The Case For and Against Perspective-Taking

Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection

A person's well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their own sociality across a variety of social actions, including engaging in conversation, expressing appreciation, and performing acts of kindness. We suggest that these miscalibrated expectations are created and maintained by at least three mechanisms: differential construal, uncertain responsiveness, and asymmetric learning. Underestimating the positive consequences of social engagement could make people less social than would be optimal for both their own and others' well-being.

Focus Within or On Others: The Impact of Reviewers’ Attentional Focus on Review Helpfulness

When reviewers write online reviews, they differ in the focus of their attention: some focus on their own experiences, whereas some direct their attention to others—prospective consumers who may read the reviews in the future. This paper explores how, why, and when reviewers’ attentional focus can influence the helpfulness evaluation of reviews beyond the impact of substantive review content. Drawing on the attentional focus and persuasion literatures, we develop a theoretical model proposing that reviewers’ attentional focus may influence consumers’ perception of review helpfulness through opposing processes, and that its overall effect is contingent on the review’s two-sidedness. Results of one archival analysis and five controlled experiments provide consistent support for our hypotheses. This work challenges the predominant view of the positive impact of other-focus (vs. self-focus), explores the interpersonal impact of a reviewer’s attentional focus on prospective consumers who are total strangers, and reveals an important, context-specific boundary condition.

Perspective taking reduces intergroup bias in visual representations of faces

Intergroup biases shape most aspects of person construal, including lower-level visual representations of group members' faces. Specifically, ingroup members' faces tend to be represented more positively than outgroup members' faces. Here, we used a reverse-correlation paradigm to test whether engaging in perspective taking (i.e., actively imagining another person's mental states) can reduce these biased visual representations. In an initial image-generation experiment, participants were randomly assigned to a minimal group and then composed a narrative essay about an ingroup or an outgroup target person, either while adopting the person's perspective or while following control instructions. Afterward, they generated an image of the person's face in a reverse-correlation image-classification task. Subsequent image-assessment experiments using an explicit rating task, a sequential priming task, and an economic trust game with separate samples of participants revealed that ingroup faces elicited more likability and trustworthiness than did outgroup faces. Importantly, this pattern of intergroup bias was consistently weaker in faces created by perspective takers. Additional image-assessment experiments identified the mouth (i.e., smiling cues) as a critical facial region wherein the interactive effects of group membership and perspective taking emerged. These findings provide initial evidence that perspective taking may be an effective strategy for attenuating, though not for eliminating, intergroup biases in visual representations of what group members look like.

Assessing the evidence of perspective taking on stereotyping and negative evaluations: A p-curve analysis

Perspective taking is conceptualized as the ability to consider or adopt the perspective of another individual who is perceived to be in need; it has shown mixed results in stereotype reduction and intergroup attitude change across many social science disciplines. The inconsistent results raise concerns about the robustness of the perspective-taking phenomenon. The present study uses p-curve analysis to examine whether evidential value existed among two sets of published experimental studies where perspective taking was operationalized in two different paradigms. Despite low statistical power, we found that both sets of studies revealed some evidential value of the effects of perspective taking. The theoretical and methodological implications of perspective-taking studies are discussed as well.

Perceptions of an evidence-based empathy mobile app in post-secondary education

Cognitive empathy (also known as perspective-taking) is an important, teachable, skill. As part of a knowledge translation project, we identified a) interest in an evidence-based cognitive empathy mobile app and b) which faculties believe that cognitive empathy is important for their profession. Students (n = 638) and instructors/professors (n = 38) completed a university-wide survey. Participants in Education, Social Work, and the Health Sciences were among those most interested in the app. The majority of participants said that they would prefer for the app to be free or less than $3 for students. Most participants preferred a one-time payment option. Across 17 faculties, all but one had 60% or more of its sampled members say that cognitive empathy is important for their profession. Results illuminate perceptions of cognitive empathy instruction and technology. Results also provide insight into issues to consider when developing and implementing an educational communication app.

Communicated Sense-making After Miscarriage: A Dyadic Analysis of Spousal Communicated Perspective-Taking, Well-being, and Parenting Role Salience

Grounded in communicated sense-making (CSM) theorizing, we investigated communicated perspective-taking (CPT; i.e., conversational partners' attendance to and confirmation of each other's views) in association with individual and relational well-being in married couples who had miscarried (n = 183; N = 366). Actor-partner interdependence modeling revealed husbands' perceptions of wives' CPT were positively related to husbands' positive affect about the miscarriage and both spouses' relational satisfaction, as well as negatively associated with wives' positive affect. Wives' perceptions of husbands' CPT related positively to their own relational satisfaction and negatively to husbands' negative affect. Analyses revealed identification as a parent to the miscarried child (i.e., "parenting role salience") positively moderated the relationship between CPT and relational satisfaction. Implications for advancing CSM theorizing in health contexts and practical applications are explored.

