Egocentric Projection Research Articles

Egocentric projection is a rational strategy for accurate emotion prediction

People need to accurately understand and predict others' emotions in order to build and maintain meaningful social connections. However, when they encounter new social partners, people often do not have enough information about them to make accurate inferences. Rather, they often resort to an egocentric heuristic, and make predictions about a target by using their own self-knowledge as a proxy. Is this egocentric heuristic a form of cognitive bias, or is it a rational strategy for real-world social prediction? If egocentrism provides a rational and effective solution to the challenging task of social prediction in naturalistic contexts, we should expect that a) egocentric predictions tend to be more accurate, and b) people rely on self-knowledge to a greater extent when it's more likely to be a good proxy. Using an emotion prediction task and personality measures, we assessed similarity and predictive accuracy between first-year college students and their new acquaintance roommate. Results demonstrated that, when people need to predict an unfamiliar target's emotions, self-knowledge can often effectively approximate knowledge about others, and thus support accurate predictions. Moreover, participants that were typical of the sample, whose self-knowledge can better approximate information about the target, relied more on self-knowledge in their predictions, and thus achieved higher accuracy. These findings suggest that people rationally tune their use of egocentrism based on whether it is likely to pay off. Overall, these findings demonstrate a rational side to a cognitive phenomenon usually framed as a cognitive pitfall, namely egocentric projection, when its natural decision context is taken into consideration.

Impacts of character morality on egocentric projection and identification

Studies in the social cognition literature indicate that several strategies play a role in how observers understand an observed actor, including by simulating the actor's perspective (identification), and/or an audience member projecting their own perspective onto the actor's mind (egocentric projection). In processing story characters, there is evidence that taking a character's perspective and projecting one's own perspective are distinct psychological mechanisms used to understand a character. Manipulating a common and much studied narrative feature—character morality—we examined how morality influences the way audience members process story characters. Three experiments consistently found that audience members tend to have higher levels of both egocentric projection and identification with the character when interpreting moral characters, compared to immoral characters. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that egocentric projection and identification are two distinct constructs.

The Benefits and Obstacles to Perspective Getting

In general, people tend to rely on egocentric projection when predicting others’ emotions, attitudes, and preferences. However, this strategy is less effective than the more obvious strategy of directly asking others what they feel, think, or desire (‘perspective getting’). In three experimental studies, we investigated how likely people are to ask for others’ perspectives, whether it leads to better predictions, and what factors impede perspective getting. In the first study, we let participants predict how happy another person would be with different money distributions. Only 26% of all people engaged in perspective getting, and it did not lead to better predictions. In the second study, we let people predict how expensive another person would think certain products are. The majority of people engaged in some form of perspective getting, but only 23% of all people did this thoroughly. Perspective getting did lead to better predictions. In the final study, we let people predict another person’s attitudes about a wide range of topics. Here, 70% of the people engaged in perspective getting and 12.5% did so thoroughly. Again, perspective getting led to better predictions. We found that confidence acted as a barrier for perspective getting. We also tested whether pointing out that perspective getting is the best strategy would increase perspective getting. We do not find a positive effect of this intervention. We discuss possible other interventions to increase people’s tendency to get rather than take perspective.

Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking

People are likely to use their own knowledge as a frame of reference when they try to assess another person’s perspective. Due to this egocentric anchoring, people often overestimate the extent to which others share their point of view. This study investigated which type of feedback (if any) stimulates perceivers to make estimations of another person’s perspective that are less biased by egocentric knowledge. We allocated participants to one of the three feedback conditions (no feedback, accuracy feedback, narrative feedback). Findings showed that participants who were given feedback adjusted their perspective-judgement more than those who did not receive feedback. They also showed less egocentric projection on future assessments. Participants adjusted their perspective within the same trial to the same degree for both feedback types. However, participants’ egocentric bias was only reduced when they received narrative feedback and not when they received accuracy feedback about their performance. Implications of these findings for theories of perspective-taking are discussed.

Effects of Egocentric Projection and Identification on Narrative Persuasion in Foodborne Illness Messages

This study conceptually and empirically distinguishes two mental processes in narrative processing of food safety health messages—identification with and egocentric projection onto story characters. Two studies examined the effects of narrative autobiographical accounts of contracting foodborne illness (salmonella) because of careless food preparation. Both studies consistently found that identification increased, but egocentric projection decreased audience members’ behavioral intention to perform safe food handling practices, indicating that egocentric projection and identification represent unique mental processes and yield distinct persuasive outcomes. In addition, confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence that egocentric projection and identification are distinct constructs. Implications for the role of identification and egocentric projection for understanding narrative processing and for health persuasion are discussed.

