The role of perspective taking and emotions in punishing identified and unidentified wrongdoers

We present two studies examining the effect of identifiability on willingness to punish, emphasising that identifiability of the wrongdoer may increase or decrease willingness to punish depending on the punisher's perspective. When taking the wrongdoer's perspective, identifiability increases pity and decreases anger towards the wrongdoer, leading to a lighter punishment. On the other hand, when adopting the injured perspective, identifiability decreases pity and increases anger, resulting in a severe punishment. We show that while deliberation and rational factors affect the decision regardless of identification, the role of emotions in the decision is greater in the identified condition. Possible implications for public and educational policy are discussed.     

The role of executive function in perspective taking during online language comprehension

During conversation, interlocutors build on the set of shared beliefs known as common ground. Although there is general agreement that interlocutors maintain representations of common ground, there is no consensus regarding whether common-ground representations constrain initial language interpretation processes. Here, I propose that executive functioning—specifically, failures in inhibition control—can account for some occasional insensitivities to common-ground information. The present article presents the results of an experiment that demonstrates that individual differences in inhibition control determine the degree to which addressees successfully inhibit perspective-inappropriate interpretations of temporary referential ambiguities in their partner’s speech. Whether mentioned information was grounded or not also played a role, suggesting that addressees may show sensitivity to common ground only when it is established collaboratively. The results suggest that, in conversation, perspective information routinely guides online language processing and that occasional insensitivities to perspective can be attributed partly to difficulties in inhibiting perspective-inappropriate interpretations.     

Sex differences in components of imagined perspective transformation

We explored the impact of motor experience on the interaction between implicit motor simulation and language-processing. In an action familiarity judgment task, expert volleyball players, fans and novices were presented with semantically correct sentences describing possible and not possible motor actions, all as negative or positive contexts, e.g., "Don't shank!" or "Assist!". As processing negated action-phrases is known to reduce simulation states, exposure to negative or positive contexts was used here to test how simulation varies according to motor feasibility (possible, impossible) and experience (experts and fans). A significant group×stimulus×context interaction showed that athletes and fans, took longer to process negative than positive contexts for possible actions, compared to action-impossible sentences. In addition, experts were significantly faster and more accurate than fans and, in turn, they were both more accurate than novices. Thus, implicit motor simulation impacts on action-verb processing depending on (i) the domain-relevant expertise, (ii) the feasibility of the actions, and (iii) on whether scenes are presented in a negated context. These results suggest that the implicit triggering of motor representations is modulated by the context and it is tuned to people's motor repertoire, even when actions are described linguistically.     

The effect of culture on perspective taking

People consider the mental states of other people to understand their actions. We evaluated whether such perspective taking is culture dependent. People in collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) are said to have interdependent selves, whereas people in individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States) are said to have independent selves. To evaluate the effect of culture, we asked Chinese and American pairs to play a communication game that required perspective taking. Eye-gaze measures demonstrated that the Chinese participants were more tuned into their partner's perspective than were the American participants. Moreover, Americans often completely failed to take the perspective of their partner, whereas Chinese almost never did. We conclude that cultural patterns of interdependence focus attention on the other, causing Chinese to be better perspective takers than Americans. Although members of both cultures are able to distinguish between their perspective and another person's perspective, cultural patterns afford Chinese the effective use of this ability to interpret other people's actions.     

The imaginer and the imagined

A transference of the imaginer and the imagined, arising from largely unconscious fantasies of the way parent and child interact to construct a view of reality, is present in all analyses. For narcissistic patients, primitive fantasies of the imaginer and imagined form an enduring organization, and the enactment of these fantasies in transference and countertransference distorts the way analyst and patient construct meaning. Clinical material demonstrates the deepening that occurs when these fantasies are interpreted.     

Differentiating explanations of attitude-consistent behavior: the role of perspectives and mode of perspective taking

We examined whether participants could differentiate between explanations of attitude-consistent behavior related to EU membership given from two perspectives (EU supporter and EU opponent) by means of three perspective taking modes (the explainer's own perspective, imagined in-group members' perspective, and imagined out-group members' perspective). Participants were presented with explanations provided from different perspectives and perspective taking modes, and they were asked to judge the extent to which they agreed with each explanation, to guess the attitude of the provider of each explanation, and to rate the quality of each explanation in various respects. Participants could not differentiate between explanations given by in-group members and out-group members who imagined the same perspective. They responded more favorably to explanations given from own perspective than from the imagined perspectives. The results suggest that there exists a shared understanding about how both sides should explain attitude-consistent behavior, but this understanding is measurably different from the actual explanations.     

