725404
research-article2017
JCCXXX10.1177/0022022117725404Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyKuntoro et al.
Article
Culture, Parenting, and Children’s
Theory of Mind Development in
Indonesia
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
2017, Vol. 48(9) 1389­–1409
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022117725404
DOI: 10.1177/0022022117725404
journals.sagepub.com/home/jcc
Ike Anggraika Kuntoro1, Candida C. Peterson2,
and Virginia Slaughter2
Abstract
Children’s theory of mind (ToM) unfolds reliably through a sequence of conceptual milestones
including, but not limited to, false belief. Sequences vary with culture, one observed previously
in Western cultures (Australia, the United States) and another in two non-Western cultures,
China and Iran. Two explanations for cross-cultural sequence differences have been suggested:
(a) collectivism versus individualism or (b) authoritarian versus authoritative parenting. However,
neither has been directly tested empirically. Our goal was to do so. Children (n = 122, aged 4-6) in
Indonesia (a collectivist culture) took Wellman and Liu’s ToM Scale. Their mothers completed two
self-report measures evaluating their attitudes to (a) collectivism/individualism and (b) authoritarian
versus authoritative parenting. Indonesian mothers preferred collectivism to individualism and
authoritativeness to authoritarianism. Child ToM was negatively correlated with authoritarianism
but unrelated to other parental attitudes. ToM Scale sequences differed significantly between
Javanese and Sundanese children in Indonesia and by city of residence but not with collectivism/
individualism or parenting style. Javanese children (primarily from Jakarta) matched the Western
ToM Scale sequence, whereas Sundanese children (primarily from Bogor) matched the Chinese/
Iranian sequence. Findings highlight benefits of going beyond broad characterizations to directly
examine how culture, ethnicity, and parenting relate to ToM sequences and development.
Keywords
social cognition, developmental: child/adolescent, theory of mind, parenting, family/child rearing
The child’s acquisition of a theory of mind (ToM) confers an understanding of human behavior
as the product of subjective states of mind such as feelings, desires, and beliefs (Wellman, 2014).
Given ToM’s importance as “one of the quintessential abilities that makes us human” (BaronCohen, 2001, p. 174), considerable research over several decades has explored its acquisition
both within and across cultures. Using the standard false belief test, a widely used “litmus” ToM
indicator (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001), a majority of typically developing children in many
cultures make the transition into consistent false belief test success by age 5 or 6 (Callaghan
1University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
2University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Candida C. Peterson, Professor, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, “Quensland” 4072,
Australia.
Email: candi@psy.uq.edu.au
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Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 48(9)
et al., 2005; Slaughter & Perez-Zapata, 2014) but there are exceptions (e.g., De Gracia, de
Rosnay, & Peterson, 2016; Mayer & Trauble, 2012). Theoretical debates about the maturational
versus sociocultural underpinnings of this ToM transition are illuminated by cross-cultural
research (e.g., Avis & Harris, 1991; Callaghan et al., 2005; Shahaeian, Peterson, Slaughter, &
Wellman, 2011; Wellman, 2014) but the available evidence to date is too limited and inconsistent
to provide a convincing answer to the question of whether ToM’s developmental timetable is
culturally universal (as predicted by biological maturation theories) versus culturally variable (as
expected if social and cultural experiences play a role).
One reason for this uncertainty is methodological. Many past cross-cultural ToM studies have
focused exclusively on false belief as the ToM indicator. Yet, there is “danger in allowing a single
task to become a marker for complex development” (Astington, 2001, p. 687), and recent evidence
suggests false belief mastery is just one milestone in a broader sequence of ToM-based conceptual
developments, extending from infancy through late childhood and encompassing concepts such as
emotion, intention, and desire understanding as well as true and false belief. To capture this conceptual progression, Wellman and Liu (2004) introduced a ToM Scale that identifies a statistically
reliable sequence of conceptual developments obeying the properties of a Guttman scale and identifying a series of conceptual developments that lead up to, and beyond, false belief.
Applied cross-culturally, the ToM Scale therefore allows for a more nuanced and comprehensive testing of hypotheses about ToM development and culture than can be achieved using false
belief tests alone. A key question concerns cultural variations in the order of mastery of successive ToM milestones. In theory, culture might shape not just the timing of false belief mastery but
also the entire developmental process leading up to and beyond it. That is, cultures may vary in
the developmental sequence through which various ToM components are acquired. Empirically,
this was shown in Wellman, Fang, Liu, Zhu, and Liu’s (2006) comparison of Chinese with AngloWestern preschoolers on a developmental five-step ToM Scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004). Although
overall rates of ToM progress were cross-culturally equivalent, sequential ordering of two of the
scale steps differed. Anglo-Western children in the United States and Australia mastered the
“diverse belief” (DB) concept (different people can have different opinions about something)
ahead of the “knowledge access” (KA) concept (seeing leads to knowing). Yet, KA consistently
preceded DB for Chinese preschoolers. As detailed below, a few other studies have also found
this cultural variation. However, ToM sequence research is sparse both in terms of numbers of
studies and also numbers of cultures studied. Furthermore, results of the few extant studies are
mixed (see below). Thus, there is a clear need for further ToM scaling research in other nonWestern cultures. Another even more salient need is for direct investigation of possible factors
that could underpin these cross-cultural sequence variations. Wellman, Fang, Liu, Zhu, and Liu
(2006) speculated that cross-cultural differences in parental child-rearing styles and cultural attitudes might contribute. But neither they nor any of the more recent cross-cultural studies has
directly empirically tested this claim.
Aims of the Present Study
The present study aimed to contribute fresh insight into these questions by (a) gathering further
non-Western cultural data (from Indonesia) on children’s ToM timing and ToM Scale sequencing
using appropriately broad and sensitive ToM measures, (b) extending beyond past studies to
directly examine whether and how parents’ cultural attitudes (e.g., to individualism versus collectivism) and child-rearing styles (e.g., authoritarianism versus authoritativeness) interconnect
with their children’s ToM timing and sequencing, and (c) exploring the possible influences on
child ToM and/or on parents’ cultural and child-rearing attitudes of within-nation microcultural
variations (e.g., family ethnicity). As background, key past findings that helped to inform the
present research design and choice of these questions will be briefly outlined.
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Past Cross-Cultural Data on Non-Western Children’s ToM Scale
Sequences
Following in the wake of Wellman et al.’s (2006) seminal finding (see above), several additional
cross-cultural studies have examined the five-step ToM Scale sequence of children from non-Western
cultures using Guttman and Rasch scaling statistics. Consistently, Anglo-Western preschoolers conform to the “standard” ordering of the five tasks originally observed by Wellman and Liu (2004),
namely (from earliest to latest developing), diverse desire (DD; different people want different things),
DB (different people can hold different opinions), KA (seeing leads to knowing), false belief (FB;
people may act on untrue beliefs), and Hidden Emotion (HE; people may deliberately hide their true
feelings beneath false facial expressions). Most Chinese-speaking children in Beijing (Wellman et al.,
2006) but also in Chongqing (Zhang, Shao, & Zhang, 2016) and Singapore (Peterson & Slaughter,
2017) conform to the alternative sequence DD > KA > DB > FB > HE. Several studies of Farsispeaking preschoolers in Iran (e.g., Shahaeian et al., 2011; Shahaeian et al., 2014) have also identified
reliable conformity to this same alternative sequence.
However, the basis of this intriguing sequence contrast remains perplexing, especially given
findings by Kuntoro, Saraswati, Peterson, and Slaughter (2013) when they administered the ToM
Scale to children in Jakarta, Indonesia. As well as being a non-Western culture (such as Iran and
China), Indonesia is deemed a collectivist culture by Hofstede’s (2015) widely accepted individualism/collectivism classification scheme. Using global economic, political, and sociological
indicators, this scheme places nations at various points along an individualism-versus-collectivism continuum. Australia and the United States both score high in individualism (with ratings of
90 and 91, respectively), whereas China, at the opposite pole, scores “highly collectivist”
(Hofstede, 2015) with an individualism quotient of only 20. Indonesia is more collectivist still,
with an individualism score of just 14. Iran scores intermediately (41 on individualism), though
still deemed by Hofstede to be predominantly collectivist. Thus, if the ToM sequence contrast
had mapped onto the individualism-versus-collectivism dichotomy at the national cultural level,
then the Jakarta children tested by Kuntoro et al. (2013) should have matched the Chinese–
Iranian pattern. But in fact, the empirical data revealed the opposite. The vast majority progressed through all five steps of the ToM Scale in exactly the “standard” order obtained by
Wellman and Liu (2004) in their original study of Anglo-Western preschoolers in the United
States, namely, DD > DB > KA > FB > HE. Guttman Scale analyses (Green, 1956) confirmed the
statistical reliability of this conformity to the so-called “Western” ToM Scale sequence. However,
as this study (the only one to date in Indonesia) only tested Jakarta children, further investigation
is clearly needed. Indonesia is a vastly culturally and ethnically diverse nation with many contrasts among ethnic subgroups that might conceivably affect child ToM. Thus, further study of
Indonesian children is desirable to identify, in a more nuanced way, both the replicability of
Kuntoro et al.’s (2013) results and their likely basis. We will compare children from different
Indonesian ethnic subgroups in terms of ToM sequences and directly assess individual parents’
own attitudes as a possible basis for cross-cultural sequence variations.
