The Effects of Perspective-Taking on Prejudice: The Moderating Role of Self-Evaluation

Sports Medicine Patient Experience: Implicit Bias Mitigation and Communication Strategies

Unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias, is the principal contributor to the perpetuation of discrimination and is a robust determinant of people's decision-making. Unconscious bias occurs despite conscious nonprejudiced intentions and interferes with the actions of the reflective and conscious side. Education and self-awareness about implicit bias and its potentially harmful effects on judgment and behavior may lead individuals to pursue corrective action and follow implicit bias mitigation communication strategies. Team physicians must follow existing communication strategies and guidelines to mitigate unconscious bias and begin an evolution toward nonbiased judgment and decision-making to improve athlete care.

Deictic Relational Responding and Perspective-Taking in Autistic Individuals: A Scoping Review

Perspective-taking skills are crucial for successful social interactions and some autistic individuals seem to demonstrate great difficulty in this area. The concept continues to generate clinical and research interest across mainstream psychology and within behavior analysis. Within behavior analysis, relational frame theorists have argued that deictic relational responding is critically involved in perspective-taking. We conducted a systematic search of the behavior analytic studies on deictic relational responding and perspective-taking in autistic individuals to highlight methods used to test perspective-taking and deictic relations, methods to train these if deficits were observed, and evidence for a relationship between deictic relational responding and perspective-taking. Seven studies met inclusion criteria and we conducted a descriptive analysis of these studies. We found some variation in the methods used to test and train perspective-taking through deictic relations. Only three of the studies attempted to demonstrate a link between deictic relational responding and perspective-taking. Overall, our review highlighted a need for more research into deictic relational responding and perspective-taking in autistic individuals, and we discussed specific areas for future research.

The Effectiveness of CDC's Rx Awareness Campaigns on Reducing Opioid Stigma: Implications for Health Communication

Often health communication campaigns addressing misusing prescription opioids and opioid use disorder (OUD) do not pay enough attention to the associated stigma. This study investigated the effectiveness of a well-designed opioid awareness campaign on reducing stigma and provided evidence for future health communication design. CDC's Rx Awareness videos were used as the experiment material. 137 college students participated in this online experiment, and audience characteristics and video features were considered and tested. The results showed that Rx Awareness videos significantly reduced participants' stigmatizing attitudes and perceived public stigma and increased their empathy toward people with OUD. Empathy is a promising strategy to reduce opioid stigma. People with an opioid prescription history expressed more empathy. Recovery information, prescription history, and narrators' race influenced the audience's perceived public stigma. Implications for health communications and limitations of the study are discussed.

Letting leaders spontaneously emerge yields better creative outcomes and higher leader-follower interbrain synchrony during creative group communication

This study aimed to investigate how the ways leaders arise (appointed vs. emergent) affect the leader-follower interaction during creative group communication. Hyperscanning technique was adopted to reveal the underlying interpersonal neural correlates using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Participants were assigned into 3-person groups to complete a creative problem-solving task. These groups were randomly split into conditions of appointed (condition A) and emergent (condition E) leaders. Creative group outcomes were better in condition E, accompanied by more frequent perspective-taking behaviors between leaders and followers. The interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) increment for leader-follower pairs was significantly higher at the right angular gyrus (rAG), between the rAG and the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG), and between the right middle temporal gyrus and the right motor cortex in condition E and positively correlated with perspective-taking behaviors between leaders and followers. The graph-based analysis showed higher nodal betweenness of the rAG and the rSMG in condition E. These results indicated the neural coupling of brain regions involved in mentalizing, semantic processing and motor imagery may underlie the dynamic information transmission between leaders and followers during creative group communication.

The effects of perspective taking primes on the social tuning of explicit and implicit views toward gender and race

The current research aims to investigate whether perspective taking influences social tuning, or the alignment of one's self-views, explicit attitudes, and/or implicit attitudes with those of an interaction partner. In six different experiments, participants believed they would interact with a partner to complete a task. Prior to this ostensible interaction, participants were given a perspective taking mindset prime, or not, and information about their ostensible interaction partners views. Participants then completed attitude measures related to the partner's perceived views. Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2 examined whether perspective taking with an ostensible interaction partner who endorses gender traditional (or non-traditional) views align their self-views with this partner, including implicit self-views (Experiment 2). Experiments 3-5 investigated whether perspective taking leads to social tuning for egalitarian racial attitudes, including when the partner's expectations of how others will be and when the participant learns their ostensible IAT score at the beginning of the session. We predicted perspective takers would be more likely to social tune their explicit and implicit attitudes to the attitudes of their interaction partner than non-perspective takers. Across all experiments, perspective takers were more likely to social tune their self-views and explicit attitudes than non-perspective takers. However, social tuning never occurred for implicit attitudes. Thus, future research is needed to understand why perspective taking does not influence the tuning of implicit attitudes, but other motivations, like affiliative and epistemic, do.

