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The structure of self–other overlap and its relationship to perspective taking
Abstract
Two studies tested whether “self–other overlap” is a multidimensional construct, with only some dimensions affected by perspective taking. In Study 1, participants (n = 132) completed several previously used measures of self–other overlap for their best friend and acquaintance. Factor analyses revealed 2 distinct dimensions of self–other overlap—perceived closeness and overlapping representations. Perceived closeness but not overlapping representations was generally associated with relationship quality. Study 2 (n = 118) manipulated perspective taking of a stranger. Results replicated a factor structure similar to Study 1, and found that perspective taking had different effects on the 2 dimensions of overlap. These results are discussed with regards to the debate over self–other overlap as a mediator of perspective taking's pro‐social effects.
... While self-other overlap is often measured with a single self-report item 24 , factor analyses suggest it is actually a multidimensional construct. Specifically, self-other overlap involves perceived closeness, or the closeness of the relationship between self and other, and overlapping representations, or the extent to which ones representation of self is overlapping with their representation of the other 38 . Recent work has found that overlapping representations track social closeness 27 , and correlate with real-world prosociality such that those who have donated an organ to a stranger show greater overlap in self and other representations 39 . ...
... These results suggest that when making prosocial cognitive effort decisions, people are not homo economicus only considering potential costs and rewards. Instead, social considerations like how similar they think others are to themselves 38,39 and how their actions might impact others 55,56 also influence decisions. The multivariate approach we take here to measuring extent of overlap between self and other representations provides a simple yet flexible framework for integrating www.nature.com/scientificreports/ ...
... While participants did not observe any emotions directly, they may have used perspective taking to imagine the potential happiness or suffering of charities and strangers when first learning for whom they will be earning funds. The extent to which individuals initially took the perspective of charities and strangers may have increased the extent to which their representation of that target overlapped with their own self representation 38,58,59 . When actually deciding to invest effort or not, participants had only 5 s to integrate information about the target, the value of the reward, and the level of effort required. ...
Effort is aversive and often avoided, even when earning benefits for oneself. Yet, people sometimes work hard for others. How do people decide who is worth their effort? Prior work shows people avoid physical effort for strangers relative to themselves, but invest more physical effort for charity. Here, we find that people avoid cognitive effort for others relative to themselves, even when the cause is a personally meaningful charity. In two studies, participants repeatedly decided whether to invest cognitive effort to gain financial rewards for themselves and others. In Study 1, participants (N = 51; 150 choices) were less willing to invest cognitive effort for a charity than themselves. In Study 2, participants (N = 47; 225 choices) were more willing to work cognitively for a charity than an intragroup stranger, but again preferred cognitive exertion that benefited themselves. Computational modeling suggests that, unlike prior physical effort findings, cognitive effort discounted the subjective value of rewards linearly. Exploratory machine learning analyses suggest that people who represented others more similarly to themselves were more willing to invest effort on their behalf, opening up new avenues for future research.
... Finally, we took this opportunity to investigate one hypothesized mechanism responsible for low SCC individuals' empathic difficulties-heightened perceptual overlap between the self and other (i.e., low self-other distinction), also known as "self-other merging" (Myers & Hodges, 2012). Although some researchers have shown that self-other merging facilitates empathy and subsequent prosocial behavior (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1997), others argue that high levels of self-other merging can lead to empathic personal distress (presumably because the self and other are difficult to disentangle; Batson et al., 1987, Batson, Sager, et al., 1997. ...
... After answering an attention check question ("What happened to Katie's parents?"), participants rated their empathic reaction to Katie's story (i.e., personal distress and empathic concern) and completed two widely used measures of self-other merging. Previous research has shown that self-other merging has two dimensions: conceptual overlap between self and other and perceived closeness (Myers & Hodges, 2012). Because we had no specific predictions about which dimension of self-other merging would be related to SCC, we administered measures reflecting each dimension (see Measures for details). ...
... The mean absolute difference between the ratings of oneself and of Katie reflects self-other merging. More specifically, more recent work shows that this measure captures the perceived overlap between one's own self-concept and that of the other person's (Myers & Hodges, 2012). For ease of interpretation, the scores were reflected so that higher numbers indicated greater self-other merging. ...
Empathy is fundamental to social functioning. Although empathy involves sharing the emotional experience of another, research also highlights the importance of distinguishing the self from the other for optimal empathic responding. Without adequate self-other distinction, sharing another person's emotions can induce personal distress, a self-focused aversive reaction that often leads to withdrawing from the situation, rather than empathic concern, an other-oriented response of care. To date, no work has examined the psychological factors that might facilitate such self-other distinction in the context of empathy. We show that self-concept clarity (SCC), the extent to which the self is clearly defined, coherent, and temporally stable, predicts empathic responding. In Study 1 (N = 453, student sample), we show that low SCC is associated with more dispositional empathic personal distress and less empathic concern. We replicate these dispositional associations in Study 2 (N = 319, community sample) and, using Batson's classic Katie Banks paradigm, show that these associations hold in an actual empathy-inducing situation. Moreover, in Study 2, SCC predicts helping behavior, an effect that is mediated by feelings of personal distress and empathic concern. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 658, community sample), we again use the Katie Banks paradigm but in an experimental framework; consistent with Study 2, state SCC predicts empathic personal distress, empathic concern and helping behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of a clear, coherent and stable self-concept for empathy, and suggest that interventions aimed at increasing empathy may be futile in the presence of a weak and unclear sense of self. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Perspective taking has also been described as a way of "expanding the self" (e.g., see Galinsky et al. 2005) by including other people (and their perspectives) in the self-concept (Galinsky/Moskowitz 2000). Those other people then benefit from the generally self-favoring views and treatment granted to the self (Aron et al. 1991;Batson et al. 2003;Myers/Hodges 2012;Sassenrath et al. 2016, although see Galinsky/Ku 2004). Another path between perspective taking and prosocial behavior runs via perspective taking's arousal of empathic concern and compassion for others, which in turn triggers altruism in the form of helping (e.g., Batson 1987;Batson et al. 2007;Coke et al. 1978). ...
... Social psychologists have been able to measure this phenomenon, showing that perspective taking reliably increases perceived overlap between self and other (Davis et al. 1996;Galinsky/Moskowitz 2000;Myers/Hodges 2012). Many studies of perspective taking have shown that post-perspective taking, people perceive themselves as more similar to the other person; describe themselves in more similar terms; and choose graphical representations of themselves and the other person that literally show greater overlap (Laurent/Myers 2011;Maner et al. 2002;Myers/Hodges 2012;Myers et al. 2014). ...
... Social psychologists have been able to measure this phenomenon, showing that perspective taking reliably increases perceived overlap between self and other (Davis et al. 1996;Galinsky/Moskowitz 2000;Myers/Hodges 2012). Many studies of perspective taking have shown that post-perspective taking, people perceive themselves as more similar to the other person; describe themselves in more similar terms; and choose graphical representations of themselves and the other person that literally show greater overlap (Laurent/Myers 2011;Maner et al. 2002;Myers/Hodges 2012;Myers et al. 2014). Perspective taking rarely (if ever) produces the sense that the self and the other person occupy the exact same space, but the act of perspective taking seems to highlight the extent to which the self and the other person are perceived as overlapping in space. ...
... Of relevance to relational motives, perspective takers have been found to feel closer to their perspective taking targets [22]. Perspective taking may also be motivated by a desire to favor a beloved or influential person (i.e., taking their perspective to give them what they want). ...
... Perspective taking results in people ascribing more self characteristics to the target of perspective taking [25,26]. Also as noted above, people perceive themselves as being closer to others whose perspectives they take [22]. Thus, perspective taking increases overlap in both the cognitive representations of the self and other, and in their closeness in psychological space. ...
... Thus, perspective taking increases overlap in both the cognitive representations of the self and other, and in their closeness in psychological space. As this overlap increases, in turn, favorable views and treatment that are generally extended to the self are also extended to the targets of perspective taking [22,27]. Perspective taking can also lead us to assimilate our own perspective to someone else's, thus changing the self [28-30]. ...
Taking another person's perspective requires acknowledging that there is another viewpoint, which can challenge the concept of shared reality. At the same time, taking someone else's perspective can also preserve shared reality, by helping to explain how aspects of the world may be perceived differently by two different individuals. Thus, establishing or maintaining shared reality may be a primary motivator for perspective taking in everyday life. However, depending on the content (e.g., self-perceptions, assumptions about other people, cherished beliefs) used in constructing another perspective and comparing it with one's own, perspective taking may in some cases instead highlight differences between how people view the world, thus hindering a sense of shared reality.
... However, the evidence that perspective taking really does manipulate self-other overlap is mixed. Maner et al. (2002) and Myers and Hodges (2011) found that imagine-other instructions did increase self-other overlap, whereas Batson, Sager, et al. (1997) did not. Myers, Laurent, and Hodges (2014) found that imagine-self but not imagine-other instructions increase self-other overlap, whereas imagine-other and imagine-self instructions increase empathic concern to the same extent, relative to remain-objective instructions. ...
... Another potential limitation of the present experiment is that we used only the Inclusion of Other in Self Scale to measure selfother overlap. We used the Inclusion of Other in Self Scale because it is a validated scale that has been used in many experiments that challenge the empathy-altruism hypothesis (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1997;Maner et al., 2002), but Myers and Hodges (2011) found that the Inclusion of Other in Self Scale most likely reflects psychological closeness. Many authors do not construe self-other overlap as psychological closeness per se, but rather as reflecting the degree to which mental representations of the self and other person are congruent. ...
... Many authors do not construe self-other overlap as psychological closeness per se, but rather as reflecting the degree to which mental representations of the self and other person are congruent. Thus, it may have been more appropriate for us to use measures that Myers and Hodges (2011) identified as reflecting overlapping mental representations between the self and another person, such as an attribute checklist (Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996) or difference ratings (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). ...
