The Effect Of Empathy In Perspective Taking

Three experiments were implemented to explore the effect of taking others’ emotions which was often mentioned as empathy on perspective taking in this study.In Experiment 1,we operated the different emotional representation of the protagonist in the photos which were presented to our participants to test whether the progress of individual’s perspective-taking would be impacted when protagonist’s emotion appeared as potential social cues.However,the experiment did not ask subject to concern about other people’s emotional cues,nor did it require to empathize to protagonist’s emotion,so it couldn’t test our hypothesis directly,but only indirectly inferred the interpretations of social cues causing the individual to produce social needs,and then affecting the individual perspective-taking.Thereby in the second experiment,we test whether the initiative empathy to others would impact taking view point of others through conducting participants concerning about the protagonist’s emotion in photos to empathize with the protagonist.But neither of the two experiments could explain how one’s interacting need affected one’s perspective-taking.Because the assumption of this study is that one’s interacting need force him or her to account for current situation,and then impact one’s perspective-taking.So we had manipulated the relation of the others’ emotion to participant in the third experiment,namely the level of individual involvement in the current context,to inspect whether one’s interpretation to current situation influenced one’s empathy,and then impressed one’s perspective-taking.It’s found as follow.(1)It’s shown that other’s mood could markedly impact subsequent perspective-taking tasks in social situation,regardless of that individuals paid attention to other’s mood automatically or drivingly.Specifically,comparing to empathize with other’s negative emotion when participants empathized with other’s positive emotion,their reaction time was faster.And compared to automatic empathy,driving empathy had a bigger effect on perspective-taking.This result indicated the emotion of others in situation implying that there was social interaction need caused individuals’ empathy reaction,thereby affected the individuals’ perspective-taking to others.(2)The study found that with the enhancing of one’s self-involvement in current situation,the empathy’s difference quantity on perspective taking was magnified.Specially,perspective-taking’s reaction time became faster with the enhancing of one’s self-involvement when he or she empathized to other’s positive emotion,and perspective-taking’s reaction time became slower with the enhancing of one’s self-involvement when he or she empathized to other’s negative emotion.This indicated that the empathy need forced individuals making explains basing one’s self-involvement for current situation.These interpretations affected one’s empathy actions,and then influenced one’s perspective-taking response,finally resulted to the emergence of empathy effect on perspective-taking.(3)The experiments discovered that the impact of empathy for others’ different emotions on perspective-taking were not consistent.The perspective taking reaction time was faster when subjects empathized to others’ positive emotions than they empathized to others’negative emotions.Because the embodied cognition theory’s predeterminations were consistent to these results,and at the same time the theory could also account for other results in this study rationally.So this research provided support for the embodied cognition theory.