Quiet ego is associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims

Well-known predictors of prejudice toward Muslims include social dominance and authoritarianism. However, a gap exists for variables reflecting a rejection or mitigation of ideological motivations associated with prejudice toward Muslims. We examined if quiet ego was related to positive attitudes toward Muslims, and whether this could be explained by lower levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the motivation to express prejudice. We explored this possibility across two studies of adults in the United States (N = 376; N = 519). In Study 1, regression results showed quiet ego was directly associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims. Study 2 utilized path analyses and found that the direct relationship between quiet ego and positive attitudes toward Muslims was explained by associations between quiet ego and lower endorsement of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the internal motivation to express prejudice toward Muslims. Moreover, these associations held when accounting for several correlates of intergroup attitudes.

Social Self-Efficacy and Internet Gaming Disorder Among Chinese Undergraduates: The Mediating Role of Alexithymia and the Moderating Role of Empathy

As an increasingly serious social problem, Internet gaming disorder (IGD) of college students may be related to their social self-efficacy. However, the relationship and its internal mechanisms underlying are still unclear. The current study tested the mediating effect of alexithymia in the association between social self-efficacy and IGD, and whether this mediating process was moderated by empathy. Social Self-Efficacy Scale (PSSE), Chinese version of Internet Game Addiction Scale (IGAS-C), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and Interpersonal Response Scale (IRI-C) were adopted to examine the model on 888 Chinese college students. The results indicated that social self-efficacy was significantly negatively associate with IGD. Mediation analysis illustrated that alexithymia mediated the association between social self-efficacy and IGD. Further, moderated mediation analysis manifested that the mediated effects was stronger for lower level of empathy. The conclusions corroborate and clarify the mechanisms that alexithymia mediated the association between social self-efficacy and IGD, and the mediation effects is moderated via empathy. Besides, these findings provide available references for colleges to conduct educational activities, and at the same time provide scientific suggestions for preventing IGD among undergraduates.

Perspectives Organize Information in Mind and Nature: Empirical Findings of Point-View Perspective (P) in Cognitive and Material Complexity

The importance of perspective-taking crosses disciplines and is foundational to diverse phenomena such as point-of-view, scale, mindset, theory of mind, opinion, belief, empathy, compassion, analysis, and problem solving, etc. This publication gives predictions for and a formal description of point-view Perspectives (P) or the “P-rule”. This makes the P-rule foundational to systems, systems thinking and the consilience of knowledge. It is one of four universals of the organization of information as a whole. This paper presents nine empirical studies in which subjects were asked to complete a task and/or answer a question. The samples vary for each study (ranging from N = 407 to N = 34,398) and are generalizable to a normal distribution of the US population. As was evident in Cabrera, “These studies support—with high statistical significance—the predictions made by DSRP Theory (Distinctions, Systems Relationships, Perspectives) point-view Perspectives including its: universality as an observable phenomenon in both mind (cognitive complexity) and nature (material complexity) (i.e., parallelism); internal structures and dynamics; mutual dependencies on other universals (i.e., Distinctions, Systems, and Relationships); role in structural predictions; and, efficacy as a metacognitive skill”. These data suggest that point-view Perspectives (P) observably and empirically exist, and that universality, efficacy, and parallelism (between cognitive and material complexity) exist as well. The impact of this paper is that it provides empirical evidence for the phenomena of point-view perspective taking (“P-rule”) as a universal pattern/structure of systems thinking, a field in which scholarly debate is often based on invalidated opinioned frameworks; this sets the stage for theory building in the field.

Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States

Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in the presence of political communications about social policy issues like transgender rights? We examined two scalable antidiscrimination exercises commonly used in applied settings: describing a personal narrative of discrimination and perspective-taking. We then showed people political ads that are favorable or opposed to transgender rights to determine whether those interventions moderate how receptive people are to the messages. Relying on two demographically representative survey experiments of adults in the United States (study 1 N = 1,291; study 2 N = 1,587), we found that personal recollections of discriminatory experiences did not reduce exclusionary attitudes, but perspective-taking had some effects, particularly among those who fully complied with the exercise. However, both studies revealed potential backfire effects; recalling a discriminatory experience induced negative attitudes among a subset of the participants, and participants who refused to perspective-take when prompted also held more negative attitudes. Importantly, political ads favorable toward transgender rights consistently resulted in more positive attitudes toward transgender people. Future work needs to carefully examine heterogeneous responses and resistance to antidiscrimination interventions and examine what particular aspects of the political ads induced the attitude change.

