Self-construal and perspective taking: partial support for the attentional hypothesis
How efficiently one can take the perspective of another might be influenced by individualism (I) and collectivism (C), characterized by whether the self is construed as independent or interdependent. Collectivism can be associated with more accurate and faster inference of others’ mental states because of heightened attention to others’ perspective (the attentional hypothesis). However, construing the self as a separate entity from others, as in individualistic self-construal, could lead to better distinction between one’s and another’s mental states because egocentric bias (the tendency to conflate what oneself sees with what another sees) is better mitigated (the representational hypothesis). We measured IC on an individual level (Individual IC), primed participants (N = 142) with either I or C (Situational IC) and assessed their perspective-taking performance with the Director task. Participants primed with collectivism were significantly faster than the control group but not faster than those primed with individualism. On the individual level, being predominantly collectivistic did not lead to faster perspective taking, but was associated with slower non-perspective-taking performance. These findings provide more support for the attentional hypothesis than the representational hypothesis and improve our understanding of how the representation of the self can contribution to the representation of others’ mind.