The Curse of Knowing: The Influence of Explicit Perspective-Awareness Instructions on Perceivers’ Perspective-Taking
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Tilburg University, School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Netherlands
Successful social interactions rely a great deal on interlocutors’ propensity to imagine each other’s thoughts, knowledge and intentions. Perspective-taking is therefore considered to be a vital process for social functioning (e.g. Davis, 1983). Ample research has shown, however, that interlocutors often fail to appreciate the other’s perspective, even when the social context requires them to do so (e.g., Damen et al., 2017; Wardlow Lane et al., 2006). These failed perspective-taking attempts are claimed to be the result of perceivers’ curse of knowledge (Keysar, 1994). The ease with which perceivers’ egocentric perspective is accessible makes it hard for perceivers to ignore or suppress it during perspective-taking. This may lead to instances in which perceivers overestimate the extent to which their private perception is shared by uninformed others.
Keysar’s (1994) study showed how perceivers’ egocentric perspective ‘cursed’ perspective-taking. In his scenario study, participants read e-mail conversations between a speaker and an addressee protagonist. In these conversations, the speaker made an ambiguous comment (e.g., “You wanted to know about the restaurant: well, marvelous, just marvelous”) about a past (dining) experience to the addressee. This comment could be interpreted as either sarcastic or sincere. Only participants were given clarifying information about how the comment could be interpreted. Participants either learned that the speaker’s experience had been positive (marvelous dining experience) or had been negative (miserable dining experience). In both cases, the addressee was uninformed about the speaker’s experience and had thus no other reason than to believe that the speaker was being sincere. After reading the speaker’s comment, participants indicated how the uninformed addressee would interpret it. Keysar (1994) showed that when participants’ privileged information suggested that the comment was meant to be sarcastic (in the miserable dining experience) rather than sincere (in the marvelous dining experience), participants were more likely to believe the addressee would too perceive speaker’s sarcasm. Participants’ were unable to suppress their knowledge about the speaker’s sarcastic intention, which caused them to attribute this perception of sarcasm to the uninformed addressee. Participants’ egocentric perspective thus ‘cursed’ their judgment of the addressee’s perspective.
It is argued that the more information perceivers gather about the mental states of others, the better they are at suppressing their egocentric perspective in order to correctly imagine the others’ perspective (e.g., Mitchell, 2009). One way to incite perceivers to gather this information seems to be to explicitly instruct them to mentalize about other’s perspective. Family therapists (e.g., Brown, 1997) and mediators (e.g., Cobb, 1993; Tomm, 1985) regularly employ interpersonal perception questions, such as “What does your partner think/feel/see?” to explicitly force interlocutors to engage in perspective-taking. The answers to these questions and the feedback perceivers receive about the correctness of their interpretation should enable both interlocutors to update any existing false-beliefs (Tomm, 1985). To our knowledge, no research has yet examined whether these explicit perception instructions contribute to establish perceivers’ general awareness of the other’s perspective.
This study examined whether explicit perception questions (Tomm, 1985) help perceivers to acknowledge the perspective of another person, and whether this awareness helps perceivers to suppress the influence of their private knowledge on perspective-taking. We replicated Keysar’s (1994) first scenario study. Instead of using a student sample, we aimed to generalize Keysar’s findings to a non-student, adult population. We invited 229 employees (116 women, 111 men, 2 unknown, Mage = 48.0 years, age range 27-65) of a financial institution in the Netherlands to participate in an online scenario study. We translated two scenarios of Keysar into Dutch and asked participants to determine how an addressee protagonist (Maartje) would interpret a speaker’s (Tom) comment. As in Keysar, we manipulated participants’ privileged information about the speaker’s (positive vs. negative) experience within-subjects. This means that participants were confronted with one scenario in which participants’ information suggested a sarcastic (negative experience) interpretation, and one scenario that suggested a sincere (positive experience) interpretation. After reading each scenario, participants answered “How did the addressee (Maartje) interpret the speaker’s (Tom’s) comment?” on a 7-point scale (1 = very sincere, 7 = very sarcastic).
