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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness

Published on: August 1, 2017