Simulating other people changes the self.

Abstract

The self is not static. Our identities change considerably over development and across situations. Here, we propose one novel cause of self-change: simulating others. How could simply imagining others change the self? First, when simulating other people's mental states and traits, individuals access self-knowledge; they do so while concurrently considering information about the other person they are trying to understand. Second, episodic and semantic knowledge is malleable and susceptible to incorporating new, postevent information. If self-knowledge is similarly malleable, then simulation may change self-knowledge such that it incorporates information about the simulated person (i.e., "postevent information"). That is, simulation should render the self more similar to the simulated other. We test this hypothesis in 8 studies. In each study, participants (a) recalled personal information (e.g., traits and episodic memories), (b) simulated other people in similar contexts, and (c) re-recalled personal information. Results consistently demonstrated that simulating others changed self-knowledge, such that the self becomes more similar to the simulated other. This effect occurred for both traits and memories, spanned self-report and linguistic measures, and persisted 24 hr after simulation. The findings suggest that self-knowledge is susceptible to misinformation effects similar to those observed in other forms of semantic and episodic knowledge.

Simulation induces durable, extensive changes to self-knowledge

“…Studies 1-2 show that when simulation involves episodic memories, simulation of another individual can be incorporated into episodic memories, altering self-knowledge beyond what working self-concept can account for. Though episodic and semantic self-knowledge are distinct, prior work on SIM suggests that trait-related self-knowledge is vulnerable to change based on simulation, just like other types of knowledge (Klein et al, 1999;Klein & Lax, 2010;Meyer et al, 2019). When participants simulate another individual by rating how well traits apply to them, their ratings of how well those traits apply to themselves change in the direction of the target.…”

“…Participants (N=186) were recruited from Prolific. This sample size provided at least 99% power to detect a target x time interaction effect, at a size reported by prior work on this same effect (Meyer et al, 2019). Participants were excluded prior to analyses based on three a priori exclusion criteria: if they completed the task in an unreasonably short period of time (n = 2), if they self-reported poor English proficiency, or if they provided fewer than 15 unique answers.…”

“…When we imagine another individual, we use our own mental states to understand their mental states; our own self-knowledge serves as a source of social comparisons and inferences (Gallese & Goldman, 1998;Schacter & Addis, 2007). This process, known as social simulation, can change self-knowledge (Meyer et al, 2019). More specifically, when individuals simulate another person (i.e.…”

“…SIM has the potential to offer profound insight into how the self develops and transforms over time, though the full potential of this effect is as of yet unknown. Thus far, simulation has been shown to change both episodic memories and semantic self-knowledge (Meyer et al, 2019). We know that simulation can change episodic memories both immediately and following a 24-hour delay.…”

Could Acting Training Improve Social Cognition and Emotional Control?

“…Additionally, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction are implicated in self/other processing and judgments (Denny et al, 2012 ) and it has been suggested that overcoming self–other interference and ToM are deeply integrated processes (Qureshi et al, 2020 ). Moreover, simulating others has been shown to influence self-knowledge, with trait and memory measures becoming similar to a simulated other after adopting their perspective (Meyer et al, 2019 ). In relation to acting, a recent neuroimaging study demonstrated that when trained actors answered questions from the first-person fictional perspective of a character, in contrast to their own perspective, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex/superior frontal gyrus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are deactivated, suggesting acting may involve the suppression of self-processing (Brown et al, 2019 ).…”