Taking another’s visual perspective: examining the role of biased thoughts, salient objects and distracting environments

Taking another’s perspective is central to effective social interactions. Understanding another’s visual perspective (e.g. what another person can see (level 1), and how another person can see something (level 2)) can help to resolve potential ambiguities in social communication.

This research takes a novel approach by exploring the extent to which biases in a person’s thoughts, the saliency of objects in the environment, and the environment itself affects the ability to take another’s visual perspective.

In study 1, we explored whether a distracting environment (e.g. a bar for social drinkers) and specific thoughts (cravings for alcohol) impacted visual perspective-taking. Results showed that neither had a significant effect on perspective-taking ability (ps > .1).

In study 2, we explored whether the presence of personally salient objects (e.g. alcohol objects in social drinkers) interfered with visual perspective-taking. These objects delayed visual perspective-taking when they were visually available to both parties and there was inconsistent information between the perspectives (p < .05).

In study 3, we examined the role of objects further by exploring whether the frequency of exposure to unfamiliar objects (e.g. abstract symbols) affected visual perspective-taking. Here the frequency of occurrence did not affect perspective-taking.

Together, these findings indicate that the salient nature of objects, rather than specific environments or related cognitions, impact the ability to effectively take others’ visual perspective, but only where they relate to a specific context (e.g. alcohol cues instead of abstract symbols).

We will discuss implications for the impact of external influences on taking another’s perspective.