An Exploratory Investigation of the Process of Perspective Taking in Interpersonal Situations

Abstract

The ability to take the perspectives of others is considered a pre-requisite for effective interpersonal interaction. Despite extensive investigation into the correlates of perspective taking, there have been few previous attempts to understand the process by which people take another's psychological point of view. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the strategies used by individuals when attempting to take the perspective of another person.Twelve participants discussed a time they engaged in perspective taking. The analysis revealed that perspective taking was used in situations in which significant negative emotions could arise, and that participants shifted between the use of self-information (e.g., switching places, past experience) and other-information (e.g., target's personal characteristics) during the process of perspective taking. Different emotions and cognitions were associated with taking one's own perspective and taking that of the other person. The study provides a direct consideration of an under-investigated component of social and personal relationships.

Perspective Taking and Empathy: Does Having Similar Past Experience to Another Person Make It Easier to Take Their Perspective?

“…In a recent qualitative study, Gerace, Day, Casey, and Mohr (2013) asked participants to reflect on the strategies they used in attempting to take the perspective of another person. Amongst the strategies discussed (e.g., imagining oneself in the other's position, considering common responses to certain types of situation), past experiences were commonly used to understand the other person.…”

“…For example, participants in the studies by Gerace et al (2013) and Van Boven and Loewenstein (2003) either explicitly referred to past experiences they used to take another's perspective, or demonstrated the ability to reflect upon their similar past experiences when asked. Hodges and Wegner (1997) have also suggested that the empathy experience involves "such a generalized structural transformation in thought and emotion that it must be conceptualized more broadly than many less sweeping changes in mental content" (p. 312), with the implication that "empathy is a state of our minds upon which we can reflect" (p. 313).…”

“…mentally switching places with the person to imagine how you would feel in their place) approach. The imagine-other approach was adopted here as this reflects more general definitions of perspective taking, rather than focusing on the more specific strategy of imagining oneself in the other's place (Gerace et al, 2013 After reading the vignette and induction, participants completed a measure of ease of perspective taking and two manipulation check items. In the last section of the questionnaire, participants completed measures of empathic concern and personal distress, perspectivetaking strategies used, and a similarity of past experience item.…”

“…In order to develop a range of scenarios, life-event measures were examined for the types of events that they included (e.g., Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Holmes & Rahe, 1967;Life Events Questionnaire, Norbeck, 1984;Life Experiences Survey, Sarason, Johnson, & Siegel, 1978), as well as the situations used or described in previous empathy studies (e.g., Barnett et al, 1987;Batson et al, 1996;Gerace et al, 2013). Vignettes were constructed to minimise the inclusion of potential confounds, such as sex, age or ethnicity of the vignette protagonist (i.e., these were not provided), or the priming of particular attitudes or attributions (e.g., by not discussing particular aspects of the nature of the sexual act in the third vignette).The specific situations described in the vignettes involved a person (1) considering ending an intimate relationship; (2) experiencing workrelated difficulties; (3) having experienced coercion to engage in sexual intercourse; and (4) having lost a parent.…”

“…Items were devised based on strategies identified in previous research (Batson et al, 1997;Davis et al, 2004;Gerace et al, 2013). …”