EFFECT OF PERSPECTIVE-TAKING ON THE COGNITIVE REPRESENTATION OF PERSONS - A MERGING OF SELF AND OTHER

Two experiments examined the possibility that perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representations of others that substant ially overlap with the observers' own self-representations. In Experim ent 1 observers receiving role-taking instructions were more likely to ascribe traits to a novel target that they (observers) had earlier in dicated were self-descriptive. This pattern was most pronounced, howev er, for positively valenced traits. In Experiment 2 some participants received role-taking instructions but were also given a distracting me mory task. In the absence of this task, role taking again produced gre ater overlap-primarily for positive traits-between self- and target re presentations. In the presence of the memory task, the degree of self- target overlap was significantly reduced for all traits, regardless of valence. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.