Abstract:
Perspective taking is often regarded as a tool to improve social relations, but it can sometimes “backfire,” leading to negative outcomes (e.g., increased stereotyping). Past research has examined the effect of instructing people to take another person’s perspective (or not) on various outcomes, but has focused less on the strategies people might employ when doing such perspective taking. To better understand what causes this “backfiring,” we asked participants to write about the typical day of an out-group target (i.e., someone who supported the opposing candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election) and then answer questions about social outcomes in relation to the target (e.g., how much they liked the target, willingness to engage in conversation with the target, and validity of the target’s position). Participants’ narratives were coded for the point of view they were written in (i.e., first-person, embedded/marked, third-person, and no point of view), the concentration of stereotypes for each political group (i.e., liberal and conservative), and average valence (i.e., negative to positive) of content. Third-person point of view was hypothesized and found to be the most commonly chosen point of view, but first-person was hypothesized to have the most positivity and the least stereotyping, however this hypothesis was not supported. Separate multiple regressions conducted found that smaller concentrations of stereotypes and more positive valence generally predicted better social outcomes. Liberal participants generally exhibiting greater negative perceptions of out-group relations, which could be potentially explained by bitterness over the liberal loss in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Altogether, the findings show the need for deeper understanding of the natural strategies people employ when perspective taking before perspective taking can be used to foster a more consistently effective intergroup intervention.