Experimental manipulations of perspective taking and perspective switching in expressive writing

Previous studies suggest that those who naturally vary their pronoun use over the course of expressive writing subsequently report the greatest improvements in physical and mental health. To explore possible perspective taking or perspective switching effects, two studies manipulated writing perspectives about emotional events from either a first-person, second-person, or third-person perspective. In Study 1, 55 students were randomly assigned to one of the three writing perspectives and were asked to write from the same perspective for three 5-minute writing sessions. In Study 2, 129 students wrote for three 5-minute sessions, one from each perspective in a counterbalanced order. The results showed that writing from a first-person perspective conferred more perceived benefits and was associated with using more cognitive mechanism words, whether engaged in perspective taking or perspective switching.     

Narrative imagination and taking the perspective of others

Narrative imagination, as MarthaNussbaum (1996) discusses it, is ``the abilityto be an intelligent reader of another person'sstory', an ability tied to being a democraticand cultivated world citizen, one whounderstands the lives of others. Narrativeimagination does not only need knowledge andlogical reasoning but also love and compassion.This article argues that in order to be agenuine tool for democracy, narrativeimagination and consciously taking theperspective of others has to be based on anunderstanding of humans as basicallypluralistic, as homines aperti. Criticalexamination and reflection should be broughtcloser to the lives we live and confront ourhabits and implicit values in order tocultivate us as humans so that we are genuinelyaffected and touched.     

The role of locomotor posture and experience on handedness and footedness in infancy

This research examined the development of handedness and footedness in infancy. We measured footedness by documenting the limb infants used to "lead-out" as they crawled or walked down a path several times. We measured handedness by documenting the hand infants used to reach for a goal at the end of each trial. Study 1 showed that locomotor skill affects limb lateralization preferences and that most 13-month-old infants demonstrated a side preference for reaching and leading out "in the moment." Study 2 longitudinally examined the developmental trajectories of handedness and footedness as they related to locomotor posture and experience. The findings suggest high variability in the developmental trajectory of footedness, with frequent fluctuation between side preferences. The developmental trajectory of handedness was more stable over the transition between locomotor milestones. The transition between crawling and walking decreased the proportion of infants demonstrating side preferences for leading out and the onset of walking decreased the proportion of infants demonstrating side preferences for reaching. These findings demonstrate the importance of making behavioral observations at multiple time scales to understand underlying developmental trajectories, specifically the stability or instability of the motor system associated with the acquisition of new motor abilities.     

Individual differences in risk perception versus risk taking: handedness and interhemispheric interaction

Research indicates that right-hemisphere mechanisms are specifically sensitive to and averse to risk. Research also indicates that mixed degree of handedness is associated with increased access to right hemisphere processing. Accordingly, it was predicted that mixed-handers would exhibit greater risk aversion. Participants were presented with various risky activities and were asked to rate (i) the perceived risk, (ii) the perceived benefit, and (iii) their likelihood to engage in each activity. No handedness differences were found for any of these ratings. Regression analyses, however, indicated that the likelihood to engage in risky activities was predicted primarily by the perceived risks in mixed-handers and by the perceived benefits in strong-handers.     

Pricing risk and ambiguity: The effect of perspective taking

In the valuation of uncertain prospects, a difference is often observed between selling and buying perspectives. This paper distinguishes between risk (known probabilities) and ambiguity (unknown probabilities) in decisions under uncertainty and shows that the valuation disparity increases under ambiguity compared to risk. It is found that both the comparative versus noncomparative evaluation of risky and ambiguous prospects and the uniqueness of the valuation perspective (either seller or buyer) moderate this increase in the disparity under ambiguity. The finding is consistent with recent theoretical accounts of pricing under uncertainty. We discuss implications for market behaviour and for the ambiguity paradigm as a research tool.     

