Presenter(s): Clare Brinkman—Psychology
Faculty Mentor(s): Sara Hodges
Session 6: Cerebal Matters
The current body of psychology literature on perspective taking is largely made up of studies which instruct participants to take the perspective of another person . In order to better understand the circumstances under which unprompted perspective taking occurs, an online study (n = 238) was conducted to explore naturalistic accounts of everyday perspective taking . In this study, university student research participants were asked to write about a time, preferably in recent days, when they took the perspective of another person . Narratives were coded using a reliable coding scheme developed to capture the prevalence of and variation in the following elements: whose perspective was taken; what triggered the perspective taking; strategies mentioned (if any) for perspective taking; interpersonal or other outcomes of perspective taking; and use of perspective-taking metaphors (e .g ., use of visual or place metaphors) . Results will help shed light on when people think they engage in perspective taking, and may address whether these contexts are related to prosocial and interpersonal understanding outcomes associated with perspective taking .