The current research investigated whether mind-sets and contexts that afford a focus on self-other differences can facilitate perceptual and conceptual forms of perspective taking. Supporting this hypothesis, results showed that directly priming a difference mind-set made perceivers more likely to spontaneously adopt other people's visual perspectives (Experiment 1) and less likely to overimpute their own privileged knowledge to others (Experiments 2 and 3). Given that intergroup encounters typically evoke a difference mind-set, we also explored the possibility that such contexts might help perceivers to step outside their own perspectives. As predicted, perceivers were less "cursed" by their own privileged knowledge when mentalizing about out-group targets than when mentalizing about in-group targets (Experiment 4) and communicated more effectively with interaction partners whose minimal-group membership differed from their own (Experiment 5). Overall, acknowledging self-other differences allowed perceivers to look beyond the limits of their own perspectives and thereby provided an efficacious route to intuiting other people's minds.

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International audienceWe test a metacognitive account of why larger choice sets often lead to greater regret, proposing that people apply the lay theory that "a quick choice is a bad choice" when evaluating how well they have chosen. Because people often operate under time pressure, larger sets are likely to entail a more cursory selection process than smaller sets, generating a feeling of having rushed the evaluation of the alternatives and heightened regret. Four studies show that choice-set size does not influence participants' regret when they believe that they had enough time to choose, that the subjective feeling of being rushed accounts for greater regret when choosing from larger sets, and that changing people's lay theories about choosing quickly eliminates regret

In two studies, we show that comparisons with past or possible future selves shape current self-evaluation and that the direction of this influence is determined by one's current comparison focus. In Study 1, participants primed to focus on similarities versus dissimilarities were asked to remember an introverted or extraverted past self and then to evaluate their current level of extraversion. Participants who focused on similarities assimilated current self-evaluations to the past self, whereas those who focused on dissimilarities contrasted current self-evaluations away from the past self. In Study 2, participants imagined a possible future self that differed from their current self in terms of body weight. Participants who imagined a moderate weight change exhibited assimilation to the possible self, whereas those who imagined an extreme weight change exhibited contrast. These studies highlight the important role cognitive factors such as comparison focus play in shaping the consequences of temporal self-comparisons. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.People frequently compare themselves to what they were like in the past or what they may be like in the future. When evaluating her academic skills, for example, a college student may note the fact that her grade point average is not as high as it was in high school. Or she might evaluate her current grade point average relative to the one she hopes to attain next semester. Not only do people frequently engage in such temporal self-comparisons, they seem to do so as often -or even more often -than they engage in social comparisons (Wilson & Ross, 2000).Yet despite the ubiquity of temporal self-comparisons in everyday life, relatively little research has focused on the consequences of these comparisons for self-evaluation. The main exception is work inspired by Wilson and Ross' (2001) temporal self-appraisal theory (Haddock, 2004(Haddock, , 2006Haynes et al., 2007;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Ross & Wilson, 2002;Sanna, Chang, Carter, & Small, 2006). According to this theory, people derogate past selves as a way to feel good about the current self. The idea is that by believing they are more attractive, kind or responsible than they used to be, people can maintain an illusion of continuous self-improvement. This is only the case for distant past selves, however, as recent past selves presumably have implications for current self-evaluation. Indeed, as Ross and Wilson (2002) have shown, people actively distance themselves from former failures relative to former successes in order to protect their largely positive views of the current self.Temporal self-appraisal theory provides a useful framework for understanding the influence of motivational forces on the interplay between current and past selves. But this theory mainly focuses on how the need to maintain positive selfviews in the present influences the perception of past selves, rather than how past (or possible future) selves influence current self-perceptions. Moreover, in addition to motivational factor...

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