Lewica, M. (1987). The induced affect response: Ten-week-old infants’ responses to three emotion expressions. Developmental Psychology, 23, 97–104.
Heatherton, T. F. (2011). Neuroscience of self and self-regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 363–390. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.121208.131616.
Heyes, C. M., & Frith, C. D. (2014). The cultural evolution of mind reading. Science, 344(6190), 1357–1363. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1243091.
Hudson, A., & Jacques, S. (2014). Put on a happy face! Inhibitory control and socioemotional knowledge predict emotion regulation in 5 to 7-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 123, 36–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.01.012.
John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2004). Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: Personality processes, individual differences, and life span development. Journal of Personality, 72(6), 1301–1334. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00298.x.
Kimhi, Y. (2014). Theory of mind abilities and deficits in autism spectrum disorders. Topics in Language Disorders, 34(4), 329–343. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000033.
Koch, A., & Pollatos, O. (2015). Reduced facial emotion recognition in overweight and obese children. Journal of psychosomatic research, 79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.06.005.
Krantz, J. H., & Dalal, R. (2000). Validity of web-based psychological research. In Psychological experiments on the Internet (pp. 35-60). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012099980-4/50003-4.
Kim P., Evans G.W., Angstadt M., Ho S.S., Sripada C.S, Swain J.E., Liberzon I., Phan K.L. (2013) Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; 110(46): 18442–18447. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308240110.
Kirkland, R. A., Peterson, E., Baker, C. A., Miller, S., & Pulos, S. (2013). Meta-analysis reveals adult female superiority in “reading the mind in the eyes test”. North American Journal of Psychology, 15(1), 121–146. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01503.
Leslie, A., & Frith, U. (1988). Autistic children’s understanding of seeing, knowing and believing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 315–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1988.tb01104.x.
Lopes, P., Salovey, P., Côté, S. y Beers, M. (2005). Emotion regulation abilities and the quality of social interaction. Emotion, 5 (1), 113–118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.113.
Lutchmaya, S., Baron-Cohen, S., & Raggatt, P. (2002). Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old human infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 25(3), 327–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(02)00094-2.
Martino, D. J., Strejilevich, S. A., Fassi, G., Marengo, E., & Igoa, A. (2011). Theory of mind and facial emotion recognition in euthymic bipolar I and bipolar II disorders. Psychiatry Research, 189(3), 379–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2011.04.033.
Mazefsky, C. A., Herrington, J., Siegel, M., Scarpa, A., Maddox, B. B., Scahill, L., & White, S. W. (2013). The role of emotion regulation in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 52(7), 679–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2013.05.006.
McLoyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53(2), 185–204.
McRae, K., Gross, J., Weber, J., Robertson, E., Sokol-Hessner, P., Ray, R., Gabrieli, J. D., & Ochsner, K. (2012). Development of emotion regulation: An fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(1), 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsr093.
Medrano, L., Muñoz-Navarro, R. y Cano-Vindel, A. (2016). Procesos cognitivos y regulación emocional: aportes desde una aproximación psicoevolucionista. Ansiedad y estrés, 22, 47–54. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anyes.2016.11.001.
Melchers, M., Montag, C., Markett, S., & Reuter, M. (2015). Assessment of empathy via self-report and behavioural paradigms: Data on convergent and discriminant validity. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 20(2), 157–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546805.2014.991781.
Merz, E. C., Tottenham, N., & Noble, K. G. (2018). Socioeconomic status, amygdala volume, and internalizing symptoms in children and adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 47(2), 312–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2017.1326122.
Meyerson, P., & Tryon, W. W. (2003). Validating internet research: A test of the psychometric equivalence of internet and in-person samples. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35(4), 614–620.
Milfont, T. L., & Klein, R. A. (2018). Replication and reproducibility in cross-cultural psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(5), 735–750. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022117744892.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1999.0734.
Moriguchi, Y., Ohnishi, T., Lane, R. D., Maeda, M., Mori, T., Nemoto, K., & Komaki, G. (2006). Impaired selfawareness and theory of mind: An fMRI study of mentalizing in alexithymia. NeuroImage, 32, 1472–1482.
