How universal is automatic belief processing across cultures?

Humans value social information and other individuals are so important that we seemingly automatically encode other peoples’ perspectives and beliefs (Tosi et al., 2020; Schneider et al., 2017) even when the other person is irrelevant to our own task (Sebanz et al., 2003; van der Wel et al., 2014). This automatic belief processing is known as altercentric interference. Recent research proposed that human infants are born with an altercentric bias, meaning that they neglect their own memory for the beliefs of others (e.g., Manea et al., 2023). With a developing self-emergence around two years of age, this altercentric bias gets reduced, but the perspectives of others now interfere with our own perceptions (Yeung et al., 2022). The current study aims to assess whether and to which degree infants and adults in two non-westernized communities (BaYaka and Bandongo, Likouala region, Republic of the Congo) show an altercentric interference when confronted with conflicting beliefs. We will use an established paradigm by Kampis et al., (2021), and compare the developmental trajectory between the Congolese and a westernized sample (Germany, Leipzig).