Can the curse of knowing be lifted? The influence of explicit perspective-focus instructions on readers’ perspective-taking.

Damen, Debby; Wijst, Per van der; Amelsvoort, Marije van; Krahmer, Emiel

doi:10.1037/xlm0000830

Cited by 12 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(177 reference statements)

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“…In this sense, explicit instructions to focus their attention on another person's perspective did not help perceivers to inhibit their privileged perspective to increase their perspective-taking accuracy. These findings by Damen et al (2020) are in line with related studies , evidencing that an explicit focus on or an explicit awareness of another person's different perspective does not suffice to reduce perceivers' tendency to overrely on their own knowledge and attentional status during perspective-taking. It is therefore still unknown how perceivers can be stimulated to sufficiently adjust the self-perspective.…”

Section: Adjusting the Self-perspectivesupporting

confidence: 90%

Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking

Damen

Amelsvoort

Wijst

et al. 2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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People are likely to use their own knowledge as a frame of reference when they try to assess another person’s perspective. Due to this egocentric anchoring, people often overestimate the extent to which others share their point of view. This study investigated which type of feedback (if any) stimulates perceivers to make estimations of another person’s perspective that are less biased by egocentric knowledge. We allocated participants to one of three feedback conditions (no feedback, accuracy feedback, narrative feedback). Findings showed that participants who were given feedback adjusted their perspective-judgment more than those who did not receive feedback. They also showed less egocentric projection on future assessments. Participants adjusted their perspective within the same trial to the same degree for both feedback types. However, participants’ egocentric bias was only reduced when they received narrative feedback and not when they received accuracy feedback about their performance. Implications of these findings for theories of perspective-taking are discussed.

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Section: Adjusting the Self-perspectivesupporting

confidence: 90%

Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking

Damen

Amelsvoort

Wijst

et al. 2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…Third, this work contributes to a wide body of literature demonstrating that comprehenders have difficulty overcoming the so-called illusory transparency of intention (Keysar, 1994;Keysar, 2000) and the related curse of knowledge (Birch, 2005;Birch & Bloom, 2007;Damen et al, 2018). Once comprehenders have interpreted an utterance (e.g., as sarcastic), they imagine that interpretation as "transparent" and project it to a third-party comprehender, even when that third-party does not possess critically disambiguating information (Keysar, 1994;Keysar, 2000).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 88%

When Do Comprehenders Mentalize for Pragmatic Inference?

Trott¹,

Bergen²

2020

Discourse Processes

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People often speak indirectly. For example, "It's cold in here" might be intended not only as a comment on the temperature, but also as a request to turn on the heater. How are comprehenders' inferences about a speaker's intentions informed by their ability to reason about the speaker's mental states, i.e., mentalizing? We introduce a mechanistic framework by which mentalizing might be recruited for pragmatic inference, then ask: is mentalizing recruited primarily for sampling mental state information, or also for the deployment of that information for pragmatic inference? We find that the role of mentalizing is modulated by how explicitly a task involves knowledge. Mentalizing correlates with task performance when comprehenders are asked to sample and report mental state information (Experiment 1b), or when given mental state information explicitly and asked to make an inference (Experiment 2-Explicit); in contrast, mentalizing does not correlate with task performance, or correlates only weakly, when participants are given mental state information implicitly and asked to make a pragmatic inference (Experiment 1a, Experiment 2-Implicit). These results suggest that mentalizing is recruited flexibly, allowing comprehenders to construct meaning from under-specified input. MENTALIZING FOR PRAGMATIC INFERENCE 2 When do comprehenders mentalize for pragmatic inference? People often speak indirectly. For example, a speaker might say "It's cold in here" not just to comment on the temperature of the room, but also as an indirect request to turn on the heater. These indirect requests are demonstrably common; one study elicited requests from participants and found that over 80% of them were indirect in some way (Gibbs, 1981). Furthermore, they are ambiguous: in isolation, and often even in context, these utterances license more than one interpretation. Consequently, comprehenders must frequently infer which meaning was intended by the speaker in a given context. This inference could be challenging, as a speaker's intended interpretation may depend on what they want or what they know. How do comprehenders succeed under these conditions? One possibility is that making inferences about speaker intent uses a form of mentalizing (Frith & Frith, 2006). That is, comprehenders may infer a speaker's intended interpretation by relying in part on inferences about that speaker's mental states, perhaps constructing a model of their interlocutor. This model could include, among other things, the speaker's preferences, current emotional state, and beliefs about the world (Gibbs, 1987). These inferred mental states might allow a comprehender to modulate their interpretation of ambiguous utterances not only as a function of their own contextual knowledge, but also according to their beliefs about the speaker's contextual knowledge. For example, if a speaker believes that a nearby heater is operational, then they might utter "It's cold in here" as an indirect request to turn on the heater. If a comprehender knows that the heater is in fact br...