A Bird's eye view from below: Activity in the temporo-parietal junction predicts from-above Necker Cube percepts

The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) consistently emerges in other-regarding behavior, including tasks probing affective phenomena such as morality and empathy. Yet the TPJ is also recruited in processes with no affective or social component, such as visuo-spatial processing and mathematical cognition. We present serendipitous findings from a perceptual decision-making task on a bistable stimulus, the Necker Cube, performed in an MRI scanner. The stimulus in question is a transparent, wire-frame cube that evokes spontaneous switches in perception. Individuals can view the cube from below or from above, though a consistent bias is shown towards seeing the cube from above. We replicate this bias, finding participants spend more time in the from-above percept. However, in testing for BOLD differences between percept orientations, we found robust responses in bilateral TPJ for the from-above > from-below perceptual state. We speculate that this neural response comes from the sensory incongruence of viewing an object from above while lying supine in the scanner. We further speculate that the TPJ resolves this incongruence by facilitating an egocentric projection. Such a function would explain the TPJ's ubiquitous response to other-regarding, visuo-spatial and mathematical cognition, as all these phenomena demand an ability to ambulate through the coordinate space. Our findings suggest the TPJ may not play a specific role in social or moral components of other-regarding behavior, such as altruism, and further indirectly suggest that “pure”, allocentric altruism may not correlate with the TPJ. Results further have implications on how the TPJ may be modulated by activities such as flight or drone operation. Finally, this study highlights the possible need for congruence between stimuli and body position in neuroimaging studies.

Can the curse of knowing be lifted? The influence of explicit perspective-focus instructions on readers' perspective-taking.

Perceivers of other minds often overestimate the similarity between their own and other people's perspectives. This egocentric projection during perspective-taking is argued to originate from perceivers' tendency to use their own perspective as a referential anchor from which they insufficiently adjust away to account for an alternative interpretation. We investigated whether an explicit focus on another person's point of view allows perceivers to make sufficient perspective-adjustments, thereby attenuating their egocentric projection. Findings showed that we successfully replicated Keysar's (1994) illusory transparency of intention effect (Experiment 1) and Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, and Gilovich's (2004) findings that confirm perceivers' egocentric anchoring and (insufficient) adjustment during perspective-taking (Experiment 2). We further showed that enhancing perceivers' attention to another person's perspective both prior (Experiment 1) and during (Experiment 2) perspective-taking did not diminish egocentric projection. Findings are discussed in light of the role of feedback in making accurate perspective-adjustments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Should I Touch the Customer? Rethinking Interpersonal Touch Effects from the Perspective of the Touch Initiator

AbstractPrevious research has highlighted the effects of receiving interpersonal touch on persuasion. In contrast, we examine initiating touch. Individuals instructed to touch engage in egocentric projection in which they project their own affective reaction onto their expectations for how the recipient will feel (i.e., empathic forecast), how they appear to the recipient (i.e., metaperception), and the evaluation of the interaction itself (i.e., interaction awkwardness). Touch initiators expect that recipients will feel worse with touch, express concern for how they, themselves, will be perceived, and think that interactions are more awkward. Interestingly, touch recipients do not evaluate these interactions more negatively and leave higher tips after having been touched; touch initiators do not expect this to be the case. As a result, instructed touch initiators (vs. volitional touch initiators) are less (more) likely to engage in subsequent interactions with customers, potentially undermining future service provided to customers. Across five studies, four of which involve actual dyadic interactions, we test the consequences of initiating touch with an inquiry into the effects of interpersonal touch on the initiator. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications.

Some Hedonic Consequences of Perspective‐Taking in Recommending

What do people enjoy about making recommendations? Although recommendation recipients can gain useful information, the value of these exchanges for the information provider is less clear in comparison. In this article we test whether a common recommendation heuristic—egocentric projection—also has hedonic consequences, by conducting experiments that compare recommendations (suggestions for another person) to reviews, in which people merely express their own preferences. Over five studies, people preferred reviewing over recommending. Recommenders enjoyed themselves less when they had to take their recipients' perspective, to the extent that the recipients' tastes were different from their own. These results suggest that self‐expression can be intrinsically rewarding for recommendation makers, and that recommendation seekers can elicit more information by asking for reviews instead.

As seen by the other...: Perspectives on the self in the memories and emotional perceptions of Easterners and Westerners.

The experiment reported investigated the phenomenological consequences of Easterners' and Westerners'perspectives on the self Two findings are consistent with the notion that Asians are more likely than Westerners to experience the self from the perspective of the generalized other First, Eastern participants were more likely than Western participants to have third-person (as opposed to first-person) memories when they thought about situations in which they would be at the center of a scene. Second, Easterners and Westerners engaged in different sorts of projections when they read the emotional expressions of other people. Westerners were more biased than Easterners toward egocentric projection of their own emotions onto others, whereas Easterners were more biased than Westerners toward relational projection, in which they projected onto others the emotions that the generalized other would feel in relation to the participant. Implications for how phenomenological experiences could reinforce different Eastern and Western ideologies about the self and the group are discussed.