Researchers have identified the capacity to take the perspective of others as a precursor to empathy-induced altruistic motivation. Consequently, investigators frequently use so-called perspective-taking instructions to manipulate empathic concern. However, most experiments using perspective-taking instructions have had modest sample sizes, undermining confidence in the replicability of results. In addition, it is unknown whether perspective-taking instructions work because they increase empathic concern or because comparison conditions reduce empathic concern (or both). Finally, some researchers have found that egoistic factors that do not involve empathic concern, including self-oriented emotions and self-other overlap, mediate the relationship between perspective-taking instructions and helping. The present investigation was a high-powered, preregistered effort that addressed methodological shortcomings of previous experiments to clarify how and when perspective-taking manipulations affect emotional arousal and prosocial motivation in a prototypical experimental paradigm administered over the internet. Perspective-taking instructions did not clearly increase empathic concern; this null finding was not due to ceiling effects. Instructions to remain objective, on the other hand, unequivocally reduced empathic concern relative to a no-instructions control condition. Empathic concern was the most strongly felt emotion in all conditions, suggesting that distressed targets primarily elicit other-oriented concern. Empathic concern uniquely predicted the quality of social support provided to the target, which supports the empathy-altruism hypothesis and contradicts the role of self-oriented emotions and self-other overlap in explaining helping behavior. Empathy-induced altruism may be responsible for many prosocial acts that occur in everyday settings, including the increasing number of prosocial acts that occur online.
... It is therefore important to understand the effects of attachment anxiety on relationship conflict outcomes in varying conflict contexts so as to identify when conflict discussions are more versus less constructive for a given relationship. The current study addresses this topic by examining whether conflict structure (i.e., who is requesting change from whom) moderates the way in which romantic attachment anxiety impacts people's perceptions of closeness with their significant other following conflict, as measured by self-partner overlap-a potent predictor of prosociality, positive relationship functioning, and relationship satisfaction (Aron & Fraley, 1999;Myers & Hodges, 2012). ...
... Self-other overlap-defined as a sense of "oneness" or lessened self-other distinction and the inclusion of resources, perspectives, and characteristics of others into the self (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992;Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991;Mashek, Aron, & Boncimino, 2003)-has emerged within the field of social psychology as an important predictor of relationship closeness and satisfaction, prosociality, and positive interpersonal functioning (Aron & Fraley, 1999;Myers & Hodges, 2012). Aron et al. (1992) also established that self-other overlap can predict whether a given relationship will remain intact 3 months later. ...
... Postconflict self-partner overlap. The pictorial, single-item Inclusion of Other into Self (IOS) scale (Aron et al., 1992) is the most common method for measuring self-other overlap (Myers & Hodges, 2012). The IOS contains seven pairs of circles (with one circle representing the self and the second representing one's partner) that vary in the extent to which they overlap with each other. ...
Romantic attachment anxiety—the chronic tendency to seek approval from and fear abandonment by romantic partners—is a strong negative predictor of relationship quality, which is in turn a multifaceted construct that includes perceived self-partner overlap (i.e., individuals’ sense of “oneness” with their partner). Potentially, discussing an issue of conflict within a relationship could be particularly threatening for individuals higher in romantic attachment anxiety, while at the same time presenting an opportunity for renewed closeness. To understand how and when attachment anxiety contributes to poor relationship outcomes, it is important to characterize the conflict conditions under which attachment anxiety predicts greater versus diminished self-partner overlap. The present study (n = 75 heterosexual couples) tested the hypothesis that the structure of an unresolved conflict discussion (i.e., whether the topic was self- or partner-nominated) would moderate the association between attachment anxiety and postconflict self-partner overlap. We found that increased attachment anxiety predicted increased self-partner overlap after discussing one’s own topic but did not predict less overlap after discussing one’s partner’s topic. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.
... B. Swann & Bosson, 2010), close relationships (Clark & Lemay, 2010), prosocial behavior (Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005), and aggression (Bushman & Huesmann, 2010). Over the last two decades theoretical interest has focused on how the self may be merged or overlap with others and how this self-other overlap influences different intrapersonal and interpersonal outcomes (Aron & Aron, 1996, 1997Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, et al., 2004;Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991;Batson, 1987Batson, , 1991Batson, , 1997Batson et al., 1997;Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996;Goldstein & Cialdini, 2007;Myers & Hodges, 2012;Neuberg et al., 1997). Furthermore, social psychological theory and research suggest that self-other overlap has important implications for prosocial behavior in close and non-close relationships Maner et al., 2002;Neuberg et al., 1997). ...
... In social psychology, research suggests that people sometimes psychologically include others into the self (Aron & Aron, 1986;Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, et al., 2004;Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992;Cialdini et al., 1997;Myers & Hodges, 2012) in a process known as self-other overlap. Self-other overlap is a psychological construct that may be more or less directly accessible to respondents (Myers & Hodges, 2012). ...
... In social psychology, research suggests that people sometimes psychologically include others into the self (Aron & Aron, 1986;Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, et al., 2004;Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992;Cialdini et al., 1997;Myers & Hodges, 2012) in a process known as self-other overlap. Self-other overlap is a psychological construct that may be more or less directly accessible to respondents (Myers & Hodges, 2012). As representative of a psychological construct, self-other overlap can form with any partner, regardless of kinship, varies across social contexts and partners, and may be easily malleable depending on input from the social environment. ...
The present dissertation uncovers the processes by which self-other overlap influences prosocial behavior and its consequences across different close relationships. Chapter I reviews extant theory and research on self-other overlap and its role in relationships and prosocial behavior. Chapter II explores whether discrete emotions shift perceptions of self-other overlap, and how shifts influence downstream prosocial tendencies across 4 studies. Study 1 found that reflecting on an angry experience with a close friend led to less self-other overlap and subsequent prosocial tendencies toward that friend, relative to reflecting on a happy or more neutral experience. Furthermore, anger undermined helping through the mediating role of self-other overlap, relative to the other conditions. Study 2 ruled out a general negative valence explanation after finding no significant self-other overlap differences from reflecting on emotions similar in valence (i.e., sad, content, or control) involving a close friend. Study 3 tested emotions that directly implicate others (i.e., gratitude, anger, and control) among best friends. Anger undermined self-other overlap, relative to the control. However, there were no self-other overlap differences between gratitude and control, condition effects on helping, or mediation. Study 4 found null effects of anger on self-other overlap, relative to gratitude and control, suggesting that marital relationships may be one boundary condition. Chapter III explores whether relationship type, a proxy for self-other overlap, moderates the long-term health outcomes of providing support to close others. Giving to emotionally close partners predicted mortality risk, when giving to children. This likely occurred because children activate the caregiving system, which is hypothesized to benefit stress-regulation. Study 5a found that providing support to adult children predicted reduced mortality risk 17 years later among older adult parents, but providing support to other partners (e.g., parents, siblings, other relatives, friends) did not predict mortality risk among either parents (Study 5a) or non-parents (Study 5b), controlling for a number of plausible confounds. Chapter IV concludes by discussing the implications of the research for a variety of research literatures and future directions. Together, the studies begin to illuminate the intricacies by which self-other overlap influences prosocial behavior and its consequences in different close relationships.
... Related research has shown that adopting another's perspective is positively associated with perceived closeness to that person, including caring, liking, and wanting to spend time with the person (Myers & Hodges, 2012;Schröder-Abé & Schutz, 2011). Interpreting events from another's viewpoint significantly links to feelings of "oneness" and seeing oneself as similar to that person (Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996;Goldstein & Cialdini, 2007). ...
... Second, adopting others' perspectives may lead individuals to be perceived by their partners as demonstrating desirable social behavior, rendering their partner satisfied with the relationship (Davis & Oathout, 1987). Third, individuals taking on their partner's viewpoint may experience feelings of closeness (Myers & Hodges, 2012;Schröder-Abé & Schutz, 2011) and oneness (Davis et al., 1996;Goldstein & Cialdini, 2007) with their partner, leading to satisfaction with the relationship (Schröder-Abé & Schutz, 2011). Fourth, enhanced perception of others' perspectives could increase one's likelihood of choosing a compatible partner (Malouff et al., 2014). ...
This meta-analysis evaluated the association between trait perspective taking and romantic relationship satisfaction. The study synthesized the association in 20 separate samples in a total of 18 published and unpublished studies, involving a total of 4,678 participants. The studies were completed by many different research teams, using different samples, different measures, and various correlational research designs. The results showed a significant association between trait perspective taking and romantic relationship satisfaction (r = .21, 95% confidence intervals [.17, .25]). The results did not vary significantly with whether the respondents were men or women, whether they rated their own perspective taking or that of their partner, or whether the perspective taking assessed was general or specific to the partner. The findings provide a basis for future intervention studies that test whether increasing perspective taking has a positive effect on relationship satisfaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... The IOS, Inclusion of Other in the Self-scale (Gächter et al., 2015) was used to ascertain familiarity within the duos along a 7-point scale (1 = ''not close at all,'' 7 = ''very close''). Only the subjects with IOS scores ≥4, reflecting close relationships (Aron et al., 1997;Myers and Hodges, 2012), were retained in the analyses. ...
... Twelve participants were excluded (five for saccades, one for visual search, three for continuous performance) because of eye-tracker recording problems (n = 4), misunderstanding of the instructions (n = 5), or IOS scores lower than 4 (n = 3) denoting acquaintances rather than close relationships. The remaining socially tested subjects reached 5.6/7 (±0.2) on the IOS scale, a high score typical of close partners such as best friends (Aron et al., 1997;Myers and Hodges, 2012). Table 1 provides, for each task, the number of subjects included in the analyses. ...
“Social facilitation” refers to the enhancement or impairment of performance engendered by the mere presence of others. It has been demonstrated for a diversity of behaviors. This study assessed whether it also concerns attention and eye movements and if yes, which decision-making mechanisms it affects. Human volunteers were tested in three different tasks (saccades, visual search, and continuous performance) either alone or in the presence of a familiar peer. The results failed to reveal any significant peer influence on the visual search and continuous performance tasks. For saccades, by contrast, they showed a negative or positive peer influence depending on the complexity of the testing protocol. Pro-and anti-saccades were both inhibited when pseudorandomly mixed, and both facilitated when performed separately. Peer presence impaired or improved reaction times, i.e., the speed to initiate the saccade, as well as peak velocity, i.e., the driving force moving the eye toward the target. Effect sizes were large, with Cohen’s d-values ranging for reaction times (RTs) from 0.50 to 0.95. Analyzing RT distributions using the LATER (Linear Approach to Threshold with Ergodic Rate) model revealed that social inhibition of pro- and anti-saccades in the complex protocol was associated with a significant increase in the rate of rise. The present demonstration that the simple presence of a familiar peer can inhibit or facilitate saccades depending on task difficulty strengthens a growing body of evidence showing social modulations of eye movements and attention processes. The present lack of effect on visual search and continuous performance tasks contrasts with peer presence effects reported earlier using similar tasks, and future studies are needed to determine whether it is due to an intermediate level of difficulty maximizing individual variability. Together with an earlier study of the social inhibition of anti-saccades also using the LATER model, which showed an increase of the threshold, the present increase of the rate of rise suggests that peer presence can influence both the top-down and bottom-up attention-related processes guiding the decision to move the eyes.