It’s All About the Self

Although abundant research has documented positive interpersonal outcomes of perspective taking, a growing body of evidence indicates that perspective taking can also induce negative interpersonal outcomes—in other words, it backfires. We aim at integrating these seemingly contradictory findings, suggesting that perspective taking backfires when it causes the perspective-taking individual to feel threatened. Threat can emerge from the very act of perspective taking if the target of perspective taking is perceived as too different from the self or if adopting another’s perspective creates the potential for negative self-evaluation. Furthermore, threat may emerge if perspective taking successfully creates perceptions of self-other overlap, but the overlapping characteristics accentuate potentially threatening characteristics of the target. Our theoretical model affords predictions for other conditions in which perspective taking is linked to self-threat and may backfire.

Empathy by dominant versus minority group members in intergroup interaction: Do dominant group members always come out on top?

What power dynamics are instantiated when a minority group member empathizes with a dominant group member during social interaction? How do these dynamics compare to those instantiated when the dominant group member instead does the empathizing? According to a general power script account, because empathy is generally directed “down” toward disadvantaged targets needing support, the empathizer should come out “on top” with respect to power-relevant outcomes no matter who it is. According to a meta-stereotype account, because adopting an empathic stance in intergroup contexts leads individuals to think about how their own group is viewed (including with respect to power-relevant characteristics), the dominant group member might come out on top no matter which person empathizes. Two studies involving face-to-face intergroup exchanges yielded results that overall were consistent with the meta-stereotype account: Regardless of who does it, empathy in intergroup contexts seems more apt to exacerbate than mitigate group-based status differences.

Narrative Construction, Social Perceptions, and the Situation Model

The present investigation examined how three salient features of narrative thinking (situation model construction, linguistic concreteness, and perspective-taking) influenced the social inference process. Results of four experiments indicated that compared with those given other objectives, perceivers given narrative objectives were: (a) more likely to make situation rather than trait attributions for observed behaviors (Experiment 1), (b) less likely to make implicit trait inferences (Experiment 2), and (c) less likely to rely on behavior valence when making evaluative judgments (Experiment 4). Linguistic analyses indicated that narrative construction consistently entailed the creation of situation models of events and linguistic concreteness, but only situation model creation mediated the relationship between narrative and inferences. Experiment 3 confirmed the mediating role of situation models: Perceivers with narrative objectives made trait inferences only when behaviors were inconsistent with contextual information. The role of these core narrative features on social perceptions is discussed.

Reductions in Goal-Directed Cognition as a Consequence of Being the Target of Empathy

Although empathy is widely promoted as a beneficial practice across both intergroup and interpersonal contexts, the implications of being the target of empathy for the target's own psychological state are unclear. Three experiments examined how being the target of empathy affects goal-directed cognition outcomes related to a psychological sense of power, namely, the ability to maintain goal focus and readiness to ask for more in negotiations. We reasoned that because individuals typically empathize with others they perceive as disadvantaged and needing support, trying to empathize would raise individuals up in terms of such outcomes at the same time as it pushed the targets of their empathy down in a complementary fashion. Results were consistent with these predictions across intergroup and intragroup interaction. The findings thus suggest that individuals' efforts to empathize can undermine the targets of their empathy in a subtle manner by hindering their ability to pursue their goals.

Don’t bring me down: Divergent effects of being the target of empathy versus perspective-taking on minority group members’ perceptions of their group’s social standing

This experiment examined how being the target of one of two commonly recommended strategies for improving intergroup relations—empathy or perspective-taking—affects minority group members’ sense of their group’s power and status in society. The main hypothesis was that the distinct status hierarchies implied by each of these mindsets would be communicated across face-to-face intergroup exchanges. Specifically, because empathy targets are typically in lower power positions whereas perspective-taking targets are typically in higher power positions, minority group members who were targets of a dominant group member’s empathy were expected to come away with a reduced sense of their group’s social standing relative to those who were targets of a dominant group member’s perspective-taking. Results were consistent with this prediction and further suggested that the mindset effect was partially mediated by a tendency for dominant group members’ efforts to empathize with minority targets to foster heightened imbalance in the levels of various power-relevant behaviors exhibited by each person.

You don't really love me, do you? Negative effects of imagine-other perspective-taking on lower self-esteem individuals' relationship well-being

Two studies demonstrated that active efforts to appreciate a romantic partner's unique point of view (imagine-other perspective-taking) lead individuals lower in self-esteem (LSEs) to feel less loved by their partner and less satisfied with their relationship as a result. These effects were evident regardless of whether individuals' perspective-taking efforts involved reflecting specifically on a disagreement with their partner (Study 2) or not (Study 1). The studies thus identify a new path through which perspective-taking efforts can detract from relational well-being, one to which LSEs are uniquely vulnerable. Results from an open-ended thought-listing task administered in Study 2 confirmed that increased cognitive energy LSEs devoted to drawing (negative) metaperceptual inferences about their partner's evaluation of them contributed to the negative effect of imagine-other perspective-taking on their perceived regard. No such effects were evident for individuals higher in self-esteem, and imagine-self perspective-taking instead exerted a general positive influence on individuals' evaluations of their partner.