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

这个项目联合了Vuso-空间和社会视角采取的不同研究领域。它确定了两个领域之间的接触点，并以创新的方式整合了这两个领域的知识。社会心理学家研究了社会视角采择，即想象另一个人的想法或感受的能力。已有研究表明，参与社会观点采择的指导可以产生许多积极的人际结果，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觉。但目前仍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视觉-空间视角采择，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。具身认知理论意义上的“身体”是指身体是模拟高级心理过程的重要基础。在进行视觉空间透视时，我们会模拟身体图式在心理上旋转到另一个人的位置。虽然这一体验式自我转换机制已经在以往的空间认知研究中得到了充分的确立，但关于体验式自我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。本研究使用一个体验式认知框架将这两个研究领域联系起来：预测，自我到他人位置的具体化转换是各种观点采择的共同因果机制，也产生了众所周知的社会视角采择的效果。在具体化转变期间被模拟的身体接近是心理接近的情态基础，这种心理接近经常被报告为遵循从事社会观点采择的指示。具体地说，将调查视觉-空间视角采择的诱导(因此物理上的接近)是否会因果地影响通常与社会视角采择相关的结果。此外，还将调查心理距离的诱导是否影响具体化的自我转化机制，即我们是否更难采用例如缺乏同情心的人的视觉-空间视角。最后，将测试那些典型地表现出社会视角采择缺陷的人群(例如，抑郁症或自恋者)是否也表现出视觉空间视角采择的缺陷，以及是否可以通过视觉空间视角采择的培训来改善社会视角采择和同理心。

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.