... 18 Myers et al found that selfother overlap scores can significantly predict an individual's understanding of others' emotional states, and the higher the overlap, the more accurate the understanding. 19 This suggests that the degree of self-other overlap may affect the frequency of online altruistic behavior by influencing the level of empathy. ...
Purpose
Although adolescent online behavior has become a research hotspot in recent years, most studies focus on the risks in online life, lacking research on positive phenomena online and even more so on the exploration of their internal mechanisms. This study explores the relationship between self-other overlap, empathy, moral identity, and adolescent online altruistic behavior, and discusses whether empathy and moral identity play a serial mediating role between self-other overlap and adolescent online altruistic behavior.
Patients and Methods
This study conducted a questionnaire survey on 392 adolescents. Descriptive analysis and correlation analysis were performed using SPSS 23.0, and model construction and bias-adjusted bootstrap mediation effect testing were conducted using Mplus 8.3.
Results
There were significant positive correlations between self-other overlap, empathy, moral identity and internet altruistic behavior (r=0.168~0.412, all p<0.01). Self-other overlap can directly predict internet altruistic behavior, and can also indirectly predict internet altruistic behavior through chain mediating effects of empathy and moral identity.
Conclusion
This study has discovered the internal mechanism by which self-other overlap affects online altruistic behavior, demonstrating that empathy and moral identity play a chain mediating role in this process. This finding can guide people to view the impact of network development more dialectically, calling for a focus on how to leverage the positive effects of the internet rather than simply blaming its negative impacts. It also provides new theoretical basis for guiding adolescents on how to use the internet healthily, contributing to the construction of a more harmonious online environment.
... Additionally, self-other overlap, a psychological construct that assesses perceived closeness and connectedness to others, can enhance perspective-taking (Aron & Fraley, 1999). When individuals feel a strong sense of self-other overlap, they are more likely to include others in their self, enhancing their empathy and prosocial behaviors (Myers & Hodges, 2012). On the other hand, prior experience could overload people's ability to process and attend to a VR narrative, particularly when the experience is traumatic or upsetting. ...
This paper examines the role of virtual reality (VR) in promoting cognitive empathy for characters in VR narratives with inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility themes. The paper describes the results of a mixed-methods study that found a complex interplay between prior experiences, cognitive effort, and VR design in fostering cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another person's thoughts and feelings). The study found that prior experiences, whether personal or through a close other, significantly influenced how individuals engaged with VR narratives. However, the study did not find a significant relationship between prior experience and cognitive effort. Recommendations for design are included.
... The first item measured similarity (i.e., "How similar do you think this protagonist is to you?" 1 = not at all, 7 = very much; Grigoryan, 2020). The second measured self-other overlap (Aron et al., 1992), which has been found to capture the same underlying construct as similarity (Myers & Hodges, 2012). We presented participants with seven diagrams, each depicting two circles (one representing the self and the other representing the protagonist) with varying degrees of overlap. ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are often perceived as lacking human-like qualities, leading to a preference for human experts over AI assistance. Extending prior research on AI aversion, the current research explores the potential aversion toward those using AI to seek advice. Through eight preregistered studies (total N = 2,317) across multiple AI use scenarios, we found that people denied humanness, especially emotional capacity and human nature traits, to AI-advice seekers in comparison to human-advice seekers (Studies 1–5 and S1–S3). This is because people perceived less similarity between themselves and AI-advice seekers (versus human-advice seekers), with a stronger mediating role of perceived similarity among individuals with greater aversion to AI (Studies 2 and S1). Dehumanization of AI-advice seekers predicted less behavioral support for (Study 3) and helping intention toward (Studies S2 and S3) them, and could be alleviated through anthropomorphism-related interventions, such as perceiving human-like qualities in AI or utilizing generative AI (Studies 4 and 5). These findings represent an important theoretical step in advancing research on AI aversion and add to the ongoing discussion on the potential adverse outcomes of AI, focusing on AI users.
... Feelings of social connection as measured by the IOS are related to a wide range of positive outcomes, including higher levels of perspective taking, empathy, helping, and wellbeing, as well as lower levels of prejudice, loneliness, and depression (Aron et al., 2004;Carmichael et al., 2015;Cialdini et al., 1997). Feelings of social connection are also malleable: when people are told they belong to the same group or share interests with other people, and when people take the perspective of another person, they report more self-other overlap on the IOS compared to control conditions (Batson et al., 1997;Myers & Hodges, 2012;Walton et al., 2012). ...
... Previous studies have reported that social factors may be critical for collaboration (Yang et al., 2021). Interpersonal distance, one of the social factors defined as the perceived psychological distance between individuals, has been shown to play an important role in social cognition and interaction (Aron et al., 2004;Myers and Hodges, 2012;Stephan et al., 2010). Among the previous studies that have focused on the influence of interpersonal distance on collaborative performance, some have shown a facilitating effect of interpersonal distance (e.g., Quintard et al., 2020), while other studies have found different results. ...
Collaboration is a critical skill in everyday life. It has been suggested that collaborative performance may be influenced by social factors such as interpersonal distance, which is defined as the perceived psychological distance between individuals. Previous literature has reported that close interpersonal distance may promote the level of selfother integration between interacting members, and in turn, enhance collaborative performance. These studies mainly focused on interdependent collaboration, which
requires high levels of shared representations and self-other integration. However, little is known about the effect of interpersonal distance on independent collaboration (e.g., the joint Simon task), in which individuals perform the task independently while the final
outcome is determined by the parties. To address this issue, we simultaneously measured the frontal activations of ninety-four pairs of participants using a functional
near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning technique while they performed a joint Simon task. Behavioral results showed that the Joint Simon Effect (JSE), defined as the RT difference between incongruent and congruent conditions indicating the level of self-other integration between collaborators, was larger in the friend group than in the stranger group. Consistently, the inter-brain neural
synchronization (INS) across the dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex was also stronger in the friend group. In addition, INS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex negatively predicted JSE only in the friend group. These results suggest that close interpersonal distance may enhance the shared mental representation among collaborators, which in turn influences their collaborative performance.
... Moreover, we implemented imagine-other rather than imagine-self perspective-taking instructions because we did not want to inadvertently increase feelings of interdependence by asking participants to imagine how they would feel if they were in the target's situation. When people engage in imagine-self perspective-taking (i.e., imagine how you would have felt if you were in your acquaintance's situation) they report greater IOS with the person in need; this is not the case for imagine-other perspective-taking instructions (Myers & Hodges, 2012;but see McAuliffe et al., 2018). Thus, we implemented imagine-other instructions across conditions (i.e., imagine how your acquaintance would have felt in his/her situation) to ensure that the target distress manipulation did not spill-over to measures of interdependence. ...
Previous research suggests that empathic concern selectively promotes motivation to help those with whom we typically have interdependent relationships, such as friends or siblings, rather than strangers or acquaintances. In a sample of U.S. participants (collected between 2018 and 2020), our studies not only confirmed the finding that empathic concern is directed somewhat more strongly toward interdependent relationship partners, but also showed cross-sectionally (Studies 1a–1b), and when manipulating target distress experimentally (Study 2), that empathic concern predicts higher willingness to help only when people perceive low interdependence in their relationship with the target. In Study 3, we manipulated perceived interdependence with an acquaintance via shared fate, and found that empathic concern only predicted helping motivation when we reduced shared fate, but not when we increased shared fate. These results suggest that when people perceive high interdependence in their relationships, shared fate is the driving force behind their desire to help, whereas when people perceive low interdependence with someone in need, empathic concern motivates them to help. A relationship-building perspective on empathic concern provides avenues for testing additional moderators, including those related to target-specific characteristics and culture and ecology.
... Although the effect of symmetrical communication on perceptions of connection with racially different others has not been explicitly tested, scholars have suggested that the self-other overlap can be fostered by the effort to take others' perspectives, consciously consider others' situations, and be sensitive to others' emotions (Galinsky et al., 2005;Myers & Hodges, 2012). Taking the perspective of others motivates people to perceive others as similar to themselves and encourages greater in-group perceptions (Chung & Slater, 2013). ...
... The IOS scale uses seven pairs of circles, one labelled "self " and the other labelled "peer", whose overlap varies from none to almost all. Higher IOS scores reflect a more familiar relationship between individuals (Aron et al., 1997;Myers & Hodges, 2012). The scale has been used widely in interpersonal closeness studies to measure the closeness of relationships (Baber, 2021;Herrera et al., 2018;Taillon et al., 2020). ...
Synchronous online learning via technology has become a major trend in institutions of higher education, allowing students to learn from video lectures alongside their peers online. However, relatively little research has focused on the influence of these peers on students’ learning during video lectures and even less on the effect of peer familiarity. The present study aimed to test the various effects of peer presence and peer familiarity on learning from video lectures. There were three experimental conditions: individual-learning, paired-learning with an unfamiliar peer, and paired-learning with a familiar peer. ANCOVA results found that students paired with a familiar peer reported higher motivation in learning and more self-monitoring behaviors than those paired with an unfamiliar peer or who learned alone. Furthermore, students paired with both unfamiliar or familiar peers demonstrated better learning transfer than those who learned alone. Together, these results confirm the benefits of and support learning alongside a familiar peer during video lectures.
... their IQs stood less than 10 points apart). Closeness scores, as assessed by the 7-point, Inclusion of Other in the Self scale ( Aron et al., 1992 ), reached scores ≥ 4 (children, mean: 5.94, range: 3-7; adults: mean: 5.54, range: 3-7), typical of close partners such as best friends ( Gächter et al., 2015 ;Myers and Hodges, 2012 ). ...
There is ample behavioral evidence that others' mere presence can affect any behavior in human and non-human animals, generally facilitating the expression of mastered responses while impairing the acquisition of novel ones. Much less is known about i) how the brain orchestrates the modulation of such a wide array of behaviors by others' presence and ii) when these neural underpinnings mature during development. To address these issues, fMRI data were collected in children and adults alternately observed and unobserved by a familiar peer. Subjects performed a numerosity comparison task and a phonological comparison task. While the former involves number-processing brain areas, the latter involves language-processing areas. Consistent with previous behavioral findings, adults' and children's performance improved in both tasks when observed by a peer. Across all participants, task-specific brain regions showed no reliable change in activity under peer observation. Rather, we found task-independent changes in domain-general brain regions typically involved in mentalizing, reward, and attention. Bayesian analyses singled out the attention network as the exception to the close child-adult resemblance of peer observation neural substrates. These findings suggest that i) social facilitation of some human education-related skills is primarily orchestrated by domain-general brain networks, rather than by task-selective substrates, and ii) apart from attention, peer presence neural processing is largely mature in children.
