Effect of Perspective Taking on the Cognitive Representation of Persons: A Merging of Self and Other

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology 1996-04, Vol.70 (4), p.713-726
• Main Authors: Davis, Mark H, Conklin, Laura, Smith, Amy, Luce, Carol
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Attention; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive representation; Defense Mechanisms; Factors; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Individuality; Internal-External Control; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Mental Recall; Perception of others; Perceptions; Personality Assessment; Perspective taking; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Role Playing; Role Taking; Self; Self Concept; Self-Perception; Social attribution, perception and cognition; Social Cognition; Social Comparison; Social Identification; Social Perception; Social psychology
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.70.4.713

Two experiments examined the possibility that perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representations of others that substantially overlap with the observers' own self-representations. In Experiment 1 observers receiving role-taking instructions were more likely to ascribe traits to a novel target that they (observers) had earlier indicated were self-descriptive. This pattern was most pronounced, however, for positively valenced traits. In Experiment 2 some participants received role-taking instructions but were also given a distracting memory task. In the absence of this task, role taking again produced greater overlap-primarily for positive traits-between self- and target representations. In the presence of the memory task, the degree of self-target overlap was significantly reduced for all traits, regardless of valence. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.