Connecting social and spatial cognition: the role of the body in perspective-taking

连接社会和空间认知：身体在观点采择中的作用

• 批准号: 397465598
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Thorsten Michael Erle
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Department of Social Psychology
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/397465598?language=en
• 关键词: Connecting; social; spatial; cognition; role

This project unites the disparate research areas of vuso-spatial and social perspective-taking. It identifies points of contact between the two areas and integrates knowledge from both fields in an innovative way. Social psychologists have investigated social perspective-taking, that is, the ability to imagine how another person is thinking or feeling. It has been shown that instructions to engage in social perspective-taking induce many positive interpersonal outcomes, such as increased prosocial motivation and behavior, more positive attitudes, and feelings of similarity towards another person. But it is still unclear which psychological mechanisms cause these outcomes. Cognitive psychologists mainly have investigated visuo-spatial perspective-taking, that is, the ability to imagine how the world looks for another person. It has been shown that this is an embodied process. 'Embodied' in the sense of the embodied cognition theory means that the body is an important basis for the simulation of higher mental processes. When engaging in visuo-spatial perspective-taking, we simulate a mental rotation of our body schema into the position of another person. While this mechanism of embodied self-transformation has been thoroughly established in previous spatial cognition research, the question whether the embodied transformation has any meaningful social-cognitive or affective consequences has not been investigated yet.The present grant proposal connects these two research areas using an embodied cognition framework: it is predicted that the embodied transformation of the self into the position of another person is a shared causal mechanism of all kinds of perspective-taking that also creates the well-known effects of social perspective-taking. The physical closeness that is being simulated during the embodied transformation is the modal grounding of the psychological closeness that is frequently reported following instructions to engage in social perspective-taking. Specifically, it will be investigated whether an induction of visuo-spatial perspective-taking (and hence physical closeness) causally affects outcomes usually associated with social perspective-taking. Furthermore, it will be investigated whether inductions of psychological distance affect the embodied self-transformation mechanism, that is, whether we have a harder time to adopt the visuo-spatial perspective of, for instance, an unsympathetic person. Finally, it will be tested whether populations that classically exhibit deficits in social perspective-taking (e.g., depressed people or narcissists) also show deficits in visuo-spatial perspective-taking, and whether social perspective-taking and empathy can be improved by a training in visuo-spatial perspective-taking.

这个项目结合虚拟空间和社会观点采择的不同研究领域。它确定了两个领域之间的联系点，并以创新的方式整合了两个领域的知识。社会心理学家研究了社会观点采择，即想象另一个人的想法或感受的能力。研究表明，参与社会观点采择的指导会产生许多积极的人际关系结果，例如增加亲社会动机和行为，更积极的态度以及对另一个人的相似感。但目前还不清楚是哪些心理机制导致了这些结果。认知心理学家主要研究了视觉空间观点采择，即想象世界如何看待另一个人的能力。事实证明，这是一个具体化的过程。在具身认知理论的意义上，身体是模拟高级心理过程的重要基础。在进行视觉-空间视角转换时，我们会模拟自己的身体图式在心理上旋转到另一个人的位置。虽然这种具身自我转换的机制在以前的空间认知研究中已经得到了充分的建立，但具身转换是否具有任何有意义的社会认知或情感后果的问题还没有被研究过。本资助提案使用具身认知框架将这两个研究领域联系起来：据预测，自我的具体转化为另一个人的位置是所有观点采择的共同因果机制，也创造了众所周知的社会观点采择效应。在具体化转化过程中所模拟的身体亲密是心理亲密的模态基础，心理亲密经常被报告为参与社会观点采择的指示。具体来说，它将调查是否诱导视觉空间的观点采择（因此物理接近）因果影响的结果通常与社会观点采择。此外，它将被调查是否诱导的心理距离影响的体现自我转换机制，也就是说，我们是否有一个困难的时间来采用的视觉空间的角度，例如，一个没有同情心的人。最后，将测试是否典型地表现出社会观点采择缺陷的人群（例如，抑郁症患者或自恋者）也表现出视觉-空间观点采择方面的缺陷，以及社会观点采择和移情是否可以通过视觉-空间观点采择方面的训练来改善。