Parents’ Attitudes 1: Cross-Cultural Studies of Parental
Individualism/Collectivism
Even in a society that, overall, can be deemed clearly collectivist or individualist at the national
level is likely to include members who differ in the strength of their personal endorsement of
these values or even those whose values are opposite to the prevailing cultural pattern. Yet, in
terms of a child’s ToM development, it is the family’s own particular orientation to collectivism
or individualism rather than orientation of the society at large that is likely to matter. Broad
national classification schemes such as Hofstede’s (2015) do not consider individual attitudes or
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practices. Instead, cultures are classified purely by means of global sociopolitical indicators (e.g.,
the proportion of elders throughout the nation who live in institutions vs. in extended families).
Fortunately, a body of past research outside the domain of child ToM has revealed not only
that there are individual differences in collectivist/individualist attitudes among adults within the
same culture but also that these can reliably be measured (e.g., Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Some
such measures apply specifically to attitudes about parenting (Rudy & Grusec, 2001). A few past
studies have used these self-report questionnaires to compare parents’ attitudes with individualism versus collectivism between societies that differ according to Hofstede’s (2015) scheme. For
example, using a measure of vertical collectivism similar to Triandis and Gelfand’s (1998), Rudy
and Grusec (2006) compared two groups of Canadian mothers. Some (n = 33) were of Western
European cultural background. Others (n = 26) were recent immigrants to Canada from nations
that Hofstede (2015) classified as collectivist, namely, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Mothers’ attitudes on Rudy and Grusec’s (2006) parenting-oriented self-report measure were consistent with
Hofstede’s national classifications. That is, mothers from collectivist nations favored collectivist
parenting (e.g., “a child needs to respect elders’ opinions”) more strongly than European
Canadians. Egyptian Canadian parents (n = 26) also rated collectivism higher than AngloCanadians (Rudy & Grusec, 2001), consistent with Hofstede’s ranking of Egypt as a collectivist
society. Relevant to the present study, there was a trend among Egyptian Canadians (but not
Anglo-Canadians) for higher collectivist parenting endorsement to correlate with preferences for
Baumrind’s (1971) authoritarian style of parenting. Yet, Rau, McHale, and Pearson (2003) found
the opposite for mothers in India. There, parental preferences for collectivism correlated significantly but negatively with authoritarian parenting and positively with authoritativeness.
Clearly further cross-cultural examination of parental self-reported collectivism is needed. It
will be especially interesting and novel to explore the possible links of this variable to child ToM.
Our study will do so using a self-report measure similar to Rudy and Grusec’s (2001) that entails
a direct transposition into the parenting context of each of the items of Triandis and Gelfand’s
(1998) widely used vertical individualism and vertical collectivism questionnaires. Specifically,
we will test, for the first time, whether individual parents’ relative preferences for individualism
versus collectivism relate to their children’s ToM Scale sequences.
Parents’ Attitudes 2: Cross-Cultural Studies of Parental
Authoritarianism/Authoritativeness
We also measured Indonesian parents’ attitudes and behaviors in relation to another important
and cross-culturally variable dimension of parental individual difference, namely, preferences for
an authoritative (or “autonomy”) versus authoritarian (or “conformity”) style of child rearing
(Baumrind, 1971, 1996; Vinden, 2001). In a seminal cross-cultural study, Vinden (2001) not only
compared Korean-American with Anglo-American parents on this dichotomy but also explored
possible links to their children’s pace of mastering the ToM concept of false belief. An authoritarian parenting style, according to Baumrind (1971), places high value on the child’s unquestioning
obedience and strict disciplinary control coupled with close daily monitoring of the child’s
behavior and an emphasis on social conformity, filial piety, and respect for traditional values. The
authoritative parenting style, by contrast, favors open discussion and negotiation between parent
and child within limits dictated and enforced by parents. A key parenting aim is to teach children
to be responsible, independent decision makers.
Vinden (2001) used the term “conformity” for Baumrind’s authoritarian parenting style and
“autonomy” for authoritativeness. Measuring these attitudes with a parent self-report questionnaire (the Parenting Attitude Inventory [PAI]), she found no significant link between children’s
false belief scores and parental authoritarianism versus or authoritativeness either for the sample
as a whole or for the Korean-Americans separately. For the Anglo-Americans, results were less
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clear-cut. A significant negative correlation was suggested between certain aspects of parental
control and some aspects of child false belief understanding but there were methodological problems. For example, the exact number of items that Vinden (2001) used to measure authoritarianism was not stated in the article. Nor were the actual items fully listed or described, limiting
replicability and interpretability of scores. Furthermore, Vinden’s authoritativeness subscale had
very few items (n = 3) as well as poor factorial and face validity (see O’Reilly & Peterson, 2014,
for details). Empirically, at least one previous attempt to employ the scale cross-culturally
(Shahaeian et al., 2014) was unable to proceed owing to very poor internal consistency of the
authoritarian and authoritativeness measures (e.g., Cronbach’s αs of .21 or lower). Strikingly, this
was despite a more-than-adequate sample size (n = 350 Iranian parents).
Nevertheless, despite these specific methodological problems with Vinden’s (2001) original
form of the PAI, her pioneering goal still holds much promise. Baumrind’s two key parenting
constructs warrant evaluation in a cross-culturally sensitive and psychometrically sound manner.
Recently, this was made possible by O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) creation of a modified version of Vinden’s PAI. It not only retained some original items but also added new ones to yield
two balanced and conceptually distinctive six-item scales with sound psychometric properties,
including good internal consistency and face validity. Furthermore, when O’Reilly and Peterson
(2014) used it with a sample of Anglo-Australian parents, they discovered significant negative
correlations between parental authoritarianism and children’s ToM scores (first- and secondorder false belief tests). Although promising, O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) sample was small
and limited to a single Western English-speaking culture. Further investigation is therefore desirable, especially in a non-Western culture.
A Focus on Indonesia
This brief review highlights how limited past evidence is, especially for non-Western cultures,
about connections among variables including (a) child ToM timing, sequencing, and culture; (b)
parental attitudes to individualism/collectivism and child ToM; (c) culture, ToM, and authoritarian versus authoritative parenting. Our study was designed to fill some of these gaps. Among
possible non-Western cultures to investigate, we chose Indonesia for several reasons. First,
Kuntoro et al.’s (2013) intriguing past findings on ToM sequencing in Jakarta are theoretically
important and deserve further study. Given that Kuntoro et al.’s Indonesian study only sampled
parents in Jakarta, it is important now to broaden the scope of investigation of ToM sequencing
to include Indonesian children from other regions and ethnic groups. In fact, Indonesia is a highly
culturally diverse society with more than 200 different ethnicities represented. Typically residing
in different locales, it is possible that children from different Indonesian ethnic subgroups apart
from the Javanese majority in Jakarta might develop ToM differently. Their parents might, likewise, adhere to different cultural and parenting values. Possibly, the myriad Western influences
in Jakarta, the nation’s modern and cosmopolitan capital, are not echoed in other parts of the
country. Alternatively, given that Indonesia as a whole is heavily influenced by the modern environment of globalization and rapid cultural change (Riany, Meredith, & Cuskelly, 2016), a contrasting theoretical possibility is that, irrespective of ethnicity, Indonesian parents as a whole may
be more Western in cultural values and orientations than parents in some other East Asian societies (Riany et al., 2016).