... Social and interpersonal competencies are seen as vital for academic progress of students (Webster-Stratton & Reid, 2004;Zsolnai, 2002) and also as essential for promoting diversity and inclusivity; for example, perspective-taking contributes to prosocial behaviour (Hodges et al., 2011), increases the propensity to help others and reduces outgroup bias (Batson et al., 2002;Vescio et al., 2003). Helping an individual to acknowledge that there is another viewpoint strengthens the self-other relationship by creating an overlap between the self and other cognitive representations: when people describe others, they tend to attribute a greater number of characteristics (especially positive) to the target of perspective-taking (Davis et al., 1996) and KEYWORDS perspective-taking, prejudice, active citizenship, program evaluation, education perceive themselves as being closer to those whose perspectives they are taking (Myers & Hodges, 2012). ...
The authors developed a Holding Community Program to achieve the following objectives: (a) to increase the perspective-taking capacity of adolescents; (b) to promote interpersonal and intergroup harmony; (c) to empower school students to be more (pro)active in their communities and in public life. Apart from the intervention itself, the study comprised a pre-test and a post-test and involved a total of 240 Hungarian high school students (159 female, 66.3%). The students were aged 14-18 (M age = 15.33; SD age = 0.88). They were recruited from four high schools. Control groups (N = 122) were chosen from the same institution and graded as experimental classes (N = 118, 7 classes). Both immediate and long-term effects of the intervention (4-6 months after the intervention) were explored. Quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the two-day intervention program had significantly increased the students' perspective-taking capacity (short-term: F(1, 238) = 6.03, p < 0.05, long-term: n.s.) and efficacy beliefs (short-term: F(1, 238) = 3.83, p = 0.052, long-term: F(1, 238) = 3.38, p < 0.05). After the training, students were more willing to participate in collective actions (short-term: F(1, 238) = 7.32, p < 0.01, long-term: F(1, 238) = 3.83, p < 0.05). These results seem quite promising but the outcome was not significant regarding its effect on prejudice.
... The enhanced feelings of closeness fostered by perspective-taking [28] can be expected to have a range of relational benefits and prosocial implications for the target. However, perspective-taking can also result in egocentric projection harming relationships: Perspectivetaking can lead individuals to exaggerate how easy it is for their romantic partner to read their mind during discussions involving disagreement [12]. ...
The path from perspective-taking to prosocial behavior is not as straightforward or robust as it is often assumed to be. In some contexts imagining another person’s viewpoint leads the perspective taker to thoughts about how that person might have negative thoughts or intentions toward them. It can also prompt other kinds of counter-productive egocentric projection. In this review we consider how prosocial processes potentially stimulated by perspective-taking can be derailed in such contexts. We also identify methodological limitations in current (social-) psychological evidence for a causal link between perspective-taking and prosocial outcomes. Increased appreciation of factors moderating the path from perspective-taking to prosocial behavior can enhance the explanatory power of perspective-taking as social cognitive process.
... Additionally, there are multiple measures to assess self-other overlap, such as Adjective Checklist Overlap, Absolute Difference in Attribute Ratings, and the Inclusion of Others in Self Scale (IOS; Aron et al., 1992). Myers and Hodges (2012) comprehensively analyzed these measures and identified perceived closeness (e.g., IOS) as the most effective way to measure the quality of the relationship between two people. For the above reasons, the present study does not take the indirect approaches but, instead, uses the IOS to directly measure selfother overlap. ...
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).
... The level of self-other overlap and the intention to interact with a stranger affects the multisensory representations of the space between oneself and the other (Pellencin et al., 2017). The level of self-other overlap is defined by two related factors, 'feeling close' and 'behaving close' (Myers & Hodges, 2012). Therefore, perceived social proximity may be dependent on the 'closeness' between another (stranger) subject's behavior and one's own pre-existing implicit expectations. ...
The PeriPersonal Space (PPS) has been defined as the space surrounding the body, where physical interactions with elements of the environment take place. As our world is social in nature, recent evidence revealed the complex modulation of social factors onto PPS representation. In light of the growing interest in the field, in this review we take a close look at the experimental approaches undertaken to assess the impact of social factors onto PPS representation. Our social world also influences the personal space (PS), a concept stemming from social psychology, defined as the space we keep between us and others to avoid discomfort. Here we analytically compare PPS and PS with the aim of understand if and how they relate to each other. At the behavioral level, the multiplicity of experimental methodologies, whether well-established or novel, lead to somewhat divergent results and interpretations. Beyond behavior, we review physiological and neural signatures of PPS representation to discuss how interoceptive signals could contribute to PPS representation, as well as how these internal signals could shape the neural responses of PPS representation. In particular, by merging exteroceptive information from the environment and internal signals that come from the body, PPS may promote an integrated representation of the self, as distinct from the environment and the others. We put forward that integrating internal and external signals in the brain for perception of proximal environmental stimuli may also provide us with a better understanding of the processes at play during social interactions. Adopting such an integrative stance may offer novel insights about PPS representation in a social world. Finally, we discuss possible links between PPS research and social cognition, a link that may contribute to the understanding of intentions and feelings of others around us and promote appropriate social interactions.
... Evidence from the cognitive sciences corroborates this hypothesis. In particular, some findings suggest that imagining oneself in another person's situation correlates with both an increased tendency to ascribe shared traits to oneself and the target, as well as increased liking for the target (Davis et al. 1996;Galinsky and Ku 2004;Myers and Hodges 2012). And at least in some cases, the same appears true for the target (Goldstein et al. 2014). ...
Critics of empathy—the capacity to share the mental lives of others—have charged that empathy is intrinsically biased. It occurs between no more than two people, and its key function is arguably to coordinate and align feelings, thoughts, and responses between those who are often already in close personal relationships. Because of this, critics claim that empathy is morally unnecessary at best and morally harmful at worst. This paper argues, however, that it is precisely because of its ability to connect people by coordinating and aligning their feelings, thoughts, and responses, that empathy is especially well suited to perform one particular moral task that has been largely overlooked in moral philosophical discussions. That is, helping people, including those who are antagonistically opposed on matters of moral, social, and political importance—what I call antagonistic moral opponents—find common ground: a set of shared beliefs, attitudes, values, or experiences that lays the requisite ground for even minimally positive relationships. Doing so can contribute to a number of morally, practically, and epistemically important outcomes, including resolving fraught disagreements, mitigating antagonism, promoting cooperation, learning from differences, and even forging positive relationships of various sorts. Contra critics, I therefore maintain that empathy is important for at least one area of the moral life.
... For example, some studies find that perspective taking can decrease egocentric tendencies (Caruso, Epley, & Bazerman, 2006), as well as reduce stereotyping and prejudice (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Vescio, Sechrist, & Paolucci, 2003). These benefits are theorized to be the result of a heightened sense of similarity between the perspective taker and the target (Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996;Laurent & Myers, 2011;Myers & Hodges, 2012). ...
... 者们从人格特质(trait)的角度, 将自我−他人重叠 定义为个体感知到自己和他人具有相同或者相似 的人格特质, 由此在心理表征上减少了自己和他 人之间差异的现象(Aron et al., 1991;Batson, Early, & Salvarani, 1997;Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996) (Davis et al., 1996;Myers & Hodges, 2011 Abstract: Self-others overlap is the overlap of self-concept between individuals and others. In previous studies, multiple concepts of self-others overlap were proposed, and different measurements were formulated to measure the two dimensions of perceived closeness and overlapping representation. ...
... Firstly, upon arrival each participant was required to offer the names of a friend, acquaintance, and stranger as the protagonist in the dilemma. IOS was used to test whether the different degree of interpersonal intimacy was operated availably (Aron et al., 1992;Myers and Hodges, 2012). And then they were seated in a separated room and instructed on the experimental tasks. ...
Complex moral decision making may share certain cognitive mechanisms with economic decision making under risk situations. However, it is little known how people weigh gains and losses between self and others during moral decision making under risk situations. The current study adopted the dilemma scenario-priming paradigm to examine how self-relevance and reputational concerns influenced moral decision making. Participants were asked to decide whether they were willing to sacrifice their own interests to help the protagonist (friend, acquaintance, or stranger) under the dilemmas of reputational loss risk, while the helping choices, decision times and emotional responses were recorded. In Study 1, participants showed a differential altruistic tendency, indicating that participants took less time to make more helping choices and subsequently reported weaker unpleasant experience toward friends compared to acquaintances and strangers. In Study 2, participants still made these egoistically biased altruistic choices under the low reputational loss risk conditions. However, such an effect was weakened by the high reputational loss risks. Results suggested that moral principle guiding interpersonal moral decision making observed in our study is best described as an egoistically biased altruism, and that reputational concerns can play a key role in restraining selfish tendency.
... 110; see also Aron et al. 2013). Indeed, a body of research argues that empathic understanding cannot occur without the mediation of self-other overlap between processing interpersonal information and achieving empathy Myers and Hodges 2011;Neuberg et al. 1997;but, see;Batson 1997;. ...
The current study sought to better understand the utility of two strategies—perspective-taking and facial mimicry—proposed to increase empathic responding. Thirty-seven female participants were presented an interpersonal situation (a betrayal) that would elicit the use of empathic responding to achieve conflict resolution between friends. Each participant was given instructions to partake in either perspective-taking, facial mimicry, or to remain neutral (control condition). The results demonstrated that individuals who engaged in perspective-taking reported significantly higher state empathy than the control condition, but there was no significant difference in state empathy between the mimicry and control condition. Also, those who engaged in either strategy reported significantly higher self-other overlap relative to those not instructed to engage in a particular strategy. Importantly, self-other overlap mediated the association between the instructional sets and state empathy. Both strategies are arguably means of enhancing interpersonal understanding.
... Participants were instructed to choose a pair of circles that best describes their relationship with a target person. The IOS was often used to provide a manipulation check of interpersonal intimacy, with a higher IOS score indicating more intimacy between the self and target person [30,31]. ...