Difference and Disdain as Indicators of the Public Stigma of Mental Illness

ABSTRACT

Viewing a stigmatized group as different from everyone else is believed to be a contentless stigma that leads to disdain. This study tests whether three emotions-intergroup anxiety, anger, and empathy-mediate the path between difference and disdain. Six hundred thirty-eight research participants from MTurk provided valid responses to an online survey via Qualtrics. The survey used standardized measures of difference, disdain, intergroup anxiety, anger, and empathy. The hypothesized path model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). Fit indicators from SEM and corresponding betas supported a two-mediator model. Specifically, difference was found to be significantly associated with disdain. The path between the two was positively mediated by anger and negatively mediated by empathy. Difference and disdain may become important constructs in predicting and assessing stigma change. Perspective-taking that enhances empathy may prove especially useful for decreasing difference and disdain perceptions about people with mental illness.

The Impact of Perspective Taking on Obesity Stereotypes: The Dual Mediating Effects of Self-Other Overlap and Empathy

Previous studies have indicated that obese people face many forms of severe prejudice and discrimination in various settings, such as education, employment, and interpersonal relationships. However, research aimed at reducing obesity stereotyping is relatively rare, and prior studies have focused primarily on negative stereotypes. Based on the empathy-altruism hypothesis and self-other overlap hypothesis, this study investigates the impact of perspective taking (PT) on both positive and negative obesity stereotypes and examines the mediating effects of empathy and self-other overlap. A sample of 687 students (191 males and 496 females) at Chinese universities participated by completing self-report questionnaires on trait tendency and evaluation toward obese people. Structural equation modeling and the bootstrap method revealed that self-other overlap (but not empathy) mediated the relationship between PT and negative obesity stereotypes. While self-other overlap and empathy both mediated the relationship between PT and positive obesity stereotypes. These findings address the importance of PT for improving positive and negative obesity stereotypes: specifically, PT promotes psychological merging, and produces empathic concern (EC).

Wise reasoning, intergroup positivity, and attitude polarization across contexts

We hypothesized that a wisdom-based reasoning process comprised of epistemic humility, accounting for context, and integrating different perspectives and interests, would be helpful in overcoming intergroup bias and attitude polarization in societal conflicts. Here we test the hypothesis using both the Situated Wise Reasoning Scale and experimental induction. In each study, we recruited participants who self-identified as members of a group implicated in an ongoing intergroup situation. In five correlational studies (Studies 1-5) we examined the relations between measured wise reasoning and intergroup positivity and attitude polarization. In two experiments, we tested the effects of a brief online wise-reasoning thought exercise on intergroup positivity and polarization (Studies 6-7), and charitable behaviors to an outgroup (Study 6). We found that wise reasoning relates to more positivity toward outgroups and less attitude polarization across different groups and conflicts. The results have implications for theory and may also have implications for future research on interventions to improve intergroup relations.

The Influence of Weight Bias on Processes and Outcomes in Negotiation

In two studies, using a mix of samples, we examined the influence of weight bias on behaviors in competitive, potentially high stakes situations. As predicted, weight bias directed focal actors' treatment of counterparts in a negotiation. Negotiators made lower value offers to overweight counterparts relative to average-weight counterparts. In addition, overweight counterparts also received more negative messages over the course of their negotiation and were evaluated less favorably after the negotiation than average-weight counterparts.

Acceptance of Diversity as a Building Block of Social Cohesion: Individual and Structural Determinants

High levels of social cohesion have been shown to be beneficial both for social entities and for their residents. It is therefore not surprising that scholars from several disciplines investigate which factors contribute to or hamper social cohesion at various societal levels. In recent years, the question of how individuals deal with the increasing diversity of their neighborhoods and society as a whole has become of particular interest when examining cohesion. The present study takes this a step further by combining sociological and psychological approaches in investigating whether the group-level acceptance of diversity, a core feature of cohesive societies, is related to prevailing mentalities of individuals once the social structure of a community is accounted for. We hypothesize that after controlling for individual sociodemographic and for structural variables, three individual characteristics play an important role for the level of acceptance of diversity in a given entity. We propose that individual intergroup anxiety (IGA) acts as a motor of the rejection of diversity whereas individual empathy should act as a safeguard. Furthermore, we propose that right-leaning political orientation (PO) has a negative influence on the acceptance of diversity. This study is based on a large, representative sample of the German general population (N₁ = 2,869). To draw comparisons among different social entities, the sample was divided by federal states (N₂ = 16). Data were analyzed by using a two-step approach for analyzing group-level outcomes in multilevel models. The analyses confirmed our hypothesis that intergroup anxiety at the individual level hampers the acceptance of diversity in a given sociopolitical entity. Furthermore, we found that intergroup anxiety is impacted by the economic situation in a federal state (measured per capita gross domestic product), as economic weakness intensified the fear of others. Surprisingly, neither empathy nor political orientation played a role for the acceptance of diversity. Implications for future research on social cohesion as well as for the work of policy makers are discussed.