Thus, in exploring Indonesian parents’ preferences for (a) individualism versus collectivism
and (b) authoritarianism versus authoritativeness, we were open to the possibility that there could
be differences within Indonesian society among different residential locales and/or ethnic groups
but not necessarily so. Because no known previous study has explored these parenting variables
in Indonesia, and certainly none has done so in relation to children’s ToM development, we made
no specific directional predictions. Instead, our overarching goal is to explore, for the first time,
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individual Indonesian parents’ relative personal attitudinal preferences for individualism (vs. collectivism) and authoritativeness (vs. authoritarian parenting) and also (for the first time) to gather
empirical data on how Indonesian parents’ beliefs and practices in relation to these attitudinal
dimensions may relate to their children’s rates and sequences of ToM development. These are
highly novel research questions of considerable importance for theories of ToM development
generally. Exploring them in a relatively underinvestigated non-Western culture such as Indonesia
adds special appeal. Yet, even within Western cultures, there has been little research into selfreported parenting attitudes and child ToM.
We make no specific directional predictions because, given the small amount of past
research and its mixed findings, numerous outcomes are possible. For example, authoritarian
parenting might link with children’s slower ToM mastery owing to the relative absence of
questioning, explaining, discussion, and debating of viewpoints between authoritarian parents and their offspring. This lack of exposure to mentalistic conversation could limit children’s understanding of others’ minds, irrespective of cultural background (Harris, 2005).
Alternatively, such a link might apply only in Western individualist cultures such as Australia
or the United States where children’s independent thinking is socially valued and children’s
assertive challenging of adults’ rules and requests is tolerated or even encouraged. As no
known previous study has examined the position of Indonesian parents of young children on
Baumrind’s authoritarian versus authoritative dichotomy, and certainly none has done so in
relation to children’s pace of ToM development, we will explore these issues for the first
time using O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) measure.
The possibility that contrasts in microcultural variables such as ethnicity might interconnect
with Indonesian parenting values and/or child ToM development was suggested indirectly in
earlier research comparing Indonesia’s two most populous ethnic subgroups, the Javanese and
the Sundanese (Darroch, Meyer, & Singarimbun, 1981; Hoffman, 1988). Results revealed
intriguing attitude differences between Javanese as compared with Sundanese parents. The
Javanese emphasized the value of children in terms of their material contributions to household
duties more strongly than the Sundanese. The latter emphasized family harmony and the emotional bonds between children and older relatives. Javanese parents enforced strict disciplinary
rules and expected children’s unquestioning obedience and respectful deference to their elders.
Sundanese parents, by contrast, gained satisfaction through parenthood in emotional and psychological ways. They spoke of giving and receiving love, of appreciating the opportunity to be
involved with their children’s development and of their sheer enjoyment of children’s company
(Darroch et al., 1981). When it came to disciplining and teaching their children, significantly
more Javanese than Sundanese parents ranked the child’s obedience to parental commands as
their top child-rearing priority, whereas significantly more Sundanese than Javanese suggested
reasoning, conciliation, and placed significantly higher values than the Javanese did on their
children’s gaining independent decision-making skills and self-confidence (Hoffman, 1988).
Although not strictly equivalent to Baumrind’s authoritarian versus authoritative parenting
styles, these past findings about Indonesia’s two main ethnic subgroups are suggestive.
Conceivably, there might be differences between Javanese versus Sundanese parents’ child-rearing styles and/or their children’s total ToM scores and/or sequencing of ToM Scale steps. To
examine this, we included the family’s self-reported ethnic identity as a variable, and we recruited
our sample roughly equally from Jakarta (the nation’s cosmopolitan capital with a predominantly
Javanese ethnic population) and from Bogor (a more traditional city with a predominance of
families of Sundanese ethnicity). We predicted that there would be differences between these
cities and ethnic groups in at least some aspects of parental attitudes and/or children’s ToM
development, based on previous findings of the broad contrasts in parenting goals and expectations between Sundanese and Javanese families as outlined above. However, because our specific aims and research questions were highly novel and original, and because no past study has,
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to our knowledge, empirically compared Sundanese and Javanese Indonesian groups on any of
the aspects of parental attitudes or child ToM growth and ToM sequences that we plan to investigate, we had no basis in past research for constructing specific directional hypotheses.
In sum, as explained above, the originality of each of our research aims and strategies motivated our treating each of the empirical questions detailed above as exploratory.
Method
Participants
A sample of 122 Indonesian children (66 boys) with a mean age of 5 years 4 months (range = 48-80
months, SD = 8.52 months) and their mothers took part. They all spoke Bahasa Indonesian at home
either primarily (96%) or in conjunction with a local language (4%). Approximately half (48%) of the
families lived in Jakarta, the national capital and largest city. The remaining 52% lived in Bogor
(52%), a city in West Java that is the nation’s 14th largest. There was no significant difference between
the children from the two cities in age (Ms = 5.34 and 5.36, respectively), t(120) < 1.00, p = .880, or
gender balance, χ2(1) < 1.00, p = .486.
All children were recruited from the local public schools or preschools that they attended. We
placed no ethnic or other constraints on recruitment other than the ethical requirement for parental informed consent. Thus, our sample can be deemed representative of the local population of
each city we sampled from in terms of ethnicity, religion, and so forth. The vast majority (95%)
were Islamic, whereas 5% were Christian. There were 21 only children (17%), 61 with just one
sibling (50%), and 40 (33%) with two siblings or more. All but one child lived in an intact twoparent family. In addition to parents and siblings, many children also had other relatives living
with them at home (e.g., grandparents, aunts, cousins). Thus, the average household size for the
sample as a whole was 4.66 persons (range = 2-9, SD = 1.18).
The children’s parents were well-educated. Mothers averaged 14.95 years of full-time education and fathers 15.16 years. All fathers, and all but one mother, had completed basic high school.
Furthermore, most parents (77% mothers, 79% fathers) had gone beyond senior high school to
complete postsecondary qualifications at universities, technical colleges, or similar advanced educational institutions. Twenty percent of mothers had college diplomas, 51% had bachelor’s
degrees, and 6% had master’s or PhD degrees. Corresponding percentages for fathers were 14%,
54%, and 11%. All fathers were employed. Of mothers, 47% were employed at least part-time,
whereas 52% were full-time parents with no employment outside the home. Information on the
family’s ethnic background was available for 83 children. Of these, 55% were Javanese, 27% were
Sundanese, 7% were Mingangkabau, 5% were Betawi, 4% were Palembang, and 1% each were
Sulawesi or Batak. A majority (61%) of those recruited from Bogor were Sundanese. Conversely,
the majority (64%) from Jakarta were Javanese. These figures are consistent with the proportional
population distribution between these two cities of the Indonesian population as a whole.
Procedures, Measures, and Scoring
All children were tested individually in their native language, Bahasa Indonesian, by a local
native speaker who was an experienced researcher. Children’s ToM understanding was assessed
using a ToM Scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004). Given that children’s mean age was above 5 years
(the nearly universal age cutoff for mastery of false belief mastery according to Callaghan
et al.,2005), they also each received an Advanced ToM score (see below). In addition, one of the
child’s parents (the mother in all but one case: that is, for 99% of the sample) completed (a) a
measure of preference for individualist versus collectivist parenting attitudes based on Triandis
and Gelfand’s (1998) and very similar to Rudy and Grusec’s (2001) and (b) a published parenting
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scale of preference for authoritarian versus authoritative child socialization taken verbatim from
O’Reilly and Peterson (2014). They also supplied basic demographic information on family
background, including home language and ethnic identification. Measures were as follows:
ToM Scale. Each child took the full five-step ToM Scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004) with all tasks
presented and scored exactly as described by Peterson, Wellman, and Liu (2005). All tasks, stimuli, and procedures closely mirrored the originals, apart from the minor changes of stimulus
objects for the sake of local familiarity (e.g., we replaced the Band-Aid box with a locally familiar crayons box). In developing the tasks originally, Wellman and Liu (2004) had carefully
matched procedures, stimuli, and formats across tasks. They demonstrated equivalence of formats (e.g., picture stories vs. doll scenarios) and task orderings and showed that differential
executive, memory, or linguistic demands could not account for relative task difficulty. We copied their procedures exactly, including scoring rules (see details in Peterson et al., 2005). Each
task had a focal ToM test question and one or more comprehension control questions. We required
full accuracy on control as well as test questions to pass a task.
