Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other.

TLDR

Possible explanations for these findings are discussed. Two experiments examined whether perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representations of others that substantially overlap with the observers' own self‑representations. Experiment 2 varied role‑taking instructions with or without a distracting memory task to test its effect on self‑target overlap. Role‑taking increased self‑target overlap, especially for positive traits, but a concurrent memory task reduced this overlap across all traits.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the possibility that perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representation 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.