Perspective Taking: Imagining How Another Feels Versus Imaging How You Would Feel
Abstract
Although often confused, imagining how another feels and imagining how you would feel are two distinct forms of perspective taking with different emotional consequences. The former evokes empathy; the latter, both empathy and distress. To test this claim, undergraduates listened to a (bogus) pilot radio interview with a young woman in serious need. One third were instructed to remain objective while listening; one third, to imagine how the young woman felt; and one third, to imagine how they would feel in her situation. The two imagine perspectives produced the predicted distinct pattern of emotions, suggesting different motivational consequences: Imagining how the other feels produced empathy, which has been found to evoke altruistic motivation; imagining how you would feel produced empathy, but it also produced personal distress, which has been found to evoke egoistic motivation.
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Perspective taking involves putting oneself in the shoes of another; it is an imaginal and cognitive change of location to the position of another.
“Perspective taking involves putting oneself in the shoes of another. It is an imaginal and cognitive change of location to the position of another.”
From Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud—A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling (2015) · cites this paper as [35]
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- Authors
- Batson, C. D., Early, S., & Salvarani, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Kansas (US)
- Corresponding author
- Batson, C. Daniel
- ORCID
- Batson, C. Daniel
- Venue
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1997-07
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 751-758
- ISSN
- 0146-1672 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7433
- OpenAlex
- W2120771953
- Cited by
- 1,296
- References
- 14
- Citations by year
- 2026: 98 · 2025: 85 · 2024: 85 · 2023: 62 · 2022: 79 · 2021: 81 · 2020: 66 · 2019: 68 · 2018: 68 · 2017: 61 · 2016: 72 · 2015: 59 · 2014: 62 · 2013: 70 · 2012: 50
- FWCI
- 6.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Keywords
- perspective taking, empathy, personal distress, altruistic motivation, egoistic motivation
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