Based on Wellman’s recent publications involving the ToM Scale (e.g., Peterson et al.,
2005; Peterson, Wellman, & Slaughter, 2012; Shahaeian et al., 2011), we adopted their recommendation for an additional control question for the HE task so as to guard against spuriously crediting noncomprehending children with a pass based only on their picture pointing
responses alone. Because, the supposedly neutral face picture we used (an exact duplicate of
Wellman & Liu’s, 2004) is sometimes interpreted by children as showing anger rather than an
absence of emotion, it was possible that, even without understanding emotion concealment,
children might point at this picture in response to the test question for the wrong reason. As
documented by Shahaeian et al. (2011), children often select this picture erroneously with the
intent to ascribe negative emotion (anger at being teased) rather than intent to hide negative
feelings. The new control question (“How does he try to make his face look?”) required a
verbal justification for the picture choice and hence overcame this problem. To pass it, children had to explain the boy’s intention either to mask his true emotion (e.g., “So they don’t
see he’s sad”) or to note the discrepancy between facial expression and true emotion (e.g., “To
hide his feelings” or “To pretend he is happy”).
A total ToM Scale score ranging from 0 to 5 was computed as the sum of scale tasks that the
child passed by answering all test and control questions correctly.
Advanced ToM. Past studies (O’Reilly & Peterson, 2014; Vinden, 2001) of ToM’s links to parents’
endorsement of authoritarian versus authoritative parenting styles have been based specifically
on false belief tests rather than the ToM Scale or other multifaceted ToM measures. Theoretically,
it is possible that the links of ToM to parenting style suggested by these studies might apply quite
specifically to false belief. Another possibility is that more complex and developmentally
advanced ToM concepts might be shaped in different ways by parenting styles than the simpler
ones comprising early steps in the ToM Scale. A final consideration was the relatively advanced
mean age of our sample, likely to limit individual variability on the initial (pre–false belief) three
steps of Wellman and Liu’s (2004) ToM Scale. Therefore, in addition to ToM Scale totals, we also
separately computed an Advanced ToM total for each child. This was the sum of the two most
difficult ToM Scale items, FB (false belief) plus HE. Totals could (and did) range from 0 to 2.
Parents’ Attitudes 1: Collectivism versus individualism. Similar to Rudy and Grusec (2001), we measured parents’ preferences for collectivism and individualism with a parent-oriented adaptation
of Triandis and Gelfand’s (1998) vertical individualism and vertical collectivism scales for nonparental adults. Each of the eight items on our version was a direct transposition into the parenting context of one of Triandis and Gelfand’s (1998) four vertical individualism and four vertical
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collectivism items. Responses used the same 5-point scale as for the PAI’s Conformity and
Autonomy scales (5 = strongly agree, 4 = somewhat agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 2 =
somewhat disagree, 1 = strongly disagree). The four individualism items were (a) competition is
important for my children, (b) I want my children win over their peers, (c) it is important that my
children perform better than other children, and (d) I feel upset when other children do better than
my children. We assessed the internal consistency by computing Cronbach’s alpha. For the present sample, the individualism alpha was a satisfactory α = .67. The four collectivism items were
(a) my children must attend every family gathering; (b) I would like my children to always share
their toys with their family, siblings, and peers; (c) I want my children live in harmony and be
willing to make sacrifices for their siblings and our family; and (d) It is important that my child
respects the decisions made by the family. With these four items, the alpha for collectivism was
low (.48). However, by dropping the first item (about attending family gatherings), the internal
consistency improved. The new α = .60 testified to adequate internal consistency. Thus, we used
this revised three-item measure for all further statistical analyses.
Parents’ Attitudes 2: Authoritarianism versus authoritativeness. To measure authoritarian versus
authoritative parenting attitudes, we used O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) adaptation of Vinden’s
(2001) PAI. As noted above, O’Reilly and Peterson’s version overcame possible methodological
limitations of the original version. An additional strength was that it consisted of two subscales
each with exactly the same number of items (six items each), making it possible to directly
compare each parent’s relative preference for the two styles. Each scale item consisted of a
statement that the parent rated on the following 5-point response scale: 5 = strongly agree, 4 =
somewhat agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree. The “Conformity” subscale (six items) assessed Baumrind’s (1971, 1996) authoritarian
parenting style. In full, it had the following items: (a) My child should never tell me I am wrong;
(b) I don’t think my child needs to know why I’m telling him or her to do something; (c) when
my child misbehaves in public, I worry that others will think I am not a good parent; (d) children
should do as they are told without questioning their parents; (e) children should never question
teachers’ rules; (f) I think my child is too young to make decisions by him[her]self about things
like what clothes to wear. To prevent response sets, these items were interspersed with items
from the other subscale, “Autonomy.” It was also based on Vinden (2001) but with the addition
of three new items, reflected attitudes similar to Baumrind’s authoritative parenting. In full, the
“Autonomy” subscale was (a) I like to see a child have opinions and express them, even to an
adult; (b) children should be allowed to question the authority of their parents; (c) I let my child
ask me why I am telling him or her to do something; (d) I don’t mind if my child is looked on
as different from others; (e) I like my child to stand up for his or her opinions even if it means
disagreeing with me; and (f) children should think for themselves and not be afraid to speak
their minds. We assessed the internal consistency of each subscale by computing Cronbach’s
alpha. For the present sample, conformity’s alpha was .75 and autonomy’s was .78, both testifying to sound internal consistency.
Results
Preliminary Analyses
Preliminary gender comparisons showed that there were no significant boy–girl differences for
any key variable, all ts ≤ 1.43, all ps ≥ .157. Thus, genders were combined for all remaining
analyses. Similarly, there were no effects of the child’s total number of siblings (0, 1, 2, or 3+) on
any focal variable, all Fs ≤ 1.51, all ps ≥ .216. Thus, the sibling variable was, likewise, not considered further in any remaining statistical analyses.
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Parenting Attitudes
Individualism versus collectivism. For the sample as a whole, the mean score per item for parents’
individualism was 3.49 (SD = 0.66) and for collectivism was 4.08 (SD = 2.22). A matched-pairs
t test showed that these Indonesian parents rated collectivism significantly higher than individualism, t(121) = 3.71, p < .001, consistent with Hofstede’s (2015) categorization of Indonesia as a
collectivist society. However, there was variability among individual Indonesian families. Item
means for individualism ranged from a low of 2.00 (mild disagreement with all four items) to a
high of 4.75 (strong agreement with all four items). Similarly, the collectivism item means ranged
from a low of 1.00 (complete disagreement with all three items) to a high of 5.00 (complete
agreement with all three items). We also assigned each mother a difference score that was her
collectivism item mean minus her individualism item mean. This score enabled comparison of
each parent’s relative degree of preference for collectivism over individualism, or the extent to
which they distinguished sharply versus only mildly between the two types of attitude. There
were 29 parents (24% of the sample) with negative difference scores reflecting their stronger
preference for individualism than collectivism. There were no significant differences between
parents living in Bogor versus Jakarta in either collectivism, t < 1.00, p = .536, or individualism,
t (120) = 1.82, p = .071.
Authoritarianism versus authoritativeness. For the sample as a whole, the mean conformity
(authoritarianism) total score was 12.80 (SD = 3.26) and the mean score per conformity item
was 2.13 (SD = 0.54). This corresponds, for the sample as a whole, to mild disagreement
(somewhat disagree = 2) with all items. Autonomy (or authoritative parenting), however, had
a mean total of 23.68 (SD = 3.12) and a mean score per item of 3.96 (SD = 0.58). This
equates to mild agreement (somewhat agree = 4) with each autonomy item. There were no
significant differences on either the Conformity scale or the Autonomy scale between parents living in Bogor versus Jakarta, both ts < 1.00, both ps > .600. Similarly, the 27 mothers
who were Sundanese did not differ from the 39 who were Javanese on either conformity,
t(64) = 1.19, p = .237, or autonomy, t(64) < 1.00, p = .517. A t test for matched pairs showed
that these Indonesian mothers overall gave significantly higher ratings to autonomy than to
conformity, t(121) = 23.84, p < .001, indicating they were more inclined to authoritatively
encourage their children’s confident expression of independent viewpoints (via autonomy)
than to use strict authoritarian control to compel unquestioning obedience to adult authority
(via conformity). Although similar to O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) findings for AngloAustralian families of equivalent socioeconomic status (SES) and education, this result is
inconsistent with the stereotype that collectivist cultures uniformly endorse parental authoritarianism rather than authoritativeness.
