PERSPECTIVE-TAKING, CONFLICT, AND PRESS - DRAWING AN E ON YOUR FOREHEAD

Perspective-taking and its opposite (egocentric perceptions of others) are studied here on the basis of the quality of the relationship betw een the perceiving person and the target person being perceived. It is assumed that subjectively experienced press (Murray, 1938), defined a s participants' feeling impelled to deal with another, will be a centr al determinant of perspective-taking, in the sense of being positively related to perspective-taking performance. However, if a relationship spells conflict for a person, then press should come to be negatively related to perspective-taking. This set of assumptions was tested in the course of three studies, all implementing the ''drawing an E on yo ur forehead'' procedure developed 15 years ago by Hass (1979). In Stud y 1, in which conflict with the other was an inherent aspect of partic ipants' perceiving the other, higher press led to a collapse of perspe ctive-taking. In Study 2 we attempted to eliminate conflict from the s etting, and in this case higher press led to an enhancement of perspec tive-taking performance. Study 3, an experiment, varied participants' felt press to deal with the target person as well as the extent of con flict; we found that press furthered perspective-taking as long as con flict was absent, but given a strong conflict, press led to disrupted perspective-taking. The statistical interaction, combined with the eff ects of the first two studies, confirms a theoretical model concerning the conditions under which others' unique perspectives are (or are no t) acknowledged.