When to Use Your Head and When to Use Your Heart: The Differential Value of Perspective-Taking Versus Empathy in Competitive Interactions

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin 2013-01, Vol.39 (1), p.3-16
• Main Authors: Gilin, Debra, Maddux, William W., Carpenter, Jordan, Galinsky, Adam D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Canada; Coalitions; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cooperative Behavior; Emotions; Empathy; Games; Humans; Individual differences; Intention; Interpersonal communication; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Models, Psychological; Motivation; Perspective taking; Regression Analysis; Social Behavior; Social Perception; Social psychology; Students - psychology; War games; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0146-1672; 1552-7433
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167212465320

Four studies explored whether perspective-taking and empathy would be differentially effective in mixed-motive competitions depending on whether the critical skills for success were more cognitively or emotionally based. Study 1 demonstrated that individual differences in perspective-taking, but not empathy, predicted increased distributive and integrative performance in a multiple-round war game that required a clear understanding of an opponent’s strategic intentions. Conversely, both measures and manipulations of empathy proved more advantageous than perspective-taking in a relationship-based coalition game that required identifying the strength of interpersonal connections (Studies 2-3). Study 4 established a key process: perspective-takers were more accurate in cognitive understanding of others, whereas empathy produced stronger accuracy in emotional understanding. Perspective-taking and empathy were each useful but in different types of competitive, mixed-motive situations—their success depended on the task–competency match. These results demonstrate when to use your head versus your heart to achieve the best outcomes for oneself.