Interpersonal relationship (IR) may play an important role in moral decision-making. However, it is little known about how IR influences neural and behavioral responses during moral decision-making. The present study utilized the dilemma scenario-priming paradigm to examine the time course of the different intimate IR (friend, acquaintance, or stranger) impacts on the emotional and cognitive processes during moral decision-making. Results showed that participants made less altruistic decisions with increased decision times and experienced more unpleasure for strangers versus friends and acquaintances. Moreover, at the early moral intuitional process, there was no significance difference observed at N1 under different intimate IR; however, at the emotional process, larger P260 which reflects the dilemma conflicts and negative emotional responses, was elicited when moral decision-making for strangers; at the later cognitive process, such difference was also observed at LPP (300-450 ms) which indexes the later top-down cognitive appraisal and reasoning processes. However, such differences were not observed between friends and acquaintances. Results indicate that IR modulates the emotional and cognitive processes during moral decision-making, suggesting that the closer the IR is, the weaker the dilemma conflicts and emotional responses are, and the more efficient this conflicts are solved.
... Another adaptive emotion regulation strategy, perspective taking, which is the ability to consider and understand partner's feelings and thoughts (Blair, 2005), was positively associated with interpersonal behavior (including support validation) and perceived emotional closeness between romantic partners (Myers & Hodges, 2012;Vater & Schröder-Abé, 2015). The maladaptive strategy of ruminative brooding was found to predict failure to adapt with the stressful events for both male and female partners (Horn & Maercker, 2016). ...
The aim of the present research was to investigate the association between spouses’ individual cognitive emotion regulation (CER) strategies, dyadic coping behaviors, and relationship satisfaction. Using a sample of 295 couples (590 individuals), we found that adaptive CER strategies (putting into perspective, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, and planning refocusing) were related to positive dyadic coping (supportive, common, and delegated coping in couples), which in turn increased both partners’ relationship satisfaction. Analyses using actor–partner interdependence modeling indicated that dyadic coping mediated the association between spouses’ CER and their own relationship satisfaction. These findings support the importance of addressing both cognitive coping strategies and dyadic coping in prevention and intervention in couples.
... A computerized dynamic version of the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) scale was developed to assess interpersonal proximity (Aron et al., 1992;Myers & Hodges, 2012). ...
Prior research on romantic relationships suggests that being in love involves a blurring of self–other cognitive boundaries. However, this research has focused so far on conceptual self-representation, related to the individual’s traits or interests. The present study tested the hypothesis that passionate love involves a reduced discrimination between the self and the romantic partner at a bodily level, as indexed by an increased Joint Simon effect (JSE), and we further examined whether this self–other discrimination correlated with the passion felt for the partner. As predicted, we found an increased JSE when participants performed the Joint Simon Task with their romantic partner compared with a friend of the opposite sex. Providing support for the self-expansion model of love (Aron and Aron in Pers Relatsh 3(1):45–58, 1996), this result indicates that romantic relationships blur the boundaries between the self and the romantic partner at a bodily level. Furthermore, the strength of romantic feelings was positively correlated with the magnitude of the JSE when sharing the task with the romantic partner.
... Respondents are instructed to "choose one picture that best describes your current relationship with your child." The original validation of the Inclusion of Other in the Self scale demonstrated good convergent validity with other well-established measures of relational closeness (Aron et al., 1992), and the later studies have further supported the validity of this widely used scale (Myers & Hodges, 2012). Attachment anxiety. ...
When married parents go through a divorce, they may have concerns in 6 areas that are associated with postdivorce family adjustment. These include concerns about malice, power, custody, child rejection, esteem, and finances. The Parting Parent Concern Inventory assesses these concerns. It was developed in a series of preliminary studies, and this report focuses on results from 2 subsequent validation studies including 643 divorced parents with at least 1 child from their former marriage under the age of 18. Participants completed Internet assessments of their concerns and 14 different convergent validity criterion variables regarding aspects of child internalizing behavior, coparenting relationships, settlement outcomes, and personal well-being. Across both studies, the new measure of concerns fit an expected 6-dimensional factor structure. A total of 25 convergent validity correlations were tested, and all were significant. The distinctiveness of each concern scale was supported by the fact that all but 1 convergent association remained significant after controlling for variance explained by other concern scales. These results provide preliminary validation support for the new instrument. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Thus, it would be reasonable for perspective taking to be positively related to the use of assumed similarity in judgments of others. However, perspective taking increases perceived closeness not the overlapping representations of selves (Myers & Hodges, 2012). Therefore, it is conceivable those with a higher perspective-taking tendency perceive themselves less in others allowing for normative and distinctive accuracy to be greater. ...
Empathy, the practice of taking and emotionally identifying with another’s point of view, is a skill that likely provides context to another’s behavior. Yet systematic research on its relation with accurate personality trait judgment is sparse. This study investigated this relation between one’s empathic response tendencies (perspective taking, empathic concern, fantasy, and personal distress) and the accuracy with which she or he makes judgments of others. Using four different samples (N = 1,153), the tendency to perspective take (ds = .23–.27) and show empathic concern (ds = .28–.42) were all positively related meta-analytically to distinctive accuracy, normative accuracy, and the assumed similarity of trait judgments. However, the empathic tendencies for fantasy and personal distress showed more complex patterns of relation. These findings are discussed in relation to previous literature, and in particular, why it is reasonable for empathy to be related to the accuracy of trait judgments.
... Therefore, the nature of each individual relationship can be characterised by the perceived distance between the self and the other. It is this distance between self and other that plays an important role in how we feel about an individual and how we behave towards that individual in social situations (Aron, Mashek, & Aron, 2004;Myers & Hodges, 2012). Importantly, in relationships that are very close, we act as if characteristics of the other individual are partially our own (Wright, Aron, & Tropp, 2002), reflecting an overlap between cognitive representations of self and close others (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991). ...
Our relationships with romantic partners are often some of the closest and most important relationships that we experience in our adult lives. Interpersonal closeness in romantic relationships is characterised by an increased overlap between cognitive representations of oneself and one's partner. Importantly, this type of self-other overlap also occurs in the bodily domain, whereby we can represent another's embodied experiences in the same way as we represent our own. However, as yet this bodily self-other overlap has only been investigated in individuals unfamiliar to each other. Here, we investigate bodily self-other overlap between romantic partners, using automatic imitation as an example case of bodily overlap in the motor domain. We found that participants automatically imitated romantic partners significantly more than close others with whom they had a platonic relationship. Furthermore, imitation in these relationships was related to key aspects of relationship quality, as indicated by adult attachment style.
... Importantly, we also explored whether any possible influence of empathy on the joint SE was affected by the degree of prior acquaintance between the co-actors; specifically, we were interested in the possibility that effects of empathy might be accentuated for actors who were well acquainted. Given evidence that the perception of self-other overlap is increased when people know each other well (e.g., Myers and Hodges, 2012), we asked participants to perform the joint Simon task with either a friend (who signed up for the experiment at the same time) or a stranger (who signed up individually). The need to take account of relational context when researching human social behavior has been gaining recognition, especially in regards to kinship and friendship (reviews by Clark-Polner and Clark, 2014). ...
Tasks for which people must act together to achieve a goal are a feature of daily life. The present study explored social influences on joint action using a Simon procedure for which participants (n = 44) were confronted with a series of images of hands and asked to respond via button press whenever the index finger wore a ring of a certain color (red or green) regardless of pointing direction (left or right). In an initial joint condition they performed the task while sitting next to another person (friend or stranger) who responded to the other color. In a subsequent individual condition they repeated the task on their own; additionally, they completed self-report tests of empathy. Consistent with past research, participants reacted more quickly when the finger pointed toward them rather than their co-actor (the Simon Effect or SE). The effect remained robust when the co-actor was no longer present and was unaffected by degree of acquaintance; however, its magnitude was correlated positively with empathy only among friends. For friends, the SE was predicted by cognitive perspective taking when the co-actor was present and by propensity for fantasizing when the co-actor was absent. We discuss these findings in relation to social accounts (e.g., task co-representation) and non-social accounts (e.g., referential coding) of joint action.
... Perspective-taking has been found to be a key driver of building and maintaining social bonds (Galinsky et al., 2005). For example, perspective-taking increases empathy (Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997), leads to approach (Myers & Hodges, 2011;Todd et al., 2011), increases satisfaction (Blatt, LeLacheur, Galinsky, Simmens, & Greenberg, 2010;Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008), and facilitates social coordination (Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008;Laurent & Myers, 2011). Perspective-taking also reduces stereotyping and improves intergroup attitudes (Batson et al., 1997;Galinsky & Ku, 2004;Ku et al., 2010;Todd et al., 2011;Vescio et al., 2003). ...
Numerous studies have found that perspective-taking reduces stereotyping and prejudice, but they have only involved negative stereotypes. Because target negativity has been empirically confounded with reduced stereotyping, the general effects of perspective-taking on stereotyping and prejudice are unclear. By including both positively and negatively stereotyped targets, this research offers the first empirical test of two competing hypotheses: The positivity hypothesis predicts that perspective-taking produces a positivity bias, with less stereotyping of negative targets but more stereotyping of positive targets. In contrast, the stereotype-reduction hypothesis predicts that perspective-taking reduces stereotyping, regardless of target valence. Three studies support the stereotype-reduction hypothesis. Perspective-taking also produced less positive attitudes toward positive targets, with reduced stereotyping mediating this effect. A final study demonstrated that perspective-taking reduced all stereotyping because it increased self–other overlap. These findings help answer fundamental questions about perspective-taking’s effects and processes, and provide evidence that perspective-taking does not improve attitudes invariantly.
This study investigates how prior experiences (personal or a close other’s) influence individuals’ engagement with virtual reality (VR) stories designed to promote understanding and foster prosocial behavior. Integrating self-determination theory and self–other overlap, we conducted an experimental mixed-method study with 35 participants who experienced three VR stories focused on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA): living with Alzheimer’s, blindness, and in a refugee camp. Findings indicate that while participants felt some autonomy with the VR headset, they experienced a lack of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the storytelling. Participants engaged in perspective-taking but often thought about those close to them who had similar experiences rather than themselves. Thus, a close other’s experience affected whether people engaged in perspective-taking. However, prior experience with IDEA topics did not predict cognitive effort, indicating that individuals with such experience do not exert more cognitive effort than those without it. Additionally, cognitive effort did not predict prosocial attitudes or behaviors. This study highlights the complexities of how previous experiences affect engagement with IDEA-centered VR, perspective-taking, and cognitive effort and suggests directions for future research.