We also assigned each mother a difference score that was her autonomy total minus her conformity total. This score reflected her relative preference for authoritative parenting over
authoritarianism. The direction of the difference was strikingly consistent across participants. A
total of 119 (98%) of these 122 Indonesian parents accorded a higher overall preference to
autonomy than to conformity, as reflected in a positive difference score. Only two parents preferred conformity. This indicates that these well-educated Indonesian parents were consistently
supportive of Baumrind’s (1996) authoritative parenting and rejecting of strict authoritarian
control. Nevertheless, despite this overall preference for authoritativeness, there were some
individual differences. Mean scores per item ranged from 1.00 (the lowest score possible:
reflecting the mother’s strong disagreement with every item) to a high of 3.83 (roughly equivalent to mild agreement with every item) for conformity. Similarly, autonomy item means ranged
from low of 1.83 (predominant disagreement) to 5.00 (the highest score possible: reflecting
complete agreement with all items).
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Kuntoro et al.
Table 1. Partial Correlations (Child Age Controlled) Between Indonesian Mothers’ Parenting Attitudes,
Background Variables, and Child ToM Scores.
Measures
Conf
Aut
Mother’s conformity (Conf)
Mother’s autonomy (Aut)
Aut – Conf difference
Mother’s individualism (Indiv)
Mother’s collectivism (Collect)
Collect – Indiv difference
Child ToM Scale
—
–.24**
—
Aut – Conf
difference
.80***
.78***
—
Indiv
Collect
–.37***
–.02
.34***
—
–.01
.39***
.30**
.10
—
Collect – Indiv
difference
Child ToM
Scale
Child advanced
ToM
.21**
.26**
–.04
–.74***
.71***
—
–.17†
.06
.15
.002
–.01
.02
—
–.27**
.09
.23**
.02
.06
.05
.75***
Note. ToM = theory of mind.
†p < .07. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
Interconnections Among Parental Attitudes Between Attitudes and Child ToM
We also explored whether (a) individual Indonesian parents’ attitudes to authoritative versus
authoritarian parenting related to their preferences for individualism versus collectivism and (b)
there were any links between any of these parental attitudes and children’s ToM. We used partial
correlation (with the child’s age statistically controlled) for all these analyses to avoid the potential of an age confound, based on O’Reilly and Peterson’s (2014) reasoning. (They argued that
the known close links of ToM with child age, coupled with the likelihood of possible changes in
parents’ child-rearing attitudes as their children progress from age 3 to age 6, advocated such
controls.) Table 1 shows the resulting partial correlation coefficients and significance levels.
Conformity was significantly negatively correlated with both autonomy (in line with Baumrind’s
theory that most parents adopt either an authoritative or an authoritarian stance, not both) and
also with the cultural attitude of individualism. By contrast, autonomy was positively correlated
with a cultural attitude preference for collectivism, in line with a past study by Rau et al. (2003)
for mothers in India, but not with Rudy and Grusec’s (2001) opposite finding for Egyptian immigrant parents in Canada.
Child ToM Scale totals (M = 2.74, SD = 1.11) correlated marginally (p = .067) and negatively
(see Table 1) with parental conformity scores. Moreover, there was a strongly significant negative partial correlation (p = .003; see Table 1) between parental conformity and the child’s
Advanced ToM score (M = 0.40, SD = 0.64). In other words, even with child age controlled,
children of authoritarian Indonesian mothers were slower to develop sophisticated ToM concepts
than those whose mothers most strongly rejected this style of parenting. Mothers’ years of education and employment status (employed at least part-time = 1, full-time housewife = 0) were both
significant correlates of conformity scores but unrelated to the other three parental attitude
dimensions. Employed mothers were more authoritarian than full-time housewives and highly
educated mothers were both less authoritarian and less likely to be employed.
In other words, the strength of a mother’s rejection of an authoritarian parenting style directly
predicted her child’s rapid mastery of advanced ToM concepts. Similarly, the parent’s difference
score (autonomy minus conformity) correlated significantly with the child’s Advanced ToM, but
not with the total on the ToM Scale, r(120) = .13, p = .163. None of the other parental attitude
variables (namely, parental autonomy scores, individualism scores, collectivism scores, or cultural attitude difference scores [collectivism minus individualism]) displayed any significant correlations with children’s ToM Scale total (all ps ≥ .441) or with Advanced ToM (all ps ≥ .307).
We also computed two hierarchical multiple regression analyses (one predicting ToM Scale totals
and the other Advanced ToM). For the first regression, with ToM Scale total as the dependent variable (DV), the control variables of child age, mother’s education, mother’s ethnicity (dummy-coded
1 = Javanese, 2 = Sundanese or other), and mother’s employment status were entered at Step 1. The
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Table 2. Numbers (and Percent) of Children in Bogor, Jakarta, and the Full Indonesian Sample Passing
Each ToM Scale Task With Mean ToM Scale Total Scores.
Jakarta
Bogor
Total sample
DD
DB
KA
FB
HE
Mean total ToM
Scale score (SD)
58 (98%)
50 (79%)
108 (88%)
57 (97%)
35 (56%)
92 (75%)
39 (66%)
46 (73%)
85 (70%)
19 (32%)
14 (22%)
33 (27%)
11 (19%)
5 (8%)
16 (13%)
3.14 (1.06)
2.41 (1.03)
2.74 (1.11)
Note. ToM = theory of mind; DD = diverse desire; DB = diverse belief; KA = knowledge access; FB = false belief;
HE = hidden emotion.
result was a significant regression equation, F(change) = 4.49, p = .003. But beta weights showed
that child age was the only significant predictor (β = .35, p = .001). At Step 2, the addition of the four
parental attitude dimensions (conformity, autonomy, collectivism, individualism) resulted in no statistically significant increment in the prediction, F(change) = 1.89, p = .122. However, age (p < .001)
remained significant in the final model and parental conformity (authoritarianism) was a marginally
significant negative predictor (β = –.21, p = .057), consistent with the partial correlations.
For the second hierarchical multiple regression (with the child’s Advanced ToM score as the
DV), the control variables of child age, mother’s education, mother’s ethnicity (dummy-coded 1
= Javanese, 2 = Sundanese or other), and mother’s employment status were entered at Step 1. The
results at the end of this step were significant with child age as the only independently significant
predictor, just as in the previous regression. With the addition of the four parental attitude dimensions (conformity, autonomy, collectivism, individualism) at Step 2, there was a statistically significant increment in the prediction of Advanced ToM, F(change) = 3.97, p = .006. Inspection of
beta weights showed that only two predictor variables were significant. Both child age (β = .37,
p < .001) and the parental conformity score (β = .40, p < .001) were significant independent predictors of the child’s Advanced ToM in the final model.
In summary, Indonesian mothers who strongly endorsed authoritarian child rearing (via the
PAI’s conformity dimension) were likely to have offspring who were slower than others to grasp
ToM, especially the more advanced ToM Scale concepts of false belief and deliberate emotional
concealment. This finding for Indonesia echoes a similarly significant negative correlation
between children’s first-order and advanced false belief scores that had previously been observed
among Western parents (both Anglo-Australians, O’Reilly and Peterson, 2014; and AngloAmericans, Vinden, 2001). By contrast, Vinden (2001) found no significant associations between
either type of parenting and children’s false belief scores for Korean- Americans.
ToM Growth and ToM Scale Sequences
To examine the Indonesian children’s ToM development in more detail, we examined each individual child’s sequential pattern of performance across all five developmentally ordered ToM
Scale concepts. Table 2 shows the results. Based on previous research in Western and non-Western cultures (e.g., Wellman et al., 2006), two distinct ToM Scale sequences were of special interest. The first was the original Wellman and Liu (2004) sequence (DD > DB > KA > FB > HE)
characterizing the vast majority of children in Western cultures such as the United States and
Australia. The second was the Chinese/Iranian sequence, DD > KA > DB > FB > HE, confirmed
in multiple studies of children from these two populations (e.g., Peterson & Slaughter, 2017). We
predicted that the former sequence would apply at least for the Jakarta subgroup in our sample,
based on Kuntoro et al.’s previous Jakarta study. However, it was also possible that the other
sequence might apply to at least some children, especially in the subgroup who lived in Bogor.
Kuntoro et al.
