Seeing what other people see: accessible cultural mindset affects perspective-taking
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Seeing what other people see: accessible cultural mindset affects perspective‑taking Anett Wolgast1 · Daphna Oyserman2 Accepted: 26 June 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract People can think about themselves as both separate and distinct from others (an individualistic mindset) and as connected and related to others (a collectivistic mindset) though societies differ in the frequency that each mindset is cued in everyday life. We predicted that an activated collectivistic mindset bolsters perspective-taking compared to an activated individualistic mindset for tasks requiring 2- and 3-dimensional mental rotation. We tested our prediction in four studies (n = 910) with German participants. We used an autobiographical recall task (Studies 1 and 2) and a pronoun-circling task (Studies 3 and 4). The recall task was to look at a photograph of children playing alone and think about a time one had worked alone (individualistic mindset) or to look at a photograph of children playing together and think about a time that one worked together with others (collectivistic mindset). The pronouncircling task entailed reading a different narrative paragraph before each dependent measure and circling the first person singular (individualistic mindset) or plural (collectivistic mindset) pronouns in the text. Brief cultural mindset priming was sufficient to change perspective-taking (performance on a 3-buildings variant of the classic 3-mountains task). Our results support our prediction that accessible collectivistic mindset improves momentary ability to perspective-take—see things from another’s perspective. Effects are small but consistent and specific. Self-reported social sensitivity, self-reported perspective-taking skill, and empathy are not affected across studies. Neither, consistently, is performance on an “R” mental-rotation task. Keywords Perspective-taking · Cultural mindset · Individualism · Collectivism · Priming
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s4016 7-019-00083-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Daphna Oyserman [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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A. Wolgast, D. Oyserman
Introduction Imagine that you are supervising student teachers. To facilitate active peer-to-peer learning, you recommend that teachers have their students sit in 4-desk clusters facing one-another rather than in rows facing the teacher. You observe classrooms and find that at some points during the day, all teachers need to explain a task or show their students something. Some teachers seem to automatically intuit what this requires adjustment—they either move around the classroom so all students see them or they ask students to rotate in their chairs. Other teachers seem not to notice that students with their back facing them see something different than they do. You wonder if teaching may be easier for teachers who adjust for
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