Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the possibility that perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representation of others that substantially overlap with the observers' own self-representations. In Experiment 1 observers receiving role-taking instructions were more likely to ascribe traits to a novel target that they (observers) had earlier indicated were self-descriptive. This pattern was most pronounced, however for positively valenced traits. In Experiment 2 some participants received role-taking instructions but were also given a distracting memory task. In the absence of this task, role taking again produced greater overlap--primarily for positive traits--between self- and target representations. In the presence of the memory task, the degree of self-target overlap was significantly reduced for all traits, regardless of valence. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

An Exploratory Investigation of the Process of Perspective Taking in Interpersonal Situations

“…Goldman (1989Goldman ( /1995 has stressed that our attempts to understand others by simulating how we would feel in their position can both exhibit automaticity and be influenced by previous efforts. With such a view, there will be times when the perspective-taking process (or parts of it) runs relatively easily or with minimally-reported cognitive effort, while at other times it may be subjectively felt as less easy, more conscious, and/or called upon (Davis et al, 1996;Fennis, 2011;Roβnagel, 2000). It is likely that the latter situations are the type discussed by many of our participants.…”

“…Davis, Conklin, Smith, and Luce (1996) suggested that in the process of taking another's perspective the person's mental representations of self and target become more similar.…”

Perspective taking combats automatic expressions of racial bias.

“…Furthermore, we found no differences between the two perspective-taking conditions-a pattern that was confirmed by the results of the manipulation check, which indicated that participants did not distinguish between the two perspective-taking instruction sets. Although some previous research has demonstrated important emotional, cognitive, motivational, and neurophysiological differences when comparing these two perspective-taking conditions (Batson, 2009), numerous other studies have observed null effects (Davis et al, 1996, Experiment 1; Davis et al, 2004, Experiment 2;Finlay & Stephan, 2000;Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008, Experiment 2a). Batson (2009) has argued that null effects are especially likely when participants have very limited information about the target whose perspective they are asked to adopt, though this was not necessarily the case in Experiment 1 or in Finlay and Stephan's (2000) study.…”

“…Some participants tried to imagine the Black man's thoughts, feelings, and experiences ( perspective-taking-other condition) as they watched the video; others tried to imagine their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences as if they were in the Black man's situation ( perspectivetaking-self condition). Because both approaches have been used in past research (e.g., Batson, Early, & Salvarini, 1997;Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996;Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008) and, in some cases, have been found to have different psychological consequences (Batson, 2009), we wanted to explore whether the specific form of perspective taking would qualify our results. After watching the video, participants completed a variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) that assesses automatic evaluations of Black Americans relative to White Americans (i.e., personalized evaluative race IAT; Olson & Fazio, 2004).…”

“…Because the two perspective-taking conditions were virtually indistinguishable from each other on the manipulation check items, we examined our hypotheses by conducting two planned contrasts (Rosenthal, Rosnow, & Rubin, 2000): The first contrast compared the two perspective-taking conditions with the objective-focus condition; the second contrast compared the two perspectivetaking conditions with each other (see Davis et al, 1996, for a similar analytical approach). We also report the omnibus ANOVA.…”