Neural Mechanisms of Attitude Change Toward Stigmatized Individuals: Temporoparietal Junction Activity Predicts Bias Reduction

Objectives

Psychological and neural evidence suggests that negative attitudes toward stigmatized individuals arise in part from failures to perceive them as social targets. Here, we tested whether experimentally up-regulating neural regions involved in social cognition would predict subsequent decreases in bias toward stigmatized individuals (i.e., people who use substances).

Methods

Participants underwent fMRI while completing either a lovingkindness intervention task or a control task, and each task was reinforced via daily text messages for a month following the one-time fMRI scan. Changes in implicit bias against stigmatized individuals were measured by Implicit Association Tests.

Results

The lovingkindness intervention task, compared to a control task, elicited greater baseline activity in right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), implicated in mentalizing, or the process of making inferences about others' mental states. The lovingkindness task compared to the control task also produced marginal decreases in bias over the month of the intervention. Individual differences in initial RTPJ activity at baseline during the fMRI intervention tasks further predicted improved implicit attitudes toward stigmatized individuals a month later.

Conclusions

The current study suggests that individual differences in people's tendency to engage brain regions that support taking others' perspectives are associated with greater changes in bias reduction over time. It is possible that strategies that up-regulate mentalizing activity, such as lovingkindness training and other strategies that increase social-cognitive processing, may be effective in shifting people's biases against stigmatized individuals.

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.

Can high quality listening predict lower speakers' prejudiced attitudes?

Theorizing from humanistic and motivational literatures suggests attitude change may occur because high quality listening facilitates the insight needed to explore and integrate potentially threatening information relevant to the self. By extension, self-insight may enable attitude change as a result of conversations about prejudice. We tested whether high quality listening would predict attitudes related to speakers' prejudices and whether self-insight would mediate this effect. Study 1 (preregistered) examined scripted conversations characterized by high, regular, and poor listening quality. In Study 2, we manipulated high versus regular listening quality in the laboratory as speakers talked about their prejudiced attitudes. Finally, Study 3 (preregistered) used a more robust measure of prejudiced attitudes to test whether perceived social acceptance could be an alternative explanation to Study 2 findings. Across these studies, the exploratory (pilot study and Study 2) and confirmatory (Studies 1 & 3) findings were in line with expectations that high, versus regular and poor, quality listening facilitated lower prejudiced attitudes because it increased self-insight. A meta-analysis of the studies (N = 952) showed that the average effect sizes for high quality listening (vs. comparison conditions) on self-insight, openness to change and prejudiced attitudes were, ds = 1.19, 0.46, 0.32 95%CIs [0.73, 1.51], [0.29, 0.63] [0.12, 0.53], respectively. These results suggest that when having conversations about prejudice, high-quality listening modestly shapes prejudice following conversations about it, and underscore the importance of self-insight and openness to change in this process.

Empathy versus evidence: Does perspective-taking for a discrimination claimant bias judgments of institutional sexism?

We examined whether perspective-taking increased people’s recognition of institutional sexism in cases where evidence was in favor or against a woman’s claim. In Experiment 1, participants who took the perspective of a woman claiming institutional sexism made greater attributions to discrimination than participants who remained objective, but only if legitimate evidence of discrimination was presented. Experiment 2 replicates and extends Experiment 1 with a nonstudent, jury-eligible sample. The present research suggests perspective-taking does not bias people’s perceptions and may be an effective strategy for increasing recognition of legitimate claims of institutional sexism.

Attitudes toward Immigrants, Beliefs about Causes of Poverty and Effects of Perspective-Taking

The present work presents three studies that investigate the relationship between causal attributions of poverty in Africa, attitudes towards African immigrants and perspective-taking. The objective of preliminary study (N = 54) was to collect information to adapt the Perceived Causes of Third World Poverty Scale (Hine & Montiel, 1999), in the Spanish adaptation by Betancor et al. (2002) to Spanish adolescents. The Study 1 (N = 102) explores the factorial structure of the teenager questionnaire adaptation and to test the relationship with Modern Racism Scale (McConahay, 1986). Correlational analysis reflects the existence of a central element in the new forms of racism: Victim blaming through Personal Attributions of Poverty. The objective of Study 2 (N = 62) was to determine whether empathic induction through empathic perspective-taking (Batson et al., 1997) can ameliorate the individual’s attributions of poverty concerning African immigrants among majority group members. However, the opposite effect was found, empathy induction increased Personal Attributions of poverty (η2 = .10). This effect was moderated by Modern Racism, simple slope test indicates t(52) = 2.49, p < .01, higher prejudiced participants increased Personal Attribution of poverty after empathic induction, blaming the victims for their situation.

A mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias

Implicit social biases play a critical role in shaping our attitudes towards other people. Such biases are thought to arise, in part, from a comparison between features of one's own self-image and those of another agent, a process known as 'bodily resonance'. Recent data have demonstrated that implicit bias can be remarkably plastic, being modulated by brief immersive virtual reality experiences that place participants in a virtual body with features of an out-group member. Here, we provide a mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias in terms of a putative self-image network that encodes associations between different features of an agent. When subsequently perceiving another agent, the output of this self-image network is proportional to the overlap between their respective features, providing an index of bodily resonance. By combining the self-image network with a drift diffusion model of decision making, we simulate performance on the implicit association test (IAT) and show that the model captures the ubiquitous implicit bias towards in-group members. We subsequently demonstrate that this implicit bias can be modulated by a simulated illusory body ownership experience, consistent with empirical data; and that the magnitude and plasticity of implicit bias correlates with self-esteem. Hence, we provide a simple mechanistic account of bodily resonance and implicit bias which could contribute to the development of interventions for reducing the negative evaluation of social out-groups.

The effect of perspective taking on the mediation process

Background

Previous research demonstrated several benefits of strategic perspective taking in the field of intergroup relations and, more specifically, in the negotiation processes aimed at conflict resolution. The present study, which analyzes the effect of perspective taking and mediation in a conflict setting, corroborates the psychological models that hypothesize the positive effects of the assumption of the competitor’s perspective on having intergroup conflict and lessening of negative consequences.

Materials and methods

After being involved in an epistolary debate on a topic for which their ingroup had very contrasting views compared to an outgroup, participants were asked to use a feeling thermometer to assess their level of intergroup hostility. Mediation was then used as a conflict-resolution strategy for half of the participants. Furthermore, the assumption of perspective was manipulated, resulting in a 2 (conflict: presence vs absence) × 2 (perspective taking: presence vs absence) × 2 (mediation: presence vs absence) between-subjects design. Finally, participants were asked to use the same feeling thermometer to evaluate whether feelings of hostility diminished.

Results

The results show that in conflict situations, the level of hostility decreases the most when the mediation process is accompanied by perspective taking.

Conclusion

The results extend recent results about the advantages of a significant social ability – perspective taking – for improving intergroup relations.

Putting Perspective Taking in Perspective

We present a new framework for the discussion of perspective taking, particularly with reference to the processing of literary narrative. In this framework, adopting a perspective entails matching evaluations with those of the narrative character. This approach predicts that perspectives should be piecemeal rather than holistic, dynamic rather than consistent, effortful rather than automatic, and reactive, in the sense that they are a function of the reader's online processing as it interacts with narrative technique. We describe evidence from an interpolated evaluation method in which readers are periodically interrupted and asked to rate evaluations from a character's perspective. The results indicate that interpolated evaluations interact with narratorial stance to determine a character's transparency—that is, the extent to which she is rational and understandable. In particular, interpolated questions increase transparency of the focal character when there is minimal narratorial guidance, but decrease transparency when the narrator adopts a relatively distanced stance towards that character. These results demonstrate that perspective taking depends on the details of a reader's processing over the course of the story.

Utilizing Education and Perspective Taking to Remediate the Stigma of Taking Antidepressants

The incidence of depression has been increasing. One of the best interventions for depression is taking antidepressant medications. However, the stigma of taking antidepressants has been shown to be a barrier not only to seeking an antidepressant regimen but also adhering to it. This may have negative consequences for people who suffer from depression. Thus, in two studies, we investigate the incidence of felt stigma of taking antidepressants among clinically depressed individuals who take antidepressants and the effectiveness of two possible interventions to reduce this stigma among others. Study 1 revealed that stigma toward individuals who take antidepressants is a reality, either because people were not educated about depression and antidepressants, or because they did not show empathy or did not take on perspectives from the victim's point-of-view. Based on these results, we used an experimental design in Study 2 to investigate the effects of education and perspective-taking interventions in diminishing the stigma of taking antidepressants. These results suggest that participant gender played a moderating role in the effectiveness of education and perspective taking, such that a combination of the two interventions resulted in lower stigma for men but not for women. These results suggest that people can be trained (using a simple, low-fidelity intervention) to be more accepting of antidepressant use among their friends, family members, and colleagues, resulting in better outcomes for those who benefit from taking antidepressants.

Perspective taking: motivation and impediment to shared reality

Taking another person's perspective requires acknowledging that there is another viewpoint, which can challenge the concept of shared reality. At the same time, taking someone else's perspective can also preserve shared reality, by helping to explain how aspects of the world may be perceived differently by two different individuals. Thus, establishing or maintaining shared reality may be a primary motivator for perspective taking in everyday life. However, depending on the content (e.g., self-perceptions, assumptions about other people, cherished beliefs) used in constructing another perspective and comparing it with one's own, perspective taking may in some cases instead highlight differences between how people view the world, thus hindering a sense of shared reality.

