Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 26, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
Empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking
Petra C Gronholm1, Maria Flynn, Caroline J Edmonds
1Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
The present study examined whether strategy moderated the relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and empathy. Participants (N=96) undertook both a perspective-taking task requiring speeded spatial judgements made from the perspective of an observed figure and the Empathy Quotient questionnaire, a measure of trait empathy. Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to empathy in that more empathic individuals showed facilitated performance particularly for figures sharing their own spatial orientation. This relationship was restricted to participants that reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial orientation to align with that of the figure; it was absent in those adopting an alternative strategy of transposing left and right whenever confronted with a front-view figure. Our finding that strategy moderates the relationship between empathy and visuospatial perspective-taking enables a reconciliation of the apparently inconclusive findings of previous studies and provides evidence for functionally dissociable empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking.
Related Concept Videos
Empathy
Depth Perception and Spatial Vision
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Factors Affecting Perception
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Introducing Social Perception
Cognitive Development During Adolescence