1401
These children could conceivably differ from their Jakarta peers for reasons outlined in the
Introduction. Indeed, another possibility was that neither sequence would apply consistently
enough to significantly conform to a perfectly ordered Guttman scale.
Table 2 summarizes individual children’s patterns of passing versus failing each separate ToM
Scale task. We show these for the sample as a whole and also separately (based on the previously
noted theoretical considerations and preliminary inspection of the data) for children in Bogor
versus children in Jakarta. In terms of overall ToM Scale totals (also shown in Table 2), a preliminary comparison between Bogor and Jakarta revealed a significant difference, t(120) = 3.87, p <
.001. On closer inspection via 2 × 2 chi-square tests (for each scale task separately), this was
found to be due exclusively to contrasts between Bogor and Jakarta on the two normatively earliest tasks, DD (p = .001) and DB (p < .001). There were no significant differences between children in the two cities on KA, (p = .406), or FB (p = .215), or HE (p = .080). The Advanced ToM
Scale total, likewise, did not differ for the children in the two cities, t(120) = 1.80, p = .074.
Close inspection of Table 2 reveals that the Jakarta group’s success on the DB task was surprisingly high (97%) not just compared with the Bogor subgroup but also compared with most
past studies of children of similar age in varied cultures. For example, significantly fewer (84%)
of the U.S. preschoolers in Wellman and Liu’s (2004) original ToM Scale study passed DB than
of these Jakarta children, χ2(1) = 5.61, p = .018. Similarly, Kuntoro et al. (2013) reported significantly lower success (only 85%) on DB, χ2(1) = 4.16, p = .042, for a closely comparable group
of Bahasa Indonesian–speaking Jakarta preschoolers of similar age, SES, and parental education
to the present Jakarta subsample. The middle-class Anglo-Australian group in Kuntoro et al.’s
study also achieved significantly lower (82%) DB success than the present Jakarta subgroup,
χ2(1) = 5.37, p = .020. The other notable feature of the Jakarta group’s performance (see Table 2)
was their substantially greater success on DB than on KA (97% vs. 66%). Such a pattern, although
not definitive without considering the other three ToM Scale tasks, is in line with the original
Wellman and Liu (2004) “Western” scale sequence.
By contrast, the Bogor subgroup performed substantially better on KA (73% pass) than on DB
(56% pass), suggestive of conformity to the alternative Chinese/Iranian ToM Scale sequence.
Furthermore, despite scoring lower on DB than their peers in Jakarta, the Bogor children were
doing well even on DB relative to comparable samples in other studies. In fact, on both DB and
KA, the success of the Bogor subgroup equaled that of the Beijing children of similar age who
were found by Wellman et al. (2006) to conform to this alternative ToM Scale sequence, χ2(1) =
3.28, p = .070, for DB, and χ2 < 1.00, p = .359, for KA. Thus, a more systematic exploration of
Bogor children’s conformity to this alternative sequence was warranted.
To examine this, we selected just those children from the full sample who passed either the KA
task or the DB task but not both. There were 53 such children, 33 in Bogor and 20 in Jakarta. In
Jakarta, 19 of these 20 (95%) passed DB but failed KA, consistent with the Western ToM Scale
sequence but not the Chinese/Iranian one. In Bogor, the pattern was reversed: 22 of the 33 (67%)
who passed just one of the two tasks passed KA only, consistent with the Chinese/Iranian sequence
but inconsistent with the Western one. We tested the statistical significance of this evident contrast
between cities in sequence conformity patterns using chi-square. The difference was highly statistically significant, χ2(1) = 19.28, p < .001. Of the 53 children who matched only one of the
sequence-differentiating patterns, most in Bogor conformed only to the alternative (Chinese/
Iranian) ToM Scale sequence, whereas in Jakarta most conformed only to the Western sequence.
Next, using Guttman scaling statistics, we tested the full Jakarta sample’s conformity to all the
five steps of this Western ToM Scale sequence (DD > DB > KA > FB > HE), using Green’s
(1956) methods. These scaling statistics are conservative. For statistical significance, observed
sequences must perfectly match theoretically predicted ones at a level beyond chance. In other
words, taking tasks in order from predicted easiest to predicted hardest, children cannot pass any
higher scale step once their first failure has occurred, or else their sequences are scale
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inconsistent. Green’s (1956) summary statistic, called coefficient of reproducibility (or Rep),
evaluates how closely an observed data set conforms to this theoretically prescribed pattern. Rep
values of .90 or higher are considered statistically significant. In fact, Rep for the Jakarta subgroup to the original (U.S./Australian) sequence was a highly significant .98.
Also using Guttman scaling, we tested the Bogor children’s conformity to the alternative
Chinese/Iranian ToM Scale sequence (DD > KA > DB > FB > HE). Green’s Rep coefficient for
perfect conformity to this alternative sequence was a statistically significant .91. In other
words, even though Indonesian children in Bogor and Jakarta each conformed reliably to one
of the culturally distinct ToM Scale sequence across all its five steps, the particular developmental sequences they each conformed to differed between cities. Bogor children, unlike their
Jakarta counterparts, reliably understood the knowledge–ignorance contrast before achieving
an understanding of opinion diversity, conforming to a pattern previously found only for children in China and Iran.
Although we had anticipated (based on limited previous research outlined in the Introduction)
that parenting attitudes might differ between our Bogor and Jakarta samples, this proved not to
be the case. Yet, somewhat unexpectedly, children in the two cities were found to differ significantly in their developmental sequences on the ToM Scale. To explore the possible basis for this
novel finding more fully, we again looked just at the 53 children who passed either KA or DB but
not both. Our interest was in other background variables besides city of residence that might
align with this contrast. Only one such difference emerged: family ethnicity. Most (79%) of the
Javanese children were DB-only passers, whereas Sundanese children (together with the very
small minority of other ethnicities) were just as likely to be KA-only passers (51%) as DB-only
passers (49%), a difference that was marginally statistically significant, χ2(1) = 3.74, p = .053.
To more fully examine these ToM Scale sequencing contrasts between Bogor and Jakarta,
Guttman scaling statistics were employed. Guttman Scale sequences are precise and conservative
measures, requiring perfect conformity to the prescribed task order across steps in the scale. To
test our observed five-step ToM Scale sequences statistically, we used Green’s (1956) methods.
For these analyses, we first studied the full sample of 122 Javanese and Sundanese children. Of
these, 39 Javanese (31 living in Jakarta and eight in Bogor) and 27 were Sundanese (20 living in
Bogor and seven in Jakarta). Numbers of other ethnicities were too small to permit statistical
comparison. Looking first at the ToM sequences for the Javanese children, our results revealed
conformity to the U.S./Australian scale sequence. In fact, 29 of these 39 Javanese children (74%)
displayed response patterns that conformed perfectly to this original sequence across all its five
steps. Using Green’s (1956) methods, the resulting Rep coefficient was a highly significant .98,
testifying to reliable conformity to this so-called Western ToM Scale ordering.
Conversely, 17 of the 27 Sundanese children (63%) conformed perfectly to the alternative
(Chinese Iranian) sequence across all its five steps. Using Green’s methods, a statistically significant Rep = .91 emerged for their conformity to a perfectly ordered Guttman Scale sequence. In
other words, the Sundanese children in our sample developed their understanding of ToM in a
different way from their Javanese counterparts. Furthermore, the order for the Sundanese children was exactly that of the alternative ToM Scale sequence, DD > KA > DB > FB > HE, previously only observed for Chinese and Iranian children.
Table 3 explores whether parental attitudinal variables and other family factors are related to
ToM Scale sequencing contrasts. For these analyses (by t test), we looked only at the 53 children
who passed either the DB task or the KA task but not both. (Note that unlike children who have
already mastered both these concepts, or not yet mastered either, these 53 children’s performance
uniquely epitomizes only one of the two contrasting sequential orders of ToM growth.) We used
t tests to compare KA-only passers (epitomizing the Chinese/Iranian sequence) with DB-only
passers (epitomizing the Western sequence). As Table 3 shows, there were no significant differences in parental conformity, autonomy, individualism, or collectivism between the children
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Kuntoro et al.
Table 3. Mean Parental Attitude Scores and Background Variables for the 53 Indonesian Children
Conforming Uniquely Either to the Chinese/Iranian or the Anglo-Western ToM Scale Sequence.
