How to eliminate (and even reverse) egocentric bias in perspective taking
Samuel, S. ORCID: 0000-0001-7776-7427, Cole, G., Eacott, M. & Edwardson, R. (2025).
How to eliminate (and even reverse) egocentric bias in perspective taking.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
doi: 10.1177/17470218251341289
Abstract
The ability to be objective about the perspectives of others is often compromised by interference from our own knowledge, beliefs, and perceptions—an egocentric bias. However, recent research in visual perspective taking has found that this bias is eliminated immediately following a trial in which an alternative visual perspective is taken, suggesting egocentricity is flexible and can be eliminated under certain conditions. We examined such flexibility in relation to manual action. In contrast to other domains of perspective taking where egocentricity is usually problematic, egocentricity in manual action, even in the context of perspective taking, is usually useful, enabling accurate goal-directed movements based on real spatial relationships between the self and the environment (rather than on an imagined perspective). Eliminating egocentricity in manual action would thus make a particularly strong case for the flexibility of perspective taking. In four experiments we assessed whether this "useful" egocentric bias is compromised by practice on visual perspective taking tasks. Results showed that practice disambiguating stimuli from other perspectives makes manual actions consistent with second-person perspectives as easy as actions based on the first-person perspective for an equivalent time period afterwards.
Publication Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | © Experimental Psychology Society 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Lficense (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Publisher Keywords: | Perspective-Taking; Level 2 Perspective-Taking; Egocentric bias; Embodiment; Theory of Mind |
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
Departments: | School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Psychology |
SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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