**MATERIALS**: Available in OSF storage.
**AUTHORS**: Kara Weisman, Cristine H. Legare, Rachel E. Smith, Vivian A. Dzokoto, Felicity Aulino, Emily Ng, John C. Dulin, Nicole Ross-Zehnder, Joshua D. Brahinsky, Tanya & Marie Luhrmann
**ABSTRACT**: How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, animals, and other entities—e.g., _Do beetles get hungry? remember things? feel love?_—we reconstructed concepts of mental life from the bottom up among adults (N=711) and children (ages 6-12y, N=693) in the US, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. This revealed a cross-cultural and developmental continuity: In all sites, among both adults and children, cognitive abilities traveled separately from bodily sensations, suggesting that a mind-body distinction is common across diverse cultures and present by middle childhood. Yet there were substantial cultural and developmental differences in the status of social-emotional abilities—as part of the body, part of the mind, or a third category unto themselves. Such differences may have far-reaching social consequences, while the similarities identify aspects of human understanding that may be universal.
[1]: https://github.com/kgweisman/mental-life-culture-development