To examine whether repeated and explicit instructions to acknowledge another person’s perspective would help perceivers’ to suppress privileged information during perspective-taking, we randomly allocated the participants to one of the two conditions (Perspective-Awareness vs. No-Awareness). In the perspective-awareness condition, participants (N = 118) were ‘trained’ to acknowledge the addressee’s (Maartje’s) perspective before they took part in the subsequent scenario study. At the start of the training session, participants read an introductory scenario that introduced Maartje’s (adventurous) character. Subsequently, participants answered four consecutive perception questions. These questions trained participants to acknowledge Maartje’s perspective. For example, one question described how Maartje needed to choose an annual outing out of two available options (e.g., option 1 = workshop skydiving, option 2 = a visit to the local beer brewery). Participants answered the perception question “Which activity will Maartje choose?”. If participants were to regard Maartje’s perspective, they would choose the option that adhered the most to her previously introduced preferences (option 1). Out of the four perception questions, most participants provided at least thrice an answer that was the optimal choice from Maartje’s perspective. The training session thus elicited participants’ awareness of Maartje’s mental state reasoning. After answering the four perception questions, participants were directed to the two scenarios. Participants in the No-Awareness condition (N = 111) were at the start of the experiment immediately directed to the two scenarios.
Results showed that we replicated Keysar’s (1994) curse of knowledge effect in an adult population. Participants were more likely to impute their perception of speaker’s sarcasm onto an uninformed addressee when their privileged information suggested that the speaker was being sarcastic (M = 3.07, SD = 1.67) rather than being sincere (M = 2.11, SD = 1.14), F(1, 221) = 14.98, p <.001. Findings further revealed that participants were just as likely to overestimate the extent to which their private perspective was shared by an uninformed addressee, F(1, 221) = 0.11, p = .741, regardless of their explicit and stimulated (‘trained’) attention to this person’s perspective.
References
Damen, D. J., van der Wijst, P. J., van Amelsvoort, M. A. A., & Krahmer, E. J. (2017). Perspective-taking in referential communication: Does stimulated attention to addressees’ perspective influence speakers’ reference production? Manuscript submitted for publication.
Brown, J. (1997). Circular questioning: An introductory guide. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 18(2), 109-114.
Cobb, S. (1993). Empowerment and mediation: A narrative perspective. Negotiation Journal, 9(3), 245-259.
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113-126.
Keysar, B. (1994). The illusory transparency of intention: Linguistic perspective taking in text. Cognitive Psychology, 26, 165-208.
Mitchell, J. P. (2009). Inferences about mental states. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 364, 1309-1316.
Tomm, K. (1985). Circular interviewing: A multifaceted clinical tool. In D. Campbell & R. Draper (Eds.), Applications of systemic family therapy: The Milan approach (Vol. 3, pp. 33-45). London: Grune & Stratton (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers).
Wardlow Lane, L. W., Groisman, M., & Ferreira, V. S. (2006). Don't talk about pink elephants! Speakers' control over leaking private information during language production. Psychological Science, 17(4), 273-277.
Keywords:
Perspective-taking,
Privileged information,
Curse of knowledge,
egocentricity bias,
interpersonal perception questions
Conference:
XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference, Pavia, Italy, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Poster or Oral
Topic:
Experimental Pragmatics
Citation:
Damen
DJ,
Van Der Wijst
PJ,
Van Amelsvoort
MA and
Krahmer
EJ
(2018). The Curse of Knowing: The Influence of Explicit Perspective-Awareness Instructions on Perceivers’ Perspective-Taking.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.73.00013
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Received:
15 May 2018;
Published Online:
14 Dec 2018.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Debby J Damen, Tilburg University, School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg, 5037 AB, Netherlands, d.j.damen@uvt.nl