Taking Another Person's Perspective Increases Self-Referential Neural Processing

Ames, Daniel R.; Jenkins, Adrianna C.; Banaji, Mahzarin R.; Mitchell, James

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02135.x

Cited by 130 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…However, the mechanisms in the brain that might mediate the influence of our affiliation to a group on our responses to the behavior of another person, have not previously been explored. Notably, the effects are in a similar region to those identified in studies examining self‐related processing, including self‐reflection and studies showing effects of similarity on neural responses when people made judgments about other people (Ames, Jenkins, Banaji, & Mitchell, 2008; Cikara et al., 2014; Jenkins & Mitchell, 2011; Kelley et al., 2002; Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006; Moran, Macrae, Heatherton, Wyland, & Kelley, 2006) and also depend on the degree to which individuals shift their behaviors to conform with others (Apps & Ramnani, 2017). This raises the possibility that activity in response to others in this region may become more similar to self when interacting with ingroup members, and that this mergence is greater when an individual is highly fused to the group.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Not on my team: Medial prefrontal cortex responses to ingroup fusion and unfair monetary divisions

et al. 2018

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ObjectivePeople are highly attuned to fairness, with people willingly suffering personal costs to prevent others benefitting from unfair acts. Are fairness judgments influenced by group alignments? A new theory posits that we favor ingroups and denigrate members of rival outgroups when our personal identity is fused to a group. Although the mPFC has been separately implicated in group membership and fairness processing, it is unclear whether group alignments affect medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity in response to fairness. Here, we examine the contribution of different regions of the mPFC to processing from ingroup and outgroup members and test whether its response differs depending on how fused we are to an ingroup.MethodsSubjects performed rounds of the Ultimatum Game, being offered fair or unfair divisions of money from supporters of the same soccer team (ingroup), the fiercest rival (outgroup) or neutral individuals whilst undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).ResultsStrikingly, people willingly suffered personal costs to prevent outgroup members benefitting from both unfair and fair offers. Activity across dorsal and ventral (VMPFC) portions of the mPFC reflected an interaction between fairness and group membership. VMPFC activity in particular was consistent with it coding one's fusion to a group, with the fairness by group membership interaction correlating with the extent that the responder's identity was fused to the ingroup.ConclusionsThe influence of fusion on social behavior therefore seems to be linked to processing in the VMPFC.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Not on my team: Medial prefrontal cortex responses to ingroup fusion and unfair monetary divisions

et al. 2018

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“…A great deal of social psychological evidence outside the domain of perspective taking reveals the malleability and expansiveness of the self-concept, showing how the perceived dividing line between the self and others can be blurred in a person's perceptions (e.g., Ackerman, Goldstein, Shapiro, & Bargh, 2009;Ames 2004aAmes , 2004bAmes, Jenkins, Banaji, & Mitchell, 2008;Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991;Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997;Goldstein & Cialdini, 2007;Goldstein & Hays, 2011;Gunia, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009;Maner et al, 2002;Monin, Norton, Cooper, & Hogg, 2004;Norton, Monin, Cooper, & Hogg, 2003). Cialdini et al (1997) argued that taking the perspective of a target leads the perspective taker to experience a heightened sense of shared and interconnected personal identities, in which the perspective taker comes to incorporate the self within the boundaries of the other (see also Maner et al, 2002).…”

Section: Perspective Taking: When I Walk In Your Shoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived perspective taking: When others walk in our shoes.

