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

How We Understand Others: A Theory of How Social Perspective Taking Unfolds

Social perspective taking—the process through which perceivers discern the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of a target—is foundational for navigating social interactions, building relationships, maintaining mental health, promoting well-being, and a wide array of other desired outcomes. Despite its importance, little is known about how discrete social perspective taking attempts unfold. We propose a theory that the social perspective taking process consists of up to four distinguishable phases: perception of the target, motivation to engage in social perspective taking, strategy selection, and evaluation of the attempt. Scholars have emphasized two proximal outcomes of this process—social perspective taking effort and accuracy. We review the literature in support of these phases, noting the relative maturity of each area of research. In doing so, we hope this theory provides a framework for contextualizing how existing studies relate to one another across different subfields of psychology, facilitates testable predictions, prioritizes future investigations, and guides applied research designed to improve real-world social perspective taking.

You Are Old, but Are You Out? Intergenerational Contact Impacts on Out-Group Perspective-Taking and on the Roles of Stereotyping and Intergroup Anxiety

Perspective-taking (PT) is an important ability to imagine the world from another's point of view. Prior studies have shown that younger adults are more likely to consider the opinions of age-based in-group members relative to out-group members. However, the cause of this priority is still unknown. We conducted three independent studies to explore the effect of intergenerational contact on younger adults' PT toward older adults and the possible roles of stereotyping and intergroup anxiety. A total of 192 college students completed the Perspective taking Scale in Study 1 after being primed with age-based intergroup relationships. The results indicated that younger adults found it more difficult to take the perspective of older adults than that of their peers. 200 college students completed the Prior Contact Scale, Intergroup Anxiety Scale, Negative Stereotype Scale, and PT Scale in Study 2. The results demonstrated that intergenerational contact improved PT toward older adults by disrupting negative stereotypes, and intergroup anxiety moderated this mediating relationship. A total of 215 college students completed the PT Scale in the context of imagining intergenerational contact in Study 3. Interestingly, imagined contact effectively increased younger adults' ability to take older adults' perspectives. The present research verifies that contact is important for influencing younger adults' emotional (intergroup anxiety) and attitudinal (stereotyping) factors that are critical to improving younger adults' ability to take older people's perspectives. This is of great significance for developing harmonious intergenerational relationships.

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).

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.

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.

A daily diary study on adolescents' mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Adolescence is a formative phase for social development. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated regulations have led to many changes in adolescents' lives, including limited opportunities for social interactions. The current exploratory study investigated the effect of the first weeks of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on Dutch adolescents' (N = 53 with attrition, N = 36 without attrition) mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Longitudinal analyses comparing pre-pandemic measures to a three-week peri-pandemic daily diary study showed (i) decreases in empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension, (ii) stable levels of social value orientation, altruism, and dire prosociality, and (iii) increased levels of perspective-taking and vigor during the first weeks of lockdown. Second, this study investigated peri-pandemic effects of familiarity, need, and deservedness on giving behavior. To this end, we utilized novel hypothetical Dictator Games with ecologically valid targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescents showed higher levels of giving to a friend (a familiar other, about 51% of the total share), a doctor in a hospital (deserving target, 78%), and individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system (targets in need, 69 and 63%, respectively) compared to an unfamiliar peer (39%) This suggests that during the pandemic need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity. Overall, this study demonstrates detrimental effects of the first weeks of lockdown on adolescents' empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions, which are important predictors of healthy socio-emotional development. However, adolescents also showed marked resilience and a willingness to benefit others as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by improved perspective-taking and mood, and high sensitivity to need and deservedness in giving to others.

Your Performance Is My Concern: A Perspective-Taking Competition Task Affects ERPs to Opponent's Outcomes

Previous research has shown that people have more empathic responses to in-group members and more schadenfreude to out-group members. As a dimension of cognitive empathy, perspective-taking has been considered to be related to the enhancement of empathy. We tried to combine these effects through manipulation of a competitive task with opponents and an in-group partner and investigated the potential effect of in-group bias or the perspective-taking effect on outcome evaluation. We hypothesized that the neural activities would provide evidence of in-group bias. We tested it with a simple gambling observation task and recorded subjects' electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. Our results showed that the opponent's loss evoked larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) and smaller P300 activity than the partner's loss condition, and there was a win vs. loss differential effect in P300 for the opponent only. The principal component analysis (PCA) replicated the loss vs. win P300 effect to opponent's performance. Moreover, the correlation between the inclusion of the other in the self (IOS) scores and FRN suggests perspective-taking may induce greater monitoring to opponent's performance, which increases the win vs. loss differentiation brain response to the out-group agent. Our results thus provide evidence for the enhanced attention toward out-group individuals after competition manipulation, as well as the motivation significance account of FRN.

Regulatory Focus and Conspiratorial Perceptions: The Importance of Personal Control

We examine when and why people subscribe to conspiratorial beliefs, suggesting that promotion focus reduces conspiratorial perceptions by activating a sense of personal control. Study 1 established that individuals primed with promotion focus are less likely to perceive conspiracies than those in a baseline condition. However, individuals primed with prevention focus and those in a baseline condition did not differ in their levels of conspiratorial beliefs. Study 2 demonstrated that soldiers higher in promotion focus were less likely to endorse conspiracy theories because of their heightened sense of control; this relationship did not emerge for soldiers higher in prevention focus. Study 3 found that conspiratorial beliefs increased when individuals primed with promotion focus recalled personal control loss, whereas those primed with prevention focus were unaffected by personal control loss. Using measures and manipulations of regulatory focus and personal control, we establish when and why promotion focus reduces conspiracy theories.