Anxious and egocentric: How specific emotions influence perspective taking.

Abstract

People frequently feel anxious. Although prior research has extensively studied how feeling anxious shapes intrapsychic aspects of cognition, much less is known about how anxiety affects interpersonal aspects of cognition. Here, we examine the influence of incidental experiences of anxiety on perceptual and conceptual forms of perspective taking. Compared with participants experiencing other negative, high-arousal emotions (i.e., anger or disgust) or neutral feelings, anxious participants displayed greater egocentrism in their mental-state reasoning: They were more likely to describe an object using their own spatial perspective, had more difficulty resisting egocentric interference when identifying an object from others' spatial perspectives, and relied more heavily on privileged knowledge when inferring others' beliefs. Using both experimental-causal-chain and measurement-of-mediation approaches, we found that these effects were explained, in part, by uncertainty appraisal tendencies. Further supporting the role of uncertainty, a positive emotion associated with uncertainty (i.e., surprise) produced increases in egocentrism that were similar to anxiety. Collectively, the results suggest that incidentally experiencing emotions associated with uncertainty increase reliance on one's own egocentric perspective when reasoning about the mental states of others.

RETRACTED: Don’t stop believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety

“…As a discrete emotion, anxiety is characterized by high arousal, negative valence, a sense of uncertainty, and a low sense of control, and is theoretically distinct from other emotions such as sadness and grief, which are characterized by low arousal (Gray, 1991;Raghunathan & Pham, 1999;Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Anxiety drains working memory and impairs information processing: anxious individuals utilize working memory on processes such as worrying and ruminating instead of focusing on the task at hand (Eysenck, 1992), and feelings of anxiety increase egocentrism and impair the ability to take another person's perspective (Todd, Forstmann, Burgmer, Brooks, & Galinsky, 2015).…”

The empathy impulse: A multinomial model of intentional and unintentional empathy for pain.

“…Future research should also test for other social influences that might shape the parameter estimates as dependent variables; for instance, Intentional and/or Unintentional Empathy might increase for people high in anxiety (Todd et al, 2015) or decrease for people high in anticipated emotional exhaustion (Cameron et al, 2015).…”

Stress in NHS staff triggers defensive inward-focussing and an associated loss of connection with colleagues: this is reversed by Schwartz Rounds

“…This apparent evolutionary survival response is adaptive in some circumstances because it leads to a narrowing of focus, evidenced by improvements in selective attention [96]. In 2015, Todd and colleagues further elucidated this process, by demonstrating that feelings of stress also heighten 'self-focussed attention' ( [106], p. 375) which, in turn, undermines perspective taking. Converging research subsequently revealed that this acquired egocentrism is associated with a reduction in empathy for others [73].…”

“…This is known as the 'ultimate attribution error' [89]. To return to a point discussed at the start of the case study, and as highlighted by the doctor within the Schwartz Round, this may be underpinned by the stress-induced selfdirected focus [106]. Another way of viewing this is that stress contributes to decrements in mentalization; 'the capacity to envision mental states in self and others' ( [38], p. 23).…”