Mother’s conformity (authoritarianism)
Mother’s autonomy (authoritativeness)
Mother’s individualism
Mother’s collectivism
Mother’s education (years)
Mother employed (1 = yes, 2 = no)
Mother’s ethnic category (1 = Javanese,
2 = Sundanese or Other)
Anglo-Western
sequence (n = 30)
Chinese Iranian
sequence (n = 23)
Group difference
(p value)
2.17 (0.54)
3.94 (0.54)
3.62 (0.60)
4.17 (0.52)
14.60 (2.2.4)
1.55 (0.51)
1.63 (0.49)
2.16 (0.68)
3.96 (0.58)
3.42 (0.71)
4.14 (0.86)
14.43 (2.13)
1.64 (0.49)
1.87 (0.34)
.966, ns
.938, ns
.269, ns
.909, ns
.165, ns
.552, ns
.045*
Note. Passed either KA or DB but not both. ToM = theory of mind; KA = knowledge access; DB = diverse belief.
*p < .05.
adhering to the original (Western) sequence versus the Chinese/Iranian one. Mother’s ethnicity
was the only significant contrast, in line with the Guttman scaling analyses for the full sample, as
described earlier.
Discussion
This study’s exploration of parenting attitudes and ToM development for Indonesian children
revealed a number of novel and intriguing findings. First, when it came to parents’ child-rearing
and cultural attitudes, several of our results were unexpected. In terms of past suggestions that
parents in collectivist cultures consistently favor authoritarianism (e.g., Rudy & Grusec, 2001),
our data indicate this view may be oversimplified. Using Baumrind’s (1971, 1996) widely studied
dichotomy between authoritative versus authoritarian parenting, we found a clear preference for
authoritativeness (a democratic style allowing for children’s discussion and input into family
rules). Despite Indonesia being a strongly collectivist society (Hofstede, 2015) and despite former
suggestions that cultural collectivism aligns itself with authoritarian parenting’s emphasis on child
compliance and firm disciplinary control (Rudy & Grusec, 2001), we found authoritarianism was
not a popular choice for Indonesian parents. Only a tiny minority (2%) gave higher preference
ratings to authoritarianism than to authoritativeness. Second, for the first time in a non-Western
cultural context, we discovered a clearly significant link between authoritarian parenting and children’s slower rates of ToM development. Third, despite a significant preference for collectivism
over individualism by the Indonesian parents in our sample, this variable was unrelated to child
ToM. Fourth, in terms of ToM Scale sequences we found clear differences within Indonesian society between children of Javanese ethnicity growing up in Jakarta and children of Sundanese ethnicity growing up in Bogor. Each of these issues warrants a more in-depth examination.
Authoritarian Versus Authoritative Parenting
Despite this overall preference for authoritativeness, there were clear individual differences
among Indonesian parents in the strength of their endorsement of the alternative authoritarian (or
conformity) parenting style. Some parents disagreed (at least mildly) with all six conformity
items whereas others agreed (at least mildly) with most of them. Examining these variations in
parental attitudes in relation to child ToM, we found significant associations. Even after controlling for the child’s age, offspring of parents with more authoritarian attitudes did poorly on
advanced ToM concepts. No associations between child ToM and authoritative parenting
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emerged, perhaps because all the Indonesian parents in our sample were near ceiling in their
approval for this parenting style. Although requiring replication with a larger sample and in other
non-Western cultures, the authoritarianism–ToM link has theoretical plausibility. Authoritarian
parents place high value on their children’s unquestioning obedience. Verbal give-and-take
between parent and child is discouraged, especially in disciplinary contexts (Baumrind, 1971).
Thus, irrespective of culture, children of authoritarian parents are likely to gain less exposure
than authoritative parents’ offspring to conversations about others’ states of mind. Yet, mentalistic parent–child conversations, including talk about how victims of misbehavior feel, are known
positive ToM correlates, at least for children in Western English-speaking cultures (e.g., Harris,
2005; Ruffman et al., 2002). Further study of parent–child talk in non-Western cultures, ideally
using direct observational recordings, is now needed to further validate and clarify the basis for
the link suggested by our data.
Individualism Versus Collectivism
Similarly, although cultural collectivism was generally preferred to individualism by Indonesian
parents, children’s ToM scores were unrelated to the mother’s strength of preference for these
cultural attitudes. Furthermore, this lack of correlation applied both using raw scores and using an
attitude difference score for each mother. Of course, any study has limitations, and given that ours
is the first to examine child ToM in relation to self-reported parental collectivism/individualism in
a non-Western culture, further follow-up is now needed. Even though our sample was relatively
large for a study requiring individual test administration and testing of young children, our total
sample of 122 parents and their 122 children may not have supplied sufficient power to detect
weak but consistent links of parental attitudes with child ToM. In addition, our measures of parents’ individualism/collectivism, although based closely on those of past studies, each contained
only a small number of items. Future studies could profitably expand and further validate the
measurement of parental cultural attitudes. Direct observation of parenting behavior in relation to
this cultural attitude dichotomy is also recommended. Studies of this nature, conducted with larger
samples of parents in varied cultures, are clearly needed to confirm our suggestive results.
ToM Scale Sequences
In addition to examining child ToM in relation to parenting attitudes and child-rearing styles, our
study’s other main focus was on the sequence of ToM Scale steps through which Indonesian
children progress in their development of a mature understanding of others’ minds. Here, too, our
findings raised new questions warranting further research. In a previous study of Indonesian
children in Jakarta, Kuntoro et al. (2013) discovered statistically significant conformity to a
Western ToM Scale sequence rather than a Chinese/Iranian one. For the subset of the present
sample who lived in Jakarta, our findings replicated Kuntoro et al.’s. These 59 Jakarta children
conformed reliably to the Anglo-Western ToM sequence but not the Chinese/Iranian one.
Intriguingly, however, findings for the remaining children in our sample who lived in Bogor
were strikingly different. Despite the fact that the performance of the Bogor children on the ToM
Scale was no less reliably scale consistent than the Jakarta group’s, the particular scale sequence
to which the Bogor children conformed was the alternative Chinese/Iranian one. In other words,
Indonesian children in Bogor (like their peers in China and Iran) first came to understand the
conditions for acquiring knowledge, and only later achieved the realization that different people
can have different opinions and beliefs. How is this ToM sequence contrast between two subgroups of Indonesian children to be explained?
One likely contributing factor is the child’s ethnicity. Indonesia is comprised of many distinct
ethnic subgroups each typically maintaining their own local traditions and local languages
Kuntoro et al.
1405
(alongside fluency in the official national language, Bahasa Indonesian). Thus, it is not surprising
that past studies have observed differences between Javanese versus Sundanese Indonesian families. This has been true, as noted earlier, of differences in parents’ attitudes and values for child
rearing and also in differences in parental behavior (Darroch et al., 1981; Hoffman, 1988). In our
sample, the ethnic composition of groups recruited from Bogor versus Jakarta typified the ethnic
composition and geographic distribution of the Indonesian population as a whole. Most of the
Sundanese families in our sample (as in the overall Indonesian population) lived in Bogor,
whereas the majority we recruited from Jakarta were Javanese, just as the Jakarta population as
a whole. Because the Javanese and the Sundanese are the two most populous ethnic groups in
Indonesia, and owing to the very small numbers of other ethnicities in our sample, we selected
just these two ethnic groups (irrespective of city of residence) and performed Guttman analyses
to assess scale conformity of their respective ToM sequences. Results showed that with the
child’s ethnicity as the differentiating variable, the same significant sequence contrast as with
city of residence emerged. Indonesian children of Javanese ethnicity conformed reliably to the
original (Anglo-Western) ordering of ToM Scale tasks. However, those of Sundanese ethnicity
reliably matched the alternative Chinese Iranian sequence.
Further investigation is clearly needed to pinpoint precise causal factors underpinning these
divergences in Indonesian children’s ToM sequences as a function of their city of residence and/
or their family’s ethnicity. In advance of such data, several candidate hypotheses suggest themselves. The first is based on the differences in parental attitudes and values that were discovered
between Sundanese versus Javanese families in research conducted several decades ago. Darroch
et al. (1981) found that Javanese parents placed primary emphasis on children’s material contributions to the family unit, whereas Sundanese parents valued children more for their emotional
inputs into the quality and meaning of family relationships together with the pleasures to be
gained from watching the younger generation develop and sharing their company. Similarly,
Hoffman (1988) found that between one third and one half of the Sundanese parents she studied
ranked “fun, stimulation, affection and expansion of self” as their top reasons for having children. The Javanese parents in her study ranked all these values substantially lower than their
Sundanese peers. Conversely, many more Javanese mothers (94%) than in any other ethnic group
(including Sundanese Indonesian mothers but also mothers in Turkey, the Philippines, Taiwan,
and the United States) named “economic utility” as the primary advantage of having children.