The Cultural Boundaries of Perspective-Taking: When and Why Perspective-Taking Reduces Stereotyping

Research conducted in Western cultures indicates that perspective-taking is an effective social strategy for reducing stereotyping. The current article explores whether and why the effects of perspective-taking on stereotyping differ across cultures. Studies 1 and 2 established that perspective-taking reduces stereotyping in Western but not in East Asian cultures. Using a socioecological framework, Studies 2 and 3 found that relational mobility, that is, the extent to which individuals' social environments provide them opportunities to choose new relationships and terminate old ones, explained our effect: Perspective-taking was negatively associated with stereotyping in relationally mobile (Western) but not in relationally stable (East Asian) environments. Finally, Study 4 examined the proximal psychological mechanism underlying the socioecological effect: Individuals in relationally mobile environments are more motivated to develop new relationships than those in relationally stable environments. Subsequently, when this motivation is high, perspective-taking increases self-target group overlap, which then decreases stereotyping.

The Impact of Mindfulness and Perspective-Taking on Implicit Associations Toward the Elderly: a Relational Frame Theory Account

Perspective-taking interventions have been shown to improve attitudes toward social outgroups. In contrast, similar interventions have produced opposite effects (i.e., enhanced negativity) in the context of attitudes toward elderly groups. The current study investigated whether a brief perspective-taking intervention enhanced with mindfulness would be associated with less negativity than perspective-taking alone. One hundred five participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions which comprised of an active or control perspective-taking component and an active or control mindfulness component. Participants were then administered an Implicit Associated Test to assess implicit biases toward the elderly. Results supported previous findings in that the condition in which perspective-taking was active but mindfulness was inactive was associated with greater negative implicit bias toward the elderly; however, some of this negativity decreased in the active perspective-taking and active mindfulness condition. The current findings and other mixed effects that have emerged from perspective-taking interventions are discussed from a Relational Frame Theory perspective.

How discrimination and perspective-taking influence adolescents' attitudes about justice

Little is known about factors influencing adolescents' justice attitudes. This online study investigates perspective-taking and experiences with discrimination for their associations with adolescents' beliefs about how justice is best served. Participants included 179 ethnically/racially diverse high school students (M_age = 16.67 years; SD = 1.02). Higher perspective-taking was associated with less punitive and more restorative attitudes. Youth reporting more personal and ethnic/racial discrimination experiences endorsed more restorative justice attitudes. Perspective-taking also moderated the associations between reports of family, personal, and religious discrimination and punitive justice attitudes: adolescents reporting higher discrimination showed a stronger inverse relationship between perspective-taking and punitive attitudes. Findings have implications for school and community programs aiming to implement restorative policies, and for adolescents' civic participation.

Intelligence and Neurophysiological Markers of Error Monitoring Relate to Children's Intellectual Humility

This study explored developmental and individual differences in intellectual humility (IH) among 127 children ages 6-8. IH was operationalized as children's assessment of their knowledge and willingness to delegate scientific questions to experts. Children completed measures of IH, theory of mind, motivational framework, and intelligence, and neurophysiological measures indexing early (error-related negativity [ERN]) and later (error positivity [Pe]) error-monitoring processes related to cognitive control. Children's knowledge self-assessment correlated with question delegation, and older children showed greater IH than younger children. Greater IH was associated with higher intelligence but not with social cognition or motivational framework. ERN related to self-assessment, whereas Pe related to question delegation. Thus, children show separable epistemic and social components of IH that may differentially contribute to metacognition and learning.

The mediating effects of organization-based self-esteem for the relationship between workplace ostracism and workplace behaviors

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effects of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) for the relationship between workplace ostracism with helping behavior, voicing behavior, in-role behavior, and deviant behavior. The workplace has now become a social context where ostracism occurs and the study emphasizes how ostracism can affect workplace behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was designed using a three-wave self-reported survey. Confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping for indirect effects were conducted to test the study’s hypotheses.

Findings

The study found OBSE to fully mediate the relationship between workplace ostracism and helping behavior, voicing behavior, and in-role behavior, while OBSE partially mediated workplace ostracism and deviant behavior as workplace ostracism was found to have a direct effect on deviant behavior.

Originality/value

The study explores and empirically tests the mediating effects of OBSE with helping behavior, voicing behavior, in-role behavior, and deviant behavior. Therefore, the study extends research on workplace ostracism by investigating beyond the direct effects of workplace ostracism on workplace behaviors.

Effects of behavioural activation on the neural basis of other perspective self-referential processing in subthreshold depression: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

BACKGROUND

It has been demonstrated that negatively distorted self-referential processing, in which individuals evaluate one's own self, is a pathogenic mechanism in subthreshold depression that has a considerable impact on the quality of life and carries an elevated risk of developing major depression. Behavioural activation (BA) is an effective intervention for depression, including subthreshold depression. However, brain mechanisms underlying BA are not fully understood. We sought to examine the effect of BA on neural activation during other perspective self-referential processing in subthreshold depression.

