The Key to Reading People

After weeks of strange and elaborate explanations, our kindergartner's long con finally crumbled. Her school politely called to say that the lunch money they had been fronting our little one would not continue. They hoped we would reconcile the debt to avoid the awkwardness of refusing to feed a 5-year-old. This unexpected news explained why our budding con artist had been returning home with a nearly full lunch box for weeks. Her discovery that announcing her name to the cafeteria ladies could procure chocolate milk soon evolved into her obtaining complete (and tasty) school lunches. Yet, this information failed to explain how two well-educated parents—one of whom specifically studies how people perceive each other—misread their daughter so badly. We never doubted her increasingly fantastic explanations for the re-emergent (and healthy) homemade lunch. Reading others is as challenging as it is crucial. Our daily acts of social perspective taking—figuring out others' thoughts and feelings, perceptions and motivations—guide our behaviors toward others. They form the building blocks for all our social relationships. For the most part, we strive to read others accurately, but research indicates that two motives frequently derail us.

Perspective taking as a mechanism for children’s developing preferences for equitable distributions

How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources equally and expect others to make such distributions. Between the ages of 3–8, children begin to exhibit preferences to avoid inequitable outcomes in their distributions, dividing resources unequally if the result of that distribution is a more equitable outcome. Four studies investigated children’s developing preferences for generating equitable distributions, focusing on the mechanisms for this development. Children were presented with two characters with different amount of resources, and then a third character who will distribute more resources to them. Three- to 8-year-olds were asked whether the third character should give an equal number of resources to the recipients, preserving the inequity, or an unequal number to them, creating an equitable outcome. Starting at age 7, children showed a preference for equitable distributions (Study 1, N = 144). Studies 2a (N = 72) and 2b (N = 48) suggest that this development is independent of children’s numerical competence. When asked to take the perspective of the recipient with fewer resources, 3- to 6-year-olds were more likely to make an equitable distribution (Study 3, N = 122). These data suggest that social perspective taking underlies children’s prosocial actions, and supports the hypothesis that their spontaneous capacity to take others’ perspectives develops during the early elementary-school years.

Social perspective-taking shapes brain hemodynamic activity and eye movements during movie viewing

Putting oneself into the shoes of others is an important aspect of social cognition. We measured brain hemodynamic activity and eye-gaze patterns while participants were viewing a shortened version of the movie ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ from two perspectives: that of a potential organ donor, who violates moral norms by refusing to donate her kidney, and that of a potential organ recipient, who suffers in pain. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) of brain activity was significantly higher during the potential organ donor’s perspective in dorsolateral and inferior prefrontal, lateral and inferior occipital, and inferior–anterior temporal areas. In the reverse contrast, stronger ISC was observed in superior temporal, posterior frontal and anterior parietal areas. Eye-gaze analysis showed higher proportion of fixations on the potential organ recipient during both perspectives. Taken together, these results suggest that during social perspective-taking different brain areas can be flexibly recruited depending on the nature of the perspective that is taken.