Javanese mothers’ cultural uniqueness in this respect is striking.
Possibly attitudinal differences such as these between Sundanese and Javanese subgroups in
our sample could be relevant to our findings. It will be important for future studies to measure
such attitudes directly and to examine their relation to child ToM. Ethnic differences in parenting
values within a complex society such as Indonesia’s are likely to give rise to differences in overt
parenting behaviors. For example, based on their hopes for their children’s future financial success, Javanese parents might foster competitive individualism in their offspring as a means for
boosting their children’s economic utility to the household. Such “Westernized” parenting behaviors could then shape children’s manner of learning about other’s minds, conceivably contributing to the ethnic variations in ToM Scale sequences that we observed.
However, in considering post hoc inferences such as these, several caveats are necessary. First,
Darroch et al.’s (1981) and Hoffman’s (1988) studies were conducted several decades ago. Their
results may, therefore, no longer characterize contemporary Indonesian parents. This is especially
true in view of the rapid pace of recent social change in Indonesia. Furthermore, direct observation
of parenting behavior is needed to validate the ethnic attitudinal contrasts suggested by Darroch
et al. (1981) and Hoffman (1988). Observational evidence comparing, for example, the teaching
strategies of Indonesian parents living in Bogor versus Jakarta, and those who are Javanese versus
Sundanese would help to bridge the empirical gap that, in theory, might account for the ToM
sequence contrasts we observed. Therefore, it is important for future research to continue to
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Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 48(9)
explore sequence contrasts on the ToM Scale in Indonesia and other non-Western cultures. In
future ToM studies, it will also be useful to follow the present study’s example of exploring the
possibility of contrast among different ethnic subgroups within the same overall national culture.
Parental Involvement in Children’s Knowledge Acquisition
Meanwhile, another possible basis for the ethnicity-based (and city-based) contrasts we observed
in children’s ToM Scale sequences is worth considering. These contrasts may conceivably relate
to levels of parental interest and involvement in their young children’s education. Informal observations made by the researchers who gathered these data in the two locales suggested that the
parents in Jakarta differed from those in Bogor in this respect. In Jakarta, similar to Western
parents, most parents simply dropped their children off at school in the morning and immediately
left, returning to collect them at the end of the day but not actively participating in their children’s
school lives. In Bogor, the pattern was different. The Bogor parents displayed a much higher
level of time commitment and daily involvement in the schools’ teaching and learning activities
and in their children’s classroom lives. Most of them remained at school with their children
throughout the day. Some did this every day and others on at least some school days every week.
Bogor parents also actively assisted their children’s teachers as volunteer helpers. They established parents’ “booster” clubs, actively participated in most school programs and events, took
schoolwork home and helped their children with it after school, and socialized regularly outside
school hours with other parents from their children’s classes.
This exceptionally high interest and active involvement in their children’s schooling and
acquiring of knowledge could conceivably be associated with the ToM Scale sequence differences that we observed. To the extent that parents’ active involvement in the child’s schooling on
a daily basis reflects a way of assuring their children’s access to knowledge, the Bogor parents
appeared to value children’s gaining of knowledge especially highly and to put effort into helping
them do so. Parents who participate with their children in learning activities at home and at
school, as the Bogor parents did, may also supply conversational inputs that foster such ToM
understanding specifically. Perhaps, Jakarta parents’ more Westernized approach of confering
their children’s education to professional school staff without as much daily interference by parents as in our Bogor sample may have been relevant to the findings we observed. Teachers’
viewpoints often contrast with those of parents. More intensive exposure to these contrasts may
help to foster children’s early appreciation of concepts such as opinion diversity (DB).
Of course, such possibilities are purely speculative. Although not measured systematically
enough in our study to be quantifiable, future studies could profitably examine variations in
parental involvement in their children’s schooling to confirm possible links between this variable
and child ToM. Not only overall rates of ToM development but also the ordering and mastery of
specific milestones in the ToM Scale sequence could conceivably relate to parental involvement
schooling and knowledge transmission. The fact that these three separate sets of ToM sequence
data from Jakarta children (i.e., both Jakarta subgroups in Kuntoro et al.’s study, as well as our
Jakarta subsample) all matched the original (Anglo-Western) sequence of ToM Scale steps highlights the reliability of this particular ToM acquisition pattern for Jakarta children (though notably not Indonesian children in general as our Bogor data now show).
Overview and Directions for Further Research
This confirmed discovery of a ToM Scale sequence contrast between the two Indonesian cities
(and subcultural ethnicities) has important theoretical implications. Previously, the ToM Scale
sequence differences noted in past studies always coincided with differences between the languages spoken by the children who mastered DB first (English) versus by those who mastered
Kuntoro et al.
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KA first (Farsi or Mandarin). Thus, it had been conceivable that some neglected difference
among language groups might have been responsible. However, because our Bogor and Jakarta
children both spoke the same language (i.e., Bahasa Indonesian), such an explanation now
appears less plausible.
Nevertheless, further research is needed to more fully explore the likely basis for these intriguing sequence differences. It will be important in this future study to directly compare parenting
behavior between Indonesian families living in Bogor, Jakarta, and other areas (e.g., rural
Indonesia), using observational methods as well as the direct measurement of parenting styles
that our study pioneered. Somewhat unexpectedly, our results showed that there were no differences between Bogor and Jakarta in parental preferences for authoritative versus authoritarian
parenting or collectivism versus individualism. These findings, too, warrant replication. In future
studies, it will be useful to include city-to-city contrasts in parenting behavior, and comparisons
among different Indonesian ethnic subgroups, as well as observational study of actual parental
teaching and disciplining in relation to children’s ToM sequences.
Pending such future studies, there are several broad lessons to be learned from our results.
First, our findings combine with those of a handful of other recent cross-cultural studies to highlight the usefulness of broad assessment of children’s social cognition via the ToM Scale to
complement existing studies that have overwhelmingly focused only on false belief. Second,
they highlight the value of attention to subcultural ethnic differences (e.g., Javanese vs. Sundanese
Indonesians) rather than implicitly equating cultural boundaries with national, political, or geographical ones. Third, as noted above, our findings show for the first time that ToM sequence
contrasts can arise among children in different subcultural ethnic groups within a single nation
and who all speak the same language. This highlights that language alone is not the issue and
calls for future in-depth investigation of other within-nation culturally and linguistically diverse
subgroups (see also O’Reilly & Peterson, 2014).
Finally, our results highlight an ongoing need for direct empirical study of parents’ attitudes
and practices to replace mere theoretical speculation. In this way, a more nuanced understanding
of ToM development in a cross-cultural context should emerge. Past cross-cultural studies of
children’s ToM Scale sequences have offered numerous speculative hypotheses in the absence of
direct empirical test (e.g., Shahaeian et al., 2011). Our study, in a pioneering attempt to test such
speculations empirically, challenged a number of previously held stereotypes. For example, we
found that even though Indonesia is a highly collectivist culture, and even though our sample of
Indonesian parents themselves displayed a significant preference for collectivist parenting, the
ToM sequence contrasts we observed did not align themselves neatly with this attitude dimension. Nor did parental attitudes to Baumrind’s (1971) authoritative versus authoritarian discipline
explain ToM Scale sequence contrasts, even though aspects of ToM timing were related to them.
Findings such as these may seem to introduce unwanted complexity into a formerly attractively simple, though untested, cultural story. Yet, at the same time, they illustrate the richness
and multifaceted variety of cross-cultural investigations into children’s ToM growth. Perhaps this
may explain why so many researchers, from so many different academic disciplines and cultural
backgrounds, have sustained such a strong interest in this topic for the more than two-and-a-half
decades since Avis and Harris’s (1991) seminal investigation in Africa. Our findings, along with
those of other recent studies, reveal the need for further study of culture’s formative influence on
ToM Scale sequences and ToM development generally. This should help us perceive more clearly
how children in varied cultures, ethnic groups, and social communities the world over gain
insight into their own and others’ minds.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.