METHOD

A total of 56 subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans during a self-referential task with two viewpoints (self/other) and two emotional valences (positive/negative) on two occasions. Between scans, while the intervention group (n = 27) received BA therapy, the control group (n = 29) did not.

RESULTS

The intervention group showed improvement in depressive symptoms, increased activation in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and increased reaction times during other perspective self-referential processing for positive words after the intervention. Also, there was a positive correlation between increased activation in the dmPFC and improvement of depressive symptoms. Additionally, there was a positive correlation between improvement of depressive symptoms and increased reaction times.

CONCLUSIONS

BA increased dmPFC activation during other perspective self-referential processing with improvement of depressive symptoms and increased reaction times which were associated with improvement of self-monitoring function. Our results suggest that BA improved depressive symptoms and objective monitoring function for subthreshold depression.

A Majority Group’s Perspective-taking Towards a Minority Group

This research investigates the impact of perspective-taking on a majority group’s support for government action to help a minority group. Data among a sample of Indonesian Muslims ( N = 380), representing a religious majority group in Indonesia, showed that perspective-taking was a strong positive predictor of Muslims’ support for government action to help Christian minority. Relative Muslim prototypicality vis-à-vis Christians depressed perspective-taking. Contrariwise, inclusive victimhood reflecting a perception that Muslims are equally afflicted relative to Christians in intergroup conflicts, involving both groups, promoted perspective-taking. Relative Muslim prototypicality was augmented by the extent to which this majority group glorified Islam and was motivated to protect Islamic power. However, inclusive victimhood instead attenuated relative Muslim prototypicality. These findings suggest the importance of enhancing inclusive victimhood, given its impact in promoting perspective-taking which is beneficial to the majority’s support for minority helping.

The power of connections: Psychological sense of community as a predictor of volunteerism

Two studies explored psychological antecedents of volunteerism, including several dispositional constructs and psychological sense of community (PSOC). In Study 1, 140 retirees completed measures of empathy, self-esteem, generativity, and PSOC, as well as involvement in volunteer organizations and weekly volunteering hours at two points in time. PSOC predicted concurrent and future volunteerism even after controlling for the other predictors. In Study 2 (n = 427), PSOC and measures of environmental concern and connectedness were used to predict current environmental volunteerism and activism. PSOC was the only measure reliably and uniquely related to these behaviors. Across two different domains and operationalizations of PSOC, the findings support the validity and utility of PSOC for understanding general and issue-specific volunteerism. More generally, they highlight social relationships and psychological connections as potential pathways to volunteerism and social action.

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.

Comparison of the Effects of Individual and Group-Level Perspective Taking on Intergroup Reconciliation

Abstract. We investigated the effects of different perspective taking instructions on emotional variables in the context of intergroup reconciliation. In three experiments we found that individual-level and group-level perspective taking increased willingness to compensate an outgroup for historical transgressions of the ingroup. The data suggests that the two forms of perspective taking trigger different psychological processes. Individual-level perspective taking was more strongly linked to feelings of empathy. Group-level perspective taking increased feelings of collective guilt. Collective guilt mediated the positive effect of group-level perspective taking on willingness to compensate. No such effect was found for individual-level perspective taking.

Putting on weight stigma: A randomized study of the effects of wearing a fat suit on eating, well-being, and cortisol

OBJECTIVE

Although a considerable amount of research has revealed connections between weight stigma and mental and physical health outcomes, no studies to date have experimentally manipulated the experience of obesity to understand how weight stigma causally affects eating behavior, physiology, and psychological well-being. Research has also not yet identified effective strategies for reducing weight stigma.

METHODS

In this research, the effect of weight stigma on psychological outcomes, unhealthy eating behavior, and the stress hormone cortisol was examined by randomly assigning participants to appear obese by wearing a fat suit or not. It was hypothesized that the physical alteration of participants' apparent body size would lead to similar consequences as those associated with the experience of weight stigma and reduce antifat attitudes.

RESULTS

Supporting these hypotheses, experimentally manipulating apparent body size led participants to consume more unhealthy foods and report higher levels of negative effect. However, the study did not show any differences in cortisol reactivity or reduction in antifat attitudes as a function of the fat suit manipulation.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings contribute to an understanding of the potentially deleterious psychological and behavioral effects of weight stigma while also informing future interventions to reduce weight stigma.

