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Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?

Cole, G.G.; Atkinson, M.; Le, A.T.D.; Smith, D.T.

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Authors

G.G. Cole

M. Atkinson

A.T.D. Le



Abstract

A growing number of authors have argued that humans automatically compute the visual perspective of other individuals. Evidence for this has come from the dot perspective task in which observers are faster to judge the number of dots in a display when a human avatar has the same perspective as the observer compared to when their perspectives are different. The present experiment examined the ‘spontaneous perspective taking’ claim using a variant of the dot perspective paradigm in which we manipulated what the avatar could see via physical barriers that either allowed the targets to be seen by the avatar or occluded this view. We found a robust ‘perspective taking’ effect despite the avatar being unable to see the same stimuli as the participant. These findings do not support the notion that humans spontaneously take the perspective of others.

Citation

Cole, G., Atkinson, M., Le, A., & Smith, D. (2016). Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?. Acta Psychologica, 164, 165-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.01.007

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 19, 2016
Online Publication Date Jan 29, 2016
Publication Date Feb 1, 2016
Deposit Date Mar 10, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Acta Psychologica
Print ISSN 0001-6918
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 164
Pages 165-168
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.01.007

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