Spatial and Empathic Perspective-Taking Correlate on a Dispositional Level

Empathic perspective-taking is inevitably described using spatial locatives ("understanding a point of view") and involves a metaphorical "merging of the self and other." This correlation could not be explained by general intelligence (Study 2) and was nominally stronger among participants who explicitly reported that they engaged in spatial perspective-taking (Study 3). Study 4 showed a correlation between empathic perspective-taking and performance on another spatial perspective-taking task. These relations can be explained by a shared mechanism of embodied self-rotation during all kinds of perspective-taking.