Cognitions Associated With Attempts to Empathize: How Do We Imagine the Perspective of Another?

Abstract

Although the theoretical importance of perspective taking has long been recognized, surprisingly little work has documented the cognitions associated with attempts to imagine another’s point of view. To explore this issue and to determine whether perspective taking increases the likelihood of self-related thoughts, two experiments were carried out. In the first, a thought-listing procedure was used to assess observer cognitions; in the second, a less reactive measure was used. Instructions to imagine the self in the target’s position and instructions simply to imagine the target’s perspective produced increased levels of self-related cognition relative to a traditional control condition; the imagine-self condition also produced more self-thoughts and fewer target thoughts than did the imagine-target condition. The control condition produced thoughts suggesting that the observers were distancing themselves from the target. Observers receiving no instructions at all reported cognitions that closely resembled those of observers who received imagine-target instructions.