The role of anxiety and perspective-taking strategy on affective empathic responses

Empathy is an important pro-social behaviour critical to a positive clientetherapist relationship. Therapist anxiety has been linked to reduced ability to empathise and lower client satisfaction with therapy. However, the nature of the relationship between anxiety and empathy is currently unclear. The current study investigated the effect of experimentally-induced anxiety on empathic responses elicited during three different perspective-taking tasks. Perspective-taking was manipulated within-subjects with all participants (N¼ 52) completing imagine-self, imagine-other and objective conditions. A threat of shock manipulation was used to vary anxiety between-subjects. Participants in the threat of shock condition reported higher levels of anxiety during the experiment and lower levels of empathyrelated distress for the targets than participants in the control condition. Perspective-taking was associated with higher levels of empathy-related distress and concern compared to the objective condition. The present results suggest that perspective-taking can to a large extent mitigate the influence of heightened anxiety on an individual’s ability to empathise.

Effects of perspective taking and entitlement on consumers

Perspective taking involves mentally putting yourself in another's shoes and has been shown to offer interpersonal benefits, however, despite its use in campaigns targeting adolescents, it has been relatively neglected in marketing. This paper examines the moderating effect of entitlement in young adolescent consumers, focusing on perspective taking encouraging a prosocial behavior. This research extends existing marketing literature which to date has examined perspective taking in relation to adult behavior (Davis et al., 2004; Galinsky et al., 2008; Dietvorst et al., 2009), contributing to the study and understanding of adolescent consumers' consumer behavior. Three experiments were conducted which demonstrate that perspective taking benefits occur for nonentitled adolescents but not for entitled adolescents. Effects for perspective taking and entitlement are driven by evaluative concern for nonentitled adolescents and a perceived lack of relational closeness for entitled adolescents.

Empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking

The present study examined whether strategy moderated the relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and empathy. Participants (N=96) undertook both a perspective-taking task requiring speeded spatial judgements made from the perspective of an observed figure and the Empathy Quotient questionnaire, a measure of trait empathy. Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to empathy in that more empathic individuals showed facilitated performance particularly for figures sharing their own spatial orientation. This relationship was restricted to participants that reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial orientation to align with that of the figure; it was absent in those adopting an alternative strategy of transposing left and right whenever confronted with a front-view figure. Our finding that strategy moderates the relationship between empathy and visuospatial perspective-taking enables a reconciliation of the apparently inconclusive findings of previous studies and provides evidence for functionally dissociable empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking.

Embodied perspective-taking indicated by selective disruption from aberrant self motion

Spatial perspective-taking that involves imagined changes in one’s spatial orientation is facilitated by vestibular stimulation inducing a congruent sensation of self-motion. We examined further the role of vestibular resources in perspective-taking by evaluating whether aberrant and conflicting vestibular stimulation impaired perspective-taking performance. Participants (N = 39) undertook either an “own body transformation” (OBT)task, requiring speeded spatial judgments made from the perspective of a schematic figure, or a control task requiring reconfiguration of spatial mappings from one’s own visuo-spatial perspective. These tasks were performed both without and with vestibular stimulation by whole-body Coriolis motion, according to a repeated measures design, balanced for order. Vestibular stimulation was found to impair performance during the first minute post stimulus relative to the stationary condition. This disruption was task-specific, affecting only the OBT task and not the control task, and dissipated by the second minute post-stimulus. Our experiment thus demonstrates selective temporary impairment of perspective-taking from aberrant vestibular stimulation, implying that uncompromised vestibular resources are necessary for efficient perspective-taking. This finding provides evidence for an embodied mechanism for perspective-taking whereby vestibular input contributes to multisensory processing underlying bodily and social cognition. Ultimately, this knowledge may contribute to the design of interventions that help patients suffering sudden vertigo adapt to the cognitive difficulties caused by aberrant vestibular stimulation.

Men perform comparably to women in a perspective taking task after administration of intranasal oxytocin but not after placebo

Oxytocin (OT) is thought to play an important role in human interpersonal information processing and behavior. By inference, OT should facilitate empathic responding, i.e. the ability to feel for others and to take their perspective. In two independent double-blind, placebo-controlled between-subjects studies, we assessed the effect of intranasally administered OT on affective empathy and perspective taking, whilst also examining potential sex differences (e.g., women being more empathic than men). In study 1, we provided 96 participants (48 men) with an empathy scenario and recorded self reports of empathic reactions to the scenario, while in study 2, a sample of 120 individuals (60 men) performed a computerized implicit perspective taking task. Whilst results from Study 1 showed no influence of OT on affective empathy, we found in Study 2 that OT exerted an effect on perspective taking ability in men. More specifically, men responded faster than women in the placebo group but they responded as slowly as women in the OT group. We conjecture that men in the OT group adopted a social perspective taking strategy, such as did women in both groups, but not men in the placebo group. On the basis of results across both studies, we suggest that self-report measures (such as used in Study 1) might be less sensitive to OT effects than more implicit measures of empathy such as that used in Study 2. If these assumptions are confirmed, one could infer that OT effects on empathic responses are more pronounced in men than women, and that any such effect is best studied using more implicit measures of empathy rather than explicit self-report measures.