Previous research indicates that social distance can influence people's social evaluations of others. Individuals tend to evaluate intimate others more positively than distant others. The present study investigates the modulating effect of social distance on the time course underlying individuals' evaluation processes of others using adequate electroencephalography methods. The results reveal that in the initial processing stage, the P2 component is larger when friends are negatively evaluated, whereas this pattern is the opposite for strangers. In the second stage, medial frontal negativity and early mid-frontal theta band activity is enhanced for negative evaluations of friends, whereas this effect is absent in social evaluations of strangers. At the late stage, the P3 is larger for positive evaluations of friends but insensitive to social evaluations of strangers, and the late mid-frontal theta is also modulated by social distance. These findings provide direct and powerful evidence that social distance modulates individuals' evaluations of others with different levels of intimacy throughout all processing stages.
People commit to monogamous relationships with the intent of maintaining sexual exclusivity but often fail to do so. Existing research has focused on individual and relationship characteristics that render relationships more vulnerable to infidelity, paying less attention to strategies that decrease the likelihood of straying. Three experiments investigated the impact of one strategy that might encourage people to enact relationship-protective responses toward alternative partners, perspective-taking. In all studies, participants either adopted the perspective of their partner or not and then evaluated, encountered, or thought about attractive strangers, in Studies 1–3, respectively. Participants’ pro-relationship orientation and reactions during these experiences (interest in alternative and current partners, commitment to current relationships, and fantasmatic themes) were recorded. Results showed that perspective-taking decreased sexual and romantic interest in alternatives, while increasing commitment and desire for current partners. These findings suggest that partner perspective-taking discourages engagement in behaviors that may hurt partners and damage the relationship with them.
Despite reductions in traditional racial prejudice among non-Hispanic and non-Latino White Americans, Black Americans regularly experience discrimination. We argue that bias persists because although many White Americans espouse nonracist beliefs, far fewer actively work to combat the societal and institutional discrimination that impedes social change. In the current work, we were interested in identifying and measuring the belief systems associated with White Americans’ active participation in the fight against racial discrimination. In six studies, we developed and validated a measure of antiracism to tap into the belief that White people should proactively fight racial discrimination. Results established the convergent and discriminant validity of the measure and confirmed that antiracism was related to, but distinct from, personal nonracist beliefs. Moreover, higher levels of antiracism were associated with greater perceptions of racial discrimination, collective action intentions, willingness to condemn an officer in a racially motivated shooting, support for diversity tax incentives, and likelihood of signing up to receive information about volunteering for an equal rights organization. Results suggest antiracist beliefs may be the key to understanding White Americans’ active support for social change.
Objective: People encounter institutional rules in many settings of their lives—from schools to workplaces, from commercial places to public spaces. Often these everyday rules are indeterminate, requiring people who apply them to use their own discretion. Psychological processes help explain how lay people decide whether others have violated these everyday rules. Hypothesis: We predicted that when lay people empathize with others, they are less likely to decide that the people they empathize with violated everyday indeterminate rules. Method: We performed two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 2) and two experiments (Studies 3 and 4) using MTurk. We asked participants to read 3 dilemmas involving indeterminate institutional rules (Studies 1–3) or one dilemma (Study 4) and decide whether people violated such rules. Results: Greater empathy for people in these dilemmas was associated with a lower likelihood of deciding that rules were violated—even when controlling for the perceived harmfulness of the infraction—regardless of whether empathy was independently rated in explanations provided by lay people about their decisions (Study 1; N = 725; 51% female; 76.8% White), measured in the form of self-reported empathic concern and inclusion-of-self-in-other (Study 2; N = 1,159; 58% female; 78.9% White), or manipulated based upon whether a person transgressed a rule for selfish versus altruistic reasons (Studies 3; N = 1,073; 53% female; 77.7% White). Moreover, when we manipulated both empathy (selfish vs. altruistic transgression) and rule indeterminacy by altering whether the rule was silent about potential exceptions (indeterminate rule) versus absolutely rejected all exceptions (determinate rule), the likelihood of deciding a rule was violated was lowest when the rule was indeterminate and transgressed for altruistic reasons (Study 4; N = 239; 42% female; 77.0% White). Conclusions: Overall, results reveal a robust effect of empathy on how lay people resolve rule indeterminacy in everyday life, which may foster or frustrate law and public policy, and has implications for the resilience of institutions.
Self–other overlap is a multi-dimensional construct consisting of Perceived Closeness (claimed similarity with a target other) and Overlapping Representations (cognitive confusion or merging of self and other). However, little is known about the characterization of these dimensions through early to middle childhood. The present work introduced several adapted measures for investigating the early development of these two self–other overlap dimensions. Five- to 6-year-old children (n = 45) and 7- to 8-year-old children (n = 45) completed measures of these dimensions of overlap between themselves and two target others: a best friend and an acquaintance. Children in both age groups had higher Perceived Closeness for a best friend than an acquaintance, but this was more pronounced with the older children. In addition, younger children had higher Overlapping Representations between self and others than older children. These patterns are discussed in terms of social development and trait understanding.
Effort is aversive and often avoided, even when earning benefits for oneself. Yet, people sometimes work hard for others. How do people decide who is worth their effort? Prior work shows people avoid physical effort for strangers relative to themselves, but invest more physical effort for charity. Here, we find that people avoid cognitive effort for others relative to themselves, even when the cause is a personally meaningful charity. In two studies, participants repeatedly decided whether to invest cognitive effort to gain financial rewards for themselves and others. In Study 1, participants (N = 51; 150 choices) were less willing to invest cognitive effort for a charity than themselves. In Study 2, participants (N = 47; 225 choices) were more willing to work cognitively for a charity than an intragroup stranger, but again preferred cognitive exertion that benefited themselves. Computational modeling suggests that, unlike prior physical effort findings, cognitive effort discounted the subjective value of rewards linearly. Exploratory machine learning analyses suggest that people who represented others more similarly to themselves were more willing to invest effort on their behalf, opening up new avenues for future research.
This paper investigates the idea that Theory of Mind (ToM), empathic understanding and moral reasoning are linked, and together contribute to prosocial behaviour. All three cognitive processes are explored in adolescents (aged 14–17 years), young-adults (aged 18–24 years) and middle-adults (aged 25–55). A statistically significant age-related difference was found on all measures between the adolescent group and the middle-adult group. Except for verbal ToM, all measures detected a statistically significant age-related difference between the adolescent group and the young adult group. However, except for verbal and visual ToM, no statistically significant age-related difference was found between the young-adult and middle-adult groups. A small to medium positive association was found between each of the five measures. These findings suggest that beyond adolescence ToM, empathic understanding, and moral reasoning might be improved which could be useful to researchers and practitioners interested in the later enhancement of prosociality in older individuals.
Most prison dog programs (PDPs) have instituted a variety of practices that recognize the contributions of inmates, staff, volunteers, organizations, and sponsors. This chapter begins with a discussion on the dynamics between informal observations of dog behavior and empirical research. Next, it describes the persistent tensions between two models of justice: retributive (meting out punishment to fit the crime) and restorative (working toward rehabilitation, restitution, and re-entry into society). The chapter then moves to the widely reported outcomes for inmates involved in effective prison dog programs. Specifically, these outcomes include: (1) establishing reciprocal human-canine bonds, (2) forging new identities for offenders and canines, (3) providing outlets for healthy expression of emotions, (4) impelling meaningful behavioral changes, (5) increasing communication among stakeholders, and (6) participating in prosocial activities. Next, we recommend strategies to celebrate the contributions of PDPs. The chapter concludes with evidence from the field of neuroscience that links the production of the “calm and connect” hormone, oxytocin, to empathy, compassion, and self-forgiveness. There is a growing body of research to support the assertion that prison dog programs often can influence change in individuals and institutions.
Why do people sometimes struggle to say "no" to persuasion attempts? Research suggests that individual self-control use can deplete people, reducing those individuals' resistance to persuasion attempts. The current investigation instead tests whether the experience of mental connection between self-control users and observers can make observers more agreeable and compliant. Greater connection led observers to exhibit more positive attitudes and decisions toward persuasive messages and advertisements containing centrally processed arguments. This research identifies an important and commonly overlooked factor in self-regulatory contexts and helps to advance our mechanistic understanding of vicarious self-control processes. Thus, in social settings marked by high mental connection, as in many group meals or shopping trips, people may suffer the depleting consequences of others' decisions.
Psychologists of religion, like theologians, have concerned themselves with the question of " What is God like? " Unlike theologians, who are primarily interested in the truth of God's nature, psychologists of religion are interested in knowledge or representations of God as they exist in the minds of individuals, irrespective of how theologically true or divinely inspired such representations may be. Psychologists of religion make no truth claims about representations of God in the religious heart; our interests are in how God's characteristics and the individual's relationship with God are represented in the human mind, as well as the e ects of such cognitive representations on emotion and behavior , rather than in the degree to which these map onto metaphysical realities. In this chapter, we present an overview of the theory, measurement, and findings within psychology of religion in the contents of individuals' religious hearts, focusing on three types of content: representations of God's characteristics, relationship with and closeness to God, and emotions toward God.
Psychologists of religion, like theologians, have concerned themselves with the question of " What is God like? " Unlike theologians, who are primarily interested in the truth of God's nature, psychologists of religion are interested in knowledge or representations of God as they exist in the minds of individuals, irrespective of how theologically true or divinely inspired such representations may be. Psychologists of religion make no truth claims about representations of God in the religious heart; our interests are in how God's characteristics and the individual's relationship with God are represented in the human mind, as well as the e ects of such cognitive representations on emotion and behavior , rather than in the degree to which these map onto metaphysical realities. In this chapter, we present an overview of the theory, measurement, and findings within psychology of religion in the contents of individuals' religious hearts, focusing on three types of content: representations of God's characteristics, relationship with and closeness to God, and emotions toward God.
This article presents and discusses the results of an experiment in which television viewers were exposed to either a war journalism (WJ) or a peace journalism (PJ) version of two news stories, on Australian government policies towards asylum seekers and US-sponsored ‘peace talks’ between Israel and the Palestinians, respectively. Before and after viewing, they completed a cognitive questionnaire and two tests designed to disclose changes in their emotional state. During the viewing, they also underwent measurement of blood volume pulse, from which their heart rate variability (HRV) was calculated. HRV measures effects on the autonomic nervous system caused by changes in breathing patterns as subjects respond to stimuli with empathic concern. Since these patterns are regulated by the vagal nerve, HRV readings can therefore be interpreted as an indicator of vagal tone, which Porges et al. propose as an ‘autonomic correlate of emotion’. In this study, vagal tone decreased from baseline through both WJ stories, but showed a slightly smaller decrease during the PJ asylum story and then a significant increase during the PJ Israel–Palestine story. These readings correlated with questionnaire results showing greater hope and empathy among PJ viewers and increased anger and distress among WJ viewers, of the Israel–Palestine story.