Contact, Perspective Taking, and Anxiety as Predictors of Stereotype Endorsement, Explicit Attitudes, and Implicit Attitudes

We proposed a model of intergroup contact wherein contact promotes understanding of outgroup perspectives, perspective taking relates to reduced intergroup anxiety that in turn is associated with lessened stereotyping and more positive intergroup attitudes. Additionally, we examined if implicit attitudes followed this model or were directly impacted by contact. White undergraduates ( n = 153) completed measures of contact, perspective taking, intergroup anxiety, stereotype endorsement, and implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes. Our model fitted the data well but explained explicit attitudes and stereotyping better than implicit attitudes. Supporting an environmental association interpretation, contact was the only significant predictor of implicit attitudes. Findings support a dual-process model wherein implicit and explicit attitudes represent separate constructs and support the value of contact in improving intergroup attitudes.

Perspective Taking Explains Gender Differences in Late Adolescents' Attitudes Toward Disadvantaged Groups

Adolescents' attitudes toward disadvantaged groups are surprisingly understudied. What we know from these few studies is that adolescents' attitudes tend to become more favorable over time and that adolescent girls display more favorable attitudes than do adolescent boys. However, researchers have not offered explanations for why these effects occur. We proposed that changes in social-cognitive abilities that accompany adolescent development increase perspective taking and that the increased perspective taking facilitates more favorable attitudes toward disadvantaged groups. Because girls develop social-cognitive abilities earlier than boys, girls should show greater perspective taking and thus more positive attitudes toward disadvantaged groups than should boys. Importantly, we propose that these more positive attitudes are explained better by perspective taking than by gender. Participants were late adolescents (n = 803, 53.3 % female, ages 15-19) from high schools in north-central Florida (United States) participating in an ongoing, multi-wave study. Participants completed a measure of perspective-taking and reported their attitudes toward three disadvantaged groups (Black, gay, and poor people) during their third year of high school and, again, 6 months later during their fourth year of high school. Our findings provided strong support for our theorizing. Girls generally reported warmer attitudes than did boys toward disadvantaged groups, with the gender differences in warmth tending to diminish across time. Similarly, girls were higher than boys in perspective-taking abilities at both time points, although boys increased over time whereas girls did not. Crucially, perspective taking mediated observed gender differences in attitudes, suggesting that perspective taking is a mechanism for improving attitudes toward disadvantaged groups during late adolescence.

Action Contribution to Competence Judgments: The Use of the Journey Schema

The current research considered the question of how performing an action, or merely preparing the body for action, can have an impact on social judgments related to person perception. Participants were asked to ascribe competence and warmth characteristics to a target person by reading a metaphoric text while their body was manipulated to be prepared for the processing of action-congruent information. In Experiment 1, participants whose forward body action matched the metaphoric action described in the text ascribed more competence characteristics to a politician than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants whose body was merely prepared for forward movement also ascribed more competence characteristics to a politician than did control participants. In addition, the data from Experiment 2 ruled out an alternative non-embodied explanation (i.e., that effect is due to basic associative processes) grounded in the existing literatures on attitudes by demonstrating that body manipulation had no effect on competence when a non-metaphoric text was used. Finally, no evidence was found that body manipulation affects warmth judgments. These studies converge in demonstrating that forward body movements enhance the favorability of competence judgments when these match the metaphoric forward movements described by text.

The Impact of Emotions and Empathy-Related Traits on Punishment Behavior: Introduction and Validation of the Inequality Game

In the prevention and resolution of conflicts in social contexts, an important step is to understand how different emotions and empathic traits are linked to punishment behaviors. Unfortunately, few paradigms exist to study these phenomena. Here, we developed the Inequality Game (IG) as an economic and verbal interaction paradigm in which participants are faced with an "unfair other" as opposed to a "fair other" and subsequently have the opportunity to engage in a range of social behaviors. These social behaviors include cooperative or competitive economic choices and nice or derogatory verbal behavior toward the unfair and fair other. Participants could thus engage in punishment or forgiveness behavior toward the unfair other as well as in cooperative or aggressive behavior toward the fair other. We validated the IG through multimodal measures comprising the assessment of personality traits, emotions (by means of facial expressions and self-reports), arousal (by means of skin conductance responses), physical effort (force exertion), and behavioral reactions. Second, we examined the influence of emotions and empathy-related traits on punishment behavior. With regard to emotions, we observed a positive relation between malicious joy and punishment behavior. This result highlights the role of reward-related mechanisms in favoring punishment behavior. In addition, different empathic traits had opposing effects on antisocial behavior. Whereas personal distress predicted aggressive verbal behavior, perspective taking and empathic concern predicted a reduction in punishment behavior. Empathic traits also modulated emotional experience and person evaluations, such that perspective taking was related to more positive affect (less frowning and more smiling) and a more favorable evaluation of the unfair other. The current data validate the IG, reveal that malicious joy is positively related to punishment behavior, and show that different types of empathic traits can have opposing effects on antisocial behavior as well as on related emotions and person evaluations.