Agency attribution and visuospatial perspective taking

We tested whether processes that evoke agency interpretations and mental state attributions also lead to adoption of the actor’s visuospatial perspective by the observer. Agency and mental state interpretations were manipulated by showing different film clips involving two triangles (the Frith-Happé animations). Participants made speeded spatial decisions while watching these films. The responses in the spatial task could be either the same or different when given from the perspective of the participant versus the perspective of one of the triangles. Reaction times were longer when the perspectives of the participants and triangles differed than when they were the same. This effect increased as the need to invoke agency interpretations in order to understand the films increased, and it increased for those films that had previously been shown to evoke mental state attributions. This demonstrates that processing of an agent’s behavior co-occurs with perspective adoption, even in the case in which triangles are the actors.     

The measurement of role taking in young adults

Sociometry is presented as an alternative way of measuring role taking, specifically, an alternative to an often used projective measure, the Role-Taking Task (RTT). Study 1 assesses role taking in 161 college students. In this study, a sociometric measure, the Peer Role-Taking Questionnaire (PRTQ) was shown to correlate with class year, group status, social choice, and friendship. In contrast, the RTT correlated weakly with grade point average and some personality test measures. In Study 2, the PRTQ, and not the RIT, was associated with interaction skills in a sample of 39 college nursing students. The PRTQ and RTT did not correlate with each other in either study. The validity and reliability of these two role-taking measures are discussed. It is suggested that researchers need to examine the adequacy of the role-taking measures they use.     

The role of domain-specific practice, handedness, and starting age in chess

The respective roles of the environment and innate talent have been a recurrent question for research into expertise. The authors investigated markers of talent, environment, and critical period for the acquisition of expert performance in chess. Argentinian chess players (N = 104), ranging from weak amateurs to grandmasters, completed a questionnaire measuring variables including individual and group practice, starting age, and handedness. The study reaffirms the importance of practice for reaching high levels of performance, but it also indicates a large variability: The slower player needed 8 times as much practice to reach master level than the faster player. Additional results show a correlation between skill and starting age and indicate that players are more likely to be mixed-handed than individuals in the general population; however, there was no correlation between handedness and skill within the sample of chess players. Together, these results suggest that practice is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acquisition of expertise, that some additional factors may differentiate chessplayers and nonchessplayers, and that starting age of practice is important.     

When perspective taking increases taking: reactive egoism in social interaction

Group members often reason egocentrically, believing that they deserve more than their fair share of group resources. Leading people to consider other members' thoughts and perspectives can reduce these egocentric (self-centered) judgments such that people claim that it is fair for them to take less; however, the consideration of others' thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (selfish) behavior such that people actually take more of available resources. A series of experiments demonstrates this pattern in competitive contexts in which considering others' perspectives activates egoistic theories of their likely behavior, leading people to counter by behaving more egoistically themselves. This reactive egoism is attenuated in cooperative contexts. Discussion focuses on the implications of reactive egoism in social interaction and on strategies for alleviating its potentially deleterious effects.     

Two kinds of visual perspective taking

Visual perspective taking can be used to determine where objects are located relative toanother agent, or whether the agent can see a particular object. Four experiments indicated that different processes provide these different kinds of information. When participants were asked to report whether an object was to the left or to the right of another agent, response times (RTs) increased with increasing angular distance between the participant and the agent, suggesting that participants mentally transformed their perspective to align it with that of the agent. For visibility judgments, RTs were independent of the angle between the participant and the agent but increased with the distance between the agent and the object, suggesting that participants traced the agent's line of sight. Together, these data suggest that perspective taking encompasses at least two qualitatively different computational processes: one that updates the viewer's imagined perspective, and one that traces a line of sight.     

Domain general mechanisms account for imagined transformations of whole body perspective

Three experiments investigated the contribution of domain general processes to imagined transformations of whole body perspective. In a task where participants make left–right judgements about a schematic human figure, reaction times made from the point of view of the figure are longer when the figure does not share the same spatial orientation as the participant and are substantially longer than those made from the participant's own point of view. These phenomena have been attributed to a specialised mechanism for imagined perspective transformations. In the present experiments, the effect of orientation on performance was influenced by factors that affect spatial stimulus–response (S–R) compatibility; it was attenuated with reduced dimensional overlap and reversed by crossed S–R mappings. Performance in a control experiment in which no figure was present suggests that processes moderating S–R mappings may account for the effect of adopting another's point of view. Our findings demonstrate a role for domain general processes in imagined transformations of whole body perspective, imply that egocentric codes for spatial relationships within visually presented bodies are automatically generated, and undermine evidence for a specialised mechanism for imagined perspective transformations.