Using 3 experiments, the authors explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought. In the 1st 2 experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. In Experiment 1, perspective-taking decreased stereotypic biases on both a conscious and a nonconscious task. In Experiment 2, perspective-taking led to both decreased stereotyping and increased overlap between representations of the self and representations of the elderly, suggesting activation and application of the self-concept in judgments of the elderly. In Experiment 3, perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias in the minimal group paradigm by increasing evaluations of the out-group. The role of self–other overlap in producing prosocial outcomes and the separation of the conscious, explicit effects from the nonconscious, implicit effects of perspective-taking are discussed.
Two experiments tested the idea that empathy-induced helping is due to self–other merging. To manipulate empathy, half of the participants in each experiment received instructions to remain objective while hearing about a young woman in need (low-empathy condition), and half received instructions to imagine her feelings (high-empathy condition). To check generality of the empathy–helping relationship, half in each empathy condition learned that the young woman was a student at their university (shared group membership), and half learned that she was a student at a rival university (unshared group membership). Self-reported empathy for and willingness to help the young woman were assessed, and 3 measures of self–other merging were taken. In each experiment, an empathy–helping relationship was found, unqualified by group membership, that could not be accounted for by any of the merging measures.
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.
Three studies, using two community samples (ns = 39 and 78) and a university student sample of Christian believers in God (n = 76), found that more religious people report greater self–other overlap with God. Three measures of self–God overlap were used: the Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) scale, a dynamic version of the IOS, and an adjective checklist that was used to compute the percentage of traits that were shared between self and God. Study 1 compared evangelicals and atheists; Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that two components of religiosity, religious conservatism and awareness of God, independently predicted self–God overlap among Christian believers. The findings suggest that believers' relationships with God parallel other close relationships with human others.
Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy–altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self–other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness —a measure of perceived self–other overlap—was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy–altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness.
In this article, the integration of an attribution approach and an empathy approach to helping behavior is pursued, and causal relationships among variables independently studied in these two areas are investigated. The data from two experiments (on judgments of help-giving and actual help offered, respectively) strongly suggest that causal attributions and empathy induced by manipulating the subjects' perspective in approaching a helping scenario additively determine helping behavior. The proposed mediating role of perceived controllability of attributions and empathic emotions was supported. In addition, the perspective of a potential helper (empathic vs. objective) was found to influence the perception of controllability of the causal attribution for a victim's need. A structural equations model was developed and tested, integrating causal attributions, induced empathy, and empathic emotions as determinants of helping behavior.
The cognitive significance of being in a close relationship is described in terms of including other in the self (in K. Lewin's [1948] sense of overlapping regions of the life space and in W. James [1890/1948] sense of the self as resources, perspectives, and characteristics). Exp 1 (with 24 college students), adapting W. B. Liebrand's (see record
1985-20117-001) decomposed-game procedures, found less self/other difference in allocations of money to a friend than to a stranger, regardless of whether Ss expected other to know their allocations. Exp 2 (with 20 female undergraduates), adapting C. G. Lord's (see record
1988-00331-001) procedures, found that Ss recalled fewer nouns previously imaged with self or mother than nouns imaged with a nonclose other, suggesting that mother was processed more like self than a stranger. Exp 3 (with 17 married graduate students), adapting self-schema, reaction-time (RT) procedures (e.g., H. Markus; see record
1977-27587-001) found longer latencies when making "me/not me" decisions for traits that were different between self and spouse versus traits that were similar for both, suggesting a self/other confusion with spouse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
84 female undergraduates were exposed to a person in distress and instructed either to observe the victim's reactions (low empathy) or to imagine the victim's feelings (high empathy). This empathy manipulation was crossed with a manipulation of ease of escape without helping (easy vs difficult) to form a 2 × 2 design. As predicted by the empathy-altruism hypothesis, Ss in the low-empathy condition helped less when escape was easy than when it was difficult. This suggests that their helping was directed toward the egoistic goal of reducing their own distress. Ss in the high-empathy condition, however, displayed a high rate of helping, even when escape was easy. This suggests that their helping was directed toward the altruistic goal of reducing the distress of the person in need. Analyses of Ss' self-reported emotional response provided additional support for the hypothesis that feeling a predominance of empathy rather than distress on witnessing someone in need can evoke altruistic motivation. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Describes the development of the Relationship Closeness Inventory (RCI), which draws on the conceptualization of closeness as high interdependence between two people's activities proposed by Kelley et al. (1983). The current "closest" relationship of individuals (
N = 241) drawn from the college student population served as the basis for RCI development, with the closest relationship found to encompass several relationship types, including romantic, friend, and family relationships. The development and psychometric properties of the three RCI subscales (Frequency, Diversity, Strength), their scoring, and their combination to form an overall index of closeness are described. The RCI's test–retest reliability is reported and the association between RCI score and the longevity of the relationship is discussed. RCI scores for individuals' closest relationships are contrasted to those of not-close relationships, to a subjective closeness index, and to several measures of relationship affect, including Rubin's (1973) Liking and Loving scales. Finally, the ability of the RCI to predict relationship break up is contrasted to that of the Subjective Closeness Index, an index of the emotional tone of the relationship, and to relationship longevity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 2 studies, the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, a single-item, pictorial measure of closeness, demonstrated alternate-form and test–retest reliability; convergent validity with the Relationship Closeness Inventory (E. Berscheid et al, 1989), the R. J. Sternberg (1988) Intimacy Scale, and other measures; discriminant validity; minimal social desirability correlations; and predictive validity for whether romantic relationships were intact 3 mo later. Also identified and cross-validated were (1) a 2-factor closeness model (Feeling Close and Behaving Close) and (2) longevity–closeness correlations that were small for women vs moderately positive for men. Five supplementary studies showed convergent and construct validity with marital satisfaction and commitment and with a reaction-time (RT)-based cognitive measure of closeness in married couples; and with intimacy and attraction measures in stranger dyads following laboratory closeness-generating tasks. In 3 final studies most Ss interpreted IOS Scale diagrams as depicting interconnectedness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
To properly test the hypothesis that empathy-associated helping is altruistic, one needs to (a) consider plausible nonaltruistic alternatives for the observed empathy–helping effects, (b) validly and reliably measure these nonaltruistic alternatives, and (c) examine whether the empathy–helping relationship remains after removing the effects of the full complement of reasonable nonaltruistic alternatives. C. D. Batson, K. Sager, E. Garst, M. Kang, K. Rubchinsky, and K. Dawson (1997) failed to meet these criteria. New data, and reanalyses of existing data, bolster the case that self-other overlap—a nonaltruistic motivator—underlies the association between empathy and costly helping. At best, empathy per se leads to superficial helping. In a postscript, the authors comment briefly on C. D. Batson's (1997) reply to this comment and, given his remarks, speculate as to whether the empathy–altruism formulation is even relevant to understanding meaningful forms of help. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
R. B. Cialdini, S. L. Brown, B. P. Lewis, C. Luce, & S. L. Neuberg (1997) present data that they claim challenge the empathy–altruism hypothesis by providing evidence that the effects of empathy on helping are due to self–other merging. Despite S. L. Neuberg et al's (1997) efforts at reassurance, doubts remain about the meaning of these data because they were obtained using scenario procedures and confounded manipulations. Using less questionable methods, C. D. Batson et al. (1997) failed to find evidence that empathy-induced helping was due to self-other merging. At a more fundamental level, the Cialdini et al. challenge rests on apparent misunderstanding of the empathy-altruism hypothesis and, as a result, of appropriate means to test it. Finally, the question of whether empathy leads to anything more than superficial helping is addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
J. Millham and L. I. Jacobson's (1978) 2-factor model of socially desirable responding based on denial and attribution components is reviewed and disputed. A 2nd model distinguishing self-deception and impression management components is reviewed and shown to be related to early factor-analytic work on desirability scales. Two studies, with 511 undergraduates, were conducted to test the model. A factor analysis of commonly used desirability scales (e.g., Lie scale of the MMPI, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) revealed that the 2 major factors were best interpreted as Self-Deception and Impression Management. A 2nd study employed confirmatory factor analysis to show that the attribution/denial model does not fit the data as well as the self-deception/impression management model. A 3rd study, with 100 Ss, compared scores on desirability scales under anonymous and public conditions. Results show that those scales that had loaded highest on the Impression Management factor showed the greatest mean increase from anonymous to public conditions. It is recommended that impression management, but not self-deception, be controlled in self-reports of personality. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Data transformations are commonly used tools that can serve many functions in quantitative analysis of data. The goal of this paper is to focus on the use of three data transformations most commonly discussed in statistics texts (square root, log, and inverse) for improving the normality of variables. While these are important options for analysts, they do fundamentally transform the nature of the variable, making the interpretation of the results somewhat more complex. Further, few (if any) statistical texts discuss the tremendous influence a distribution's minimum value has on the efficacy of a transformation. The goal of this paper is to promote thoughtful and informed use of data transformations.
This research was designed to assess the effects of a manipulation of observers' focus of attention--from a focus on the actor to a focus on the actor's situation--upon observers' attributions of attitude to an actor in a simulation of a forced-compliance cognitive dissonance experiment. Observers induced through empathy instructions to focus attention on the actor's situation inferred less actor attitude positivity than did observers given no specific observational set. In addition, situation-focused observers inferred that the actor's attitude was directly related to reward magnitude, whereas actor-focused observers inferred that the actor's attitude was inversely related to reward magnitude. An extension of self-perception theory, offered as an interpretation of these and other results, suggested that motivation attribution made by actors and observers in dissonance and simulation studies are dependent on focus of attention. The attributions made by actor-focused observers simulate those of objectively self-aware actors and are based upon perceived intrinsic motivation; the attributions of situation-focused observers simulate those of subjectively self-aware actors and are based upon perceived extrinsic motivation.