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“…A secondary factor that might have played a role here is that we measured interlocutors' subjective feelings of trust and understanding using self-reported measures to capture these perceived feelings of change. Even though these subjective measures indicate interlocutors' attitude towards their own and their interlocutor's perspective-taking behavior, we know that these self-reports do not always match with perceivers' actual perspective-taking performance (Damen 2020; see also Davidson et al 2020;Faber et al 2018;Kaye et al 2020; Vanden Abeele et al 2013 on the disadvantage of using self-report measures). Subjective measures are highly susceptible to perceivers' overconfidence in their ability to assess their own (and others') behavior, and might decrease in hindsight due to their interlocutor's behavioral stance or reluctance to reciprocate.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…More importantly, in text-based computer mediated communication, the communication exchange is far more ambiguous as interlocutors cannot rely on emotional displays or the behavioral context to interpret the exchange. This ambiguity stimulates interlocutors to rely on mindreading strategies that are known to hamper interpersonal accuracy (e.g., Ames 2005;Damen et al 2020), such as using stereotypical information or by consulting their own perspective to intuit what others think, feel or desire. This stereotypical thinking or egocentric projection causes interlocutors to overestimate similarities and exaggerate differences between their own and others' viewpoints, inhibiting an accurate understanding of others' mental states (e.g., Ames 2005;Damen et al 2020;Epley et al 2004;Keysar 1994).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This ambiguity stimulates interlocutors to rely on mindreading strategies that are known to hamper interpersonal accuracy (e.g., Ames 2005;Damen et al 2020), such as using stereotypical information or by consulting their own perspective to intuit what others think, feel or desire. This stereotypical thinking or egocentric projection causes interlocutors to overestimate similarities and exaggerate differences between their own and others' viewpoints, inhibiting an accurate understanding of others' mental states (e.g., Ames 2005;Damen et al 2020;Epley et al 2004;Keysar 1994). Hence, taking a person's perspective seems to be quite challenging in computer-mediated communications in which communicators are designated to using inaccurate mindreading strategies.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Perspective-Taking on Trust and Understanding in Online and Face-to-Face Mediations

et al. 2020

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This research investigates the perspective taking process in online and face-to-face mediations. In particular, it addresses the question whether a perspective taking technique—being asked circular questions—helps the establishment of mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between negotiators in online and face-to-face mediation settings. This question was studied in an experimental setting in which disputants had to solve a conflict face-to-face or online by the help of a professional mediator. During the interventions, the mediator either posed mainly circular (perspective-taking) or linear questions. It was expected that mediations in which circular questions were used would lead to a higher level of mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between the disputants, and—as a result—to a more satisfying, integrative agreement. Furthermore, this study examined whether the communication mode of the intervention (online, face-to-face) affected the re-establishment of disputants’ interpersonal trust and understanding. The results of the study show that disputants’ feelings of trust in and understanding of their interaction partner improved more in the face-to-face mediations than in the online mediations. These improved feelings of understanding and trust also predicted how satisfying and integrative disputants perceived the agreement to be. Moreover, disputants perceived their mediator to be more trustworthy and more professional in the face-to-face than in the online interventions. No effect was found for mediators’ questioning style on disputants’ improved interpersonal trust and mutual understanding. We discuss the effects of the questioning style of a mediator and conclude with reflections on reasons why these effects did not lead to differences in mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between the disputants.

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Can the curse of knowing be lifted? The influence of explicit perspective-focus instructions on readers’ perspective-taking.

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking

Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking

When Do Comprehenders Mentalize for Pragmatic Inference?

The Effect of Perspective-Taking on Trust and Understanding in Online and Face-to-Face Mediations

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