Perspective-Taking from a Social Neuroscience Standpoint

Abstract

A primary focus of research undertaken by social psychologists is to establish why perceivers fail to accurately adopt or understand other people's perspectives. From overestimating the dispositional bases of behavior to misinterpreting the motivations of out-group members, the message that emerges from this work is that social perception is frequently imperfect. In contrast, researchers from disciplines outside social psychology seek to identify the strategies and skill sets required to successfully understand other people's perspectives. These investigations attempt to identify the mechanisms through which perceivers intuit mental states that underlie behavior (e.g. wants, motivations, beliefs). In this article, we review findings from perspective-taking research in developmental psychology, primatology (i.e. primate cognition) and cognitive neuroscience. We then discuss why understanding how accurate perspective-taking occurs may inform understanding of when and why this process fails

Investigation of Mentalizing and Visuospatial Perspective Taking for Self and Other in Asperger Syndrome

“…colleagues (1985, 1988) distinguished visuospatial perspective taking and mentalizing at the level of underlying representations: the first thought to be based on primary representations (e.g., to estimate or evaluate others' perception; p. 394: ''perceptual perspective taking can be performed using mental rotation on primary representations''), the latter on meta-or second-order representations (e.g., to infer or understand others' beliefs). Dissociating findings from comparative psychology may offer support to this idea; chimpanzees seem to be able to represent a conspecific's visuospatial perspective, whereas their ability to mentalize is contested (Hare et al 2001;Mason and Macrae 2008;Povinelli and Eddy 1996;Premack and Woodruff 1978).…”

A handoff is not a telegram: an understanding of the patient is co-constructed

“…This notion, that taking the perspective of another plays a vital role in the shared meaning of successful communication, has been repeatedly confirmed in vast numbers of studies [36]. Obviously, understanding the perspective of the other party is not a simple procedure and involves great effort from the party that is handing off.…”

Neural Substrates of Social Status Inference: Roles of Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Superior Temporal Sulcus

“…When people assign psychological reasons to others’ behaviors, they recruit a distributed network of brain regions that includes the medial pFC (mPFC), TPJ, and posterior STS (pSTS; Lieberman, 2010; Mason, Banfield, & Macrae, 2004; Frith & Frith, 1999; Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Gallagher, Happé, Brunswick, Fletcher, Frith, & Frith, 2000; for reviews, see Mitchell, 2009; Mason & Macrae, 2008; Amodio & Frith, 2006). Activity in this mentalizing or “theory of mind” (ToM) network is enhanced when people reflect on a target’s perspective (e.g., Goel, Grafman, Sadato, & Hallett, 1995), infer the sentiments one person feels toward another (Mason, Magee, Kuwabara, & Nind, 2010), attempt to understand behavior in terms of underlying goals and motivations (e.g., Brunet, Sarfati, Hardy-Baylé, & Decety, 2000; Gallagher et al, 2000), or depend on the target (Ames & Fiske, 2013), consistent with interdependence motivating dispositional inferences (Erber & Fiske, 1984).…”