Muller, F., Simion, A., Reviriego, E., Galera, C., Mazaux, J.-M., Barat, M., & Joseph, P. A. (2010). Exploring theory of mind after severe traumatic brain injury. Cortex, 46(9), 1088–1099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2009.08.014.
Nakao, T., Takezawa, T., Miyatani, M., & Ohira, H. (2009). Medial prefrontal cortex and cognitive regulation. Psychologia, 52(2), 93–109. https://doi.org/10.2117/psysoc.2009.93.
Ochsner, K., Bunge, S., Gross, J., & Gabrieli, J. (2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(8), 1215–1229. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892902760807212.
Olderbak, S., Wilhelm, O., Olaru, G., Geiger, M., Brenneman, M. W., & Roberts, R. D. (2015). A psychometric analysis of the reading the mind in the eyes test: Toward a brief form for research and applied settings. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1503. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01503.
Orgeta, V. (2009). Specificity of age differences in emotion regulation. Aging and Mental Health, 13(6), 818–826. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607860902989661.
Petermann, F., & Kullik, A. (2011). Early emotional Dysregulation: An Indicator of mental disorders in children? Childhood and Development, 20, 186–196.
Preckel, F., & Thiemann, H. (2003). Online-versus paper-pencil version of a high potential intelligence test. Swiss Journal of Psychology/Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie/Revue Suisse de Psychologie, 62(2), 131.
Premack, D. y Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1 (4), 515–526. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00076512.
Román, F., Rojas, G., Román, N., Iturry, M., Blanco, R., Leis, A., Bartoloni, L. & Allegri, R.F. (2012). Baremos del Test de la mirada en español en adultos normales de Buenos Aires. Neuropsicología latinoamericana, 4 (3), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.5579/rnl.2012.0108.
Samson, A. C., Huber, O., & Gross, J. J. (2012). Emotion regulation in Asperger’s syndrome and high functioning autism. Emotion, 12(4), 659–665. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027975.
Schipper, M., & Petermann, F. (2013). Relating empathy and emotion regulation: Do deficits in empathy trigger emotion dysregulation? Social Neuroscience, 8 (1),101–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2012.761650.
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Levkovitz, Y. (2007). The neuroanatomical basis of affective mentalizing in schizophrenia: Comparison of patients with schizophrenia and patients with localized prefrontal lesions. Schizophrenia Research, 90(1–3), 274–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2006.09.020.
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Perry, D. (2009). Two systems for empathy: A double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain, 132(3), 617–627. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awn279.
Shamay-Tsoory, S., Harari, H., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Levkovitz, Y. (2010). The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in affective theory of mind deficits in criminal offenders with psychopathic tendencies. Cortex, 46(5), 668–677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2009.04.008.
Sharp, C., Pane, H., Ha, C., Venta, A., Patel, A., Sturek, J., & Fonagy, P. (2011). Theory of mind and emotion regulation difficulties in adolescents with borderline traits. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 50(6), 563–573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2011.01.017.
Smith, A. (2009). The empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism: A theoretical approach to cognitive and emotional empathy in autistic development. The Psychological Record, 59, 489–510.
Spreng, R. N., McKinnon, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B. (2009). The Toronto empathy questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890802484381.
Tabullo, A. J., Jiménez, V. A. N., & García, C. S. (2018). Associations between fiction Reading, trait empathy and theory of mind ability. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 18(3), 357–370.
Tomasello, M. (2000). The cultural origin of human cognition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Underwood, B., & Moore, B. (1982). Perspective-taking and altruism. Psychological Bulletin, 91(1), 143–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.91.1.143.
Waytz, A., & Mitchell, J. (2011). Two mechanisms for simulating other minds: Dissociations between mirroring and self-projection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 197–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411409007.
Westen, D. (1994). Toward an integrative model of affect regulation: Applications to social-psychological research. Journal of Personality, 62(4), 641–667. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1994.tb00312.x.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: Progress, pitfalls and promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15, 675–680.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (Psychology Research Program, Faculty of Humanities and Economic Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, stating the anonymity of the data, the possibility of withdrawing from the study at any time and the exclusive use of results for scientific research.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Meyebovsky, M.M., Tabullo, Á.J. & García, C.S. Associations between Theory of Mind and Emotion Regulation in Argentinean Adults. Curr Psychol 40, 6118–6131 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00539-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00539-9