Goldstein¹,

Vezich²,

Shapiro³

2014

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

127

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A great deal of psychological research has investigated the influence of perspective taking on individuals, indicating that perspective taking increases the extent to which people like, feel a sense of self-other overlap with, and help those whose perspective they take. However, previous investigations of the topic have been limited to the study of the perspective taker, rather than the individual whose perspective has been taken. The purpose of the current work is to begin to fill this large gap in the literature by examining the consequences of believing that another individual is taking one's perspective, a phenomenon we refer to as perceived perspective taking. Over a series of 6 experiments, we demonstrate that perceiving that one's perspective has been taken confers many of the same interpersonal benefits as taking another's perspective. Specifically, our data suggest that believing that another person has successfully taken one's perspective results in an increased liking for, a greater sense of self-other overlap with, and more help provided to that person. Consistent with predictions, we find that one's self-other overlap with the perspective taker and the amount of empathy one perceives the perspective taker to feel operate in tandem to mediate the link between perceived perspective taking and liking for the perspective taker. Further, a mediational path from perceived perspective taking to helping behavior through liking is supported. Future directions are discussed, along with implications for theory and application in domains such as intergroup relations, conflict resolution, and political campaigning.Keywords: perspective taking, self-other overlap, similarity, prosocial behavior, empathy You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit-the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us-the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town.-Barack Obama, 2006I feel your pain. -Bill Clinton, 1992 Although Barack Obama's victory over challenger Mitt Romney in the 2012 U.S. Presidential elections can be attributed to many causes, some pundits have cited the large "empathy gap" between the two candidates as one of the central reasons for a decisive Obama win (Ali, 2012;Birckhead, 2012). Consistent with this suggestion, polls from the contest showed that when voters were asked to consider which candidate was "more in touch with people like them" or "understood the economic problems of regular people," Obama won by a wide margin (Associated Press, 2012;Cillizza & Blake, 2012;Frommer, 2012). All savvy politicians try to persuade voters that they understand their circumstances, but none was more proficient at it than the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Particularly when he was on the road campaigning, Clinton was a master at peering deeply in...

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“…Accordingly, this intervention aimed to activating self-referential processing in association with outgroup faces in Study 1. The intervention adapted a perspective-taking paradigm (Ames, Jenkins, Banaji & Mitchell, 2008) that showed Black faces accompanied by an emotional context (e.g., "This person just found a $100 bill on the ground."). Participants imagined that they were the person in the situation and wrote about how they felt.…”

Section: Background Design and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

Lai¹,

Marini

Lehr

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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539

482

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Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted seventeen interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in four studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of seventeen interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared to Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other nine interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics. Abstract = 160 words Keywords = attitudes, racial prejudice, implicit social cognition, malleability, Implicit Association Test September 9, 2016 update: We updated this manuscript to fix several minor reporting errors that we have learned about since the publication of the manuscript in August 2014. For a summary of these updates, please see pages 67 and 68. Authors' note:This project was supported by a gift from Project Implicit. Lai and Hawkins are consultants and Nosek is an officer of Project Implicit, Inc., a non-profit organization that includes in its mission "To develop and deliver methods for investigating and applying phenomena of implicit social cognition, including especially phenomena of implicit bias based on age, race, gender or other factors. Thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness shape social perception, judgment and action (Bargh, 1999;Devine, 1989;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Nowhere has this idea been more explored than in studies of racial prejudice in which people report egalitarian racial attitudes, but also implicitly prefer Whites compared to Blacks (Devine, 1989;Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997;Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995;. These studies have been influential because implicit racial preferences predict behaviors such as negative interracial contact (McConnell & Leibold, 2001), biases in medical decision-making (Green et al., 2007), and hiring discrimination (Rooth, 2010).From the hundreds of studies conducted, we can conclude that implicit preferences (1) are related to, but distinct from, explicit preferences (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;, (2) are constructed through different mechanisms than explicit preferences (De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, & Moors, 2009;Ranganath & Nosek, 2008;Ratliff & Nosek, 2011;Rydell & McConnell, 2006), ...

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Taking Another Person's Perspective Increases Self-Referential Neural Processing

Cited by 130 publications

References 6 publications

Not on my team: Medial prefrontal cortex responses to ingroup fusion and unfair monetary divisions

Not on my team: Medial prefrontal cortex responses to ingroup fusion and unfair monetary divisions

Perceived perspective taking: When others walk in our shoes.

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

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