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Better Living Through Perspective Taking

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Positive Psychology as Social Change

Abstract

People behave better – more acceptably, more admirably, more prosocially – after perspective taking. First, perspective taking has been consistently found to increase compassionate emotions (commonly called empathy, but the precise label in this case is “empathic concern”) toward the person whose perspective has been taken. Second, perspective taking leads people to view and treat other people more like the self, viewing them as possessing more traits in common with the self, and symbolically having “merged,” at least partially, with the self in terms of cognitive representations and descriptions of personality and explanations of behavior.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Notably, although Malle’s exhaustive meta-analysis shows no “traditional” actor–observer effect for positive behaviors, there are several oft-cited studies that report that perspective taking increases observers’ external attributions even for positive or neutral behaviors, such as (Storms, 1973). However, Malle (2006) reports five published failures to replicate Storms’ original attributional pattern among non-perspective-taking observers. Galper’s (1976) study is also regularly cited. She labeled her manipulation as an “empathy” versus a control condition, but the instructions in the empathy condition are quite similar to “imagine self” perspective-taking instructions used in other studies. Additionally, it should be noted that Malle’s meta-analysis only included studies that had actors and observers making attributions; studies that manipulated perspective taking but only for observer subjects were excluded.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge help on various sections of this chapter from Georgia Layton, Ezra Markowitz, Kathryn Oleson, Jennifer Pfeifer, Scott Sprague, and Joann Wu Shortt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403, USA

    Sara D. Hodges

  2. University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Brian A.M. Clark

  3. University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Michael W. Myers

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  1. Sara D. Hodges
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Correspondence to Sara D. Hodges .

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    Robert Biswas-Diener

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Hodges, S.D., Clark, B.A., Myers, M.W. (2011). Better Living Through Perspective Taking. In: Biswas-Diener, R. (eds) Positive Psychology as Social Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9938-9_12

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