Being able to get inside the mind of another person and take their perspective would be a handy skill. Knowing what a friend is feeling would probably be quite useful a lot of the time. I would also suspect that the majority of us think we are quite good at this. The good news is that we probably aren’t too bad after all and that there is some quite interesting relevant research that will be covered in this blog. The first study underlines that:- a) we are quite good at it, and b) we can use it to improve our dating success (always a good thing). The second study is something quite different. The flip side of perspective taking is revealed and it is somewhat unexpected. It is either good or bad news dependent on whether you see yourself as an academic type or more of a cheerleader.Place et al. (2009) designed a nice study to examine how good participants would be at judging a fairly important and common social phenomena - whether or not individuals on a date are interested in their dating partner. At the Humboldt University of Berlin the researchers set up a speed dating event and had an awful lot of speed daters attend numerous 3 minute dates during the evening and after each date make a simple decision of yes (a.k.a ‘I would love to see you again’) or no (‘you’re not fit or interesting’). In return for a free evening of speed dating the researchers filmed the dates and asked participants to complete some short questionnaires (I have been speed dating and am not sure participants did get a great deal here). The researchers then randomly selected a proportion of the many dates and invited some undergraduate participants to watch them and guess what the responses of each daters were.
Before I move on to the results of the study, I would like to let you know some interesting stats. As is the case with speed dating in general, males were far more likely to say yes (a lot of desperate men and picky women knocking about) and very few dates resulted in two yes’s (15%). These stats suggest that men might consider not bothering with 10-15 potentially terrible 3 minute interactions. Now to the results; Interestingly participants tended to perform quite well (well above what we would expect from chance) and whether participants watched 10 or 30 seconds of the date didn’t seem to have any impact on performance. Obviously quite a lot can be read in a little time. What is also interesting is that female daters were a lot harder to read than males. Participants performed only marginally better than chance when they were trying to figure out if the girl was just not into him. The researchers suggest that women tend to be harder to read as they are more likely to mask their true intentions – bad times for the single men amongst us. Finally, participants that were in a relationship consistently outperformed singletons. Why? Perhaps because they are inherently better at picking up on dating signals or perhaps because the singletons don’t get out and see people very much. Whatever the reason it is an interesting finding.
A friend and housemate of mine during final year exams came up with the idea of dressing in a suit and tie everyday for his 9-5 revision hours as he thought it would get him in the right frame of mind - quite odd in itself. But to add to this, he was revising in his bedroom. I thought he was a massive idiot for it. However, it turns out he may well have been onto something very clever and in my ignorance I was blind to his brilliance (an explanation I am not fond of). Recent research suggests that taking the perspective of another can have marked effects on how we view ourselves and influence our behaviour accordingly. A series of experiments by Gallinsky et al. (2008) underline this idea well. The general experiments involved participants listening or reading about another person and then either being asked to a) imagine and write about spending a day in their life (taking their perspective) or b) do something else that was similar but didn’t involve perspective taking. In one study the researchers found that simply taking the perspective of a cheer leader resulted in participants later viewing themselves as more attractive, sexy and gorgeous! In another, participants took the perspective of an academic and accordingly later viewed themselves as more intelligent.
This is all quite nice, but what about effects on behaviour? To answer this question the researchers carried out two studies involving an analytical test (kind of like an intelligence-problem solving test). Prior to doing the test some participants took the perspective of our blond and beautiful cheer leaders and others took the perspective of academics. The results? Taking the perspective of a cheer leader resulted in participants performing worse in the exam and taking one of an academic resulted in improved performance. It would appear that when we do take others perspectives we might be getting more than we bargained for. We seemingly end up unknowingly utilizing stereotypes and perceptions of that person to shape who we are and what we subsequently do.
Points of Interest
Be very wary of females on speed dates. Regardless of all those signals they probably find you quite repulsive.
Conversely, if you are in a relationship and speed dating:
a) you might waste less time on lost causes
b) you probably aren’t a very good girl/boyfriend.
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