A laboratory experiment was conducted to test Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of the often-observed tendency for individuals (actors) to provide relatively more situational and less dispositional causal attributions for their behavior than those provided by observers of the same behavior. According to this explanation, aspects of the situation are phenomenologically more salient for actors, whereas characteristics of the actor and his behavior are more salient for observers. To test this explanation, the phenomenological perspective of observers are altered without making available any additional information. Subjects watched a videotape of a get-acquainted conversation after instructions either to observe a target conversant or to empathize with her. As predicted, taking the perspective of the target through empathy resulted in attributions that were relatively more situational and less dispositional than attributions provided by standard observers. The results support Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of actor-observer attributional differences, and shed additional light on the process of empathy.
Using 3 experiments, the authors explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought. In the 1st 2 experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. In Experiment 1, perspective-taking decreased stereotypic biases on both a conscious and a nonconscious task. In Experiment 2, perspective-taking led to both decreased stereotyping and increased overlap between representations of the self and representations of the elderly, suggesting activation and application of the self-concept in judgments of the elderly. In Experiment 3, perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias in the minimal group paradigm by increasing evaluations of the out-group. The role of self-other overlap in producing prosocial outcomes and the separation of the conscious, explicit effects from the nonconscious, implicit effects of perspective-taking are discussed.
The abilities to identify with others and to distinguish between self and other play a pivotal role in intersubjective transactions. Here, we marshall evidence from developmental science, social psychology and neuroscience (including clinical neuropsychology) that support the view of a common representation network (both at the computational and neural levels) between self and other. However, sharedness does not mean identicality, otherwise representations of self and others would completely overlap, and lead to confusion. We argue that self-awareness and agency are integral components for navigating within these shared representations. We suggest that within this shared neural network the inferior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex in the right hemisphere play a special role in interpersonal awareness.
Perspective-taking is a complex cognitive process involved in social cognition. This positron emission tomography (PET) study investigated by means of a factorial design the interaction between the emotional and the perspective factors. Participants were asked to adopt either their own (first person) perspective or the (third person) perspective of their mothers in response to situations involving social emotions or to neutral situations. The main effect of third-person versus first-person perspective resulted in hemodynamic increase in the medial part of the superior frontal gyrus, the left superior temporal sulcus, the left temporal pole, the posterior cingulate gyrus, and the right inferior parietal lobe. A cluster in the postcentral gyrus was detected in the reverse comparison. The amygdala was selectively activated when subjects were processing social emotions, both related to self and other. Interaction effects were identified in the left temporal pole and in the right postcentral gyrus. These results support our prediction that the frontopolar, the somatosensory cortex, and the right inferior parietal lobe are crucial in the process of self/ other distinction. In addition, this study provides important building blocks in our understanding of social emotion processing and human empathy.
Self-perception theory posits that people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing their freely chosen actions. The authors hypothesized that in addition, people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity--almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. Before observing an actor's behavior, participants were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor through perspective-taking instructions (Study 1) or through feedback indicating that their brainwave patterns overlapped substantially with those of the actor (Studies 2-4). As predicted, participants incorporated attributes relevant to an actor's behavior into their own self-concepts, but only when they were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor and only when the actor's behavior seemed freely chosen. These changes in relevant self-perceptions led participants to change their own behaviors accordingly. Implications of these vicarious self-perception processes for conformity, perspective-taking, and the long-term development of the self-concept are discussed.
The authors report 4 studies exploring a self-report strategy for measuring explicit attitudes that uses "relative" ratings, in which respondents indicate how favorable or unfavorable they are compared with other people. Results consistently showed that attitudes measured with relative scales predicted relevant criterion variables (self-report of behavior, measures of knowledge, peer ratings of attitudes, peer ratings of behavior) better than did attitudes measured with more traditional "absolute" scales. The obtained pattern of differences in prediction by relative versus absolute measures of attitudes did not appear to be attributable to differential variability, social desirability effects, the clarity of scale-point meanings, the number of scale points, or overlap with subjective norms. The final study indicated that relative measures induce respondents to consider social comparison information and behavioral information when making their responses more than do absolute measures, which may explain the higher correlations between relative measures of attitudes and relevant criteria.
Empathy has long been a topic of interest to psychologists, but it has been studied in a sometimes bewildering number of ways. In this volume, Mark Davis offers a thorough, evenhanded review of contemporary empathy research, especially work that has been carried out by social and personality psychologists.Davis' approach is explicitly multidimensional. He draws careful distinctions between situational and dispositional “antecedents” of empathy, cognitive and noncognitive “internal processes,” affective and nonaffective “intrapersonal outcomes,” and the “interpersonal behavioral outcomes” that follow. Davis presents a novel organizational model to help classify and interpret previous findings. This book will be of value in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on altruism, helping, nad moral development.
Previous research has identified nonobvious, cognitive indexes of including other in the self (self-other overlap) that differentiate close from nonclose relationships. These indexes include a reaction time measure and a measure focusing on attributional perspective. This study demonstrated for the first time that these cognitive indices differentiated among romantic relationships of varying degrees of closeness, suggesting that self-other overlap is not an either-or phenomenon. Further, the degree of self-other overlap was associated with subjective feelings of closeness, but little if at all with amount and diversity of interaction, suggesting that cognitive self-other overlap is not a direct product of behavioral interaction. Finally, these indexes predicted relationship maintenance and other variables over 3 months and correlated with self-reports of love, suggesting a broad linkage of cognitive self-other overlap to other aspects of relational experience.
Two experiments tested the idea that empathy-induced helping is due to self–other merging. To manipulate empathy, half of the participants in each experiment received instructions to remain objective while hearing about a young woman in need (low-empathy condition), and half received instructions to imagine her feelings (high-empathy condition). To check generality of the empathy–helping relationship, half in each empathy condition learned that the young woman was a student at their university (shared group membership), and half learned that she was a student at a rival university (unshared group membership). Self-reported empathy for and willingness to help the young woman were assessed, and 3 measures of self–other merging were taken. In each experiment, an empathy–helping relationship was found, unqualified by group membership, that could not be accounted for by any of the merging measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Prosocial motivation is egoistic when the ultimate goal is to increase one's own welfare; it is altruistic when the ultimate goal is to increase another's welfare. The view that all prosocial behavior, regardless how noble in appearance, is motivated by some form of self-benefits may seem cynical. But it is the dominant view in contemporary psychology. Most contemporary psychologists who use the term have no intention of challenging the dominant view that all human behavior, including all prosocial behavior, is motivated by self-serving, egoistic desires. Contemporary pseudoaltruistic views can be classified into three types: altruism as prosocial behavior, not motivation, altruism as prosocial behavior seeking internal rewards, and altruism as prosocial behavior to reduce aversive arousal. If altruistic motivation exists, then one has to make some fundamental changes in the conception of human motivation and indeed of human nature. As yet, the evidence is not sufficiently clear to justify such changes. If the conceptual analysis and research outlined in the chapter have merit, then the threshold of an empirical answer to the question why one care for other will be reached.
[This book examines] empathy from the standpoint of contemporary social/personality psychology—emphasizing these disciplines' traditional subject matter (e.g., emotion, cognition, helping, aggression) and its research techniques (survey research, laboratory experiments).
[The author's] goal was to provide a thorough, readable . . . summary of contemporary empathy research [primarily for advanced undergraduate and graduate students]. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book explores a single theme—that the emotions, cognitions, and behaviors of love can be understood in terms of a basic motivation to expand the self. It also provides a broad overview of the literature on interpersonal attraction and on the maintenance of close relationships—not only romantic relationships, but friendship, sibling, and parent- child relationships as well. The book's main purpose, however, is to stimulate thinking by offering a new approach to unifying this wealth of data, using the idea of self-expansion, and to illustrate this idea's theoretical and practical implications.
As for the book's authors, we are two psychologists—one social, one clinical; the intended readers are our colleagues in psychology, sociology, marriage and family counseling, communications, psychiatry, ethology, and other fields, who are researching and/or trying to facilitate loving relationships. We also hope that the book will be useful for students in graduate or advanced undergraduate courses studying close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents a social psychological perspective of close relationships and the role of knowledge structures in individual/couple differences, emotions, and relationship development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examines thinking and research relevant to the self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships. It begins with an explanation of the key elements of the model, followed by a comment on the utility of a model of this kind in terms of the role of metaphor in science. The chapter then considers 2 key processes suggested by the model, discussing the theoretical foundation and research relevant to each. These 2 processes are, first, that relationship satisfaction is increased through the association of the relationship with self-expansion and, second, that the relationship means cognitively that each partner has included the other in his or her self. Implications of the model for 3 other relationship-relevant issues (selectivity in attraction, motivations for unrequited love, and the effects on the self of falling in love) are considered. Concludes with a brief consideration of other relationship-relevant ramifications of the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
After being instructed either to “empathize with the actor” or to “picture the events clearly,” two groups of observers read a story describing an actor's behavior, and then gave free-response explanations of that behavior, and rated the importance of personal and situational causal factors. The hypothesis that causal attributions of empathizing observers would be less personal and more situational than those of nonempathizing observers received strong support, both from subjects' free responses and from their scale ratings. These findings provide evidence for an information-processing explanation of actor/observer attributional differences. Some practical applications of increasing the situationality of observers' causal attributions are discussed. The results also suggest a novel operational definition of “empathy”; and are interpreted as evidence for the effectiveness of “interpersonal simulations”.
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.
Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness.
This article explores the cognitive underpinnings of interpersonal closeness in the theoretical context of "including other in the self" and, specifically, the notion of overlap between cognitive representations of self and close others. In each of three studies, participants first rated different traits for self, close others (e.g., romantic partner, best friend), and less close others (e.g., media personalities), followed by a surprise source recognition task (who was each trait rated for?). As predicted, in each study, there were more source confusions between traits rated for self and close others (e.g., a trait rated for self recalled as having been rated for the close other) than between self (or close others) and non-close others. Furthermore, several results suggest that the greater confusions between self and close others are due specifically to interpersonal closeness and not to greater familiarity or similarity with close others
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Bell, J. A., & Hodges, S. D. (2010, January). The cost of
being close: Self-other overlap and domestic violence.
Poster presented at the meeting of the Society of
Personality and Social Psychology, Las Vegas, NV.
An attribution-empathy model of helping behavior: Behavioral intentions and judgments of help-giving.
- Betancourt
Variation of perspective-taking instructions on the direction of self/other overlap
- M W Myers
- S D Hodges
Close relationships as including other in the self.
- Aron
Practical Assessment
- J Osborne
Poster presented at the meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology
- J A Bell
Variation of perspective-taking instructions on the direction of self/other overlap. Poster presented at the annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Tampa FL
- M W Myers