The role of perspective taking in anger arousal

Although there are strong grounds to expect that perspective taking deficits are associated with anger arousal following an interpersonal provocation, there has been little research directly testing this hypothesis. In this study, 636 volunteers were asked to rate their likely reactions to two brief video representations of potentially anger arousing social transgressions. Results confirm the relationship between dispositional perspective taking and the likelihood of anger arousal following an interpersonal provocation. Perspective taking was also predictive of trait anger (negatively) and of the means of control and expression of anger. Associations between personal distress and anger measures indicate the possible influence of the intensity, regulation, and direction of emotion on anger.

The development of CBT programmes for anger : the role of interventions to promote perspective-taking skills

Although the emotion of anger has, in recent years, been the subject of increasing theoretical analysis, there are relatively few accounts of how interventions designed to reduce problematic anger might be related to cognitively oriented theories of emotion. In this review of the literature we describe how a cognitive-behavioural approach to the treatment of those with anger-related problems might be understood in relation to conceptualizations of anger from a cognitive perspective. Three additional interventions (visual feedback, chair-work, forgiveness therapy) are identified that aim to improve the perspective-taking skills of angry clients. It is concluded that such interventions might be considered for use within the context of cognitive-behavioural treatment.

The process of interpersonal perspective taking

Perspective taking, the main cognitive component of empathy, has a particularly important and complex role to play in the clinician-client relationship, particularly in mental health nursing. However, despite extensive investigation into the outcomes of this construct (e.g. sympathy, altruism), the process by which people take another's psychological point of view has received comparatively little attention. The purpose of this study was to investigate what the individual does when attempting to take the perspective of another person. The aims were to identify the specific strategies people used to accomplish this task, to consider how and why these strategies were chosen, and the relationship between the strategies and subsequent outcomes. Participants described an example of their own perspective-taking experience. Adopting an interpretive phenomenological approach, analysis resulted in the generation of several themes of direct relevance to both the perspective taking process and the wider empathic experience. Of particular importance were two superordinate themes, use of other-information and use of self-information. One significant subordinate theme (within use of selfinformation) to emerge was that of past experience, where the participant had experienced either (a) a similar role to that which they occupied in the present situation, or (b) a similar situation to that of the target person. Both of these experiences were determinants of how easy participants perceived the task of apprehending the target’s perspective. Within the wider empathic experience, themes included emotional manifestations (e.g. sympathy), as well as judgements of appropriate behaviours. Implications of findings when working in clinical and mental health settings are discussed.

An exploratory investigation of the process of perspective taking in interpersonal situations

The ability to take the perspectives of others is considered a prerequisite for effective interpersonal interaction. Despite extensive investigation into the correlates of perspective taking, there have been few previous attempts to understand the process by which people take another's psychological point of view. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the strategies used by individuals when attempting to take the perspective of another person. Twelve participants discussed a time they engaged in perspective taking. The analysis revealed that perspective taking was used in situations in which significant negative emotions could arise, and that participants shifted between the use of self-information (e.g., switching places, past experience) and other-information (e.g., target's personal characteristics) during the process of perspective taking. Different emotions and cognitions were associated with taking one's own perspective and taking that of the other person. The study provides a direct consideration of an under-investigated component of social and personal relationships.

Perspective taking and empathy: does having similar past experience to another person make it easier to take their perspective?

This study tested the hypothesis that it is easier to take the perspective of another person when one has similar past experience. Volunteer participants (N = 154) were asked to take the perspective of a protagonistin one of four problematic interpersonal situations and then to rate the ease with which they felt able to perspective take and the extent of their personal past experience of similar situations. Similar past experiencepredicted ease of perspective taking, with the relationship influenced by reflection on past experience. Ease of perspective taking mediated the relationship between similar past experience and participant perceptionsof their accuracy in understanding the other person, but ease was not associated with emotional arousal. The findings have potential therapeutic applications for attempts to increase empathy and understanding in people for whom perspective taking may be difficult.

Perspective taking as a mechanism through which social comparisons relate to body dissatisfaction

 Social perspective taking is argued to represent a cognitive-developmental mechanism that is implicated in the development of body dissatisfaction, and a mechanism through which social comparisons relate to body dissatisfaction. Overall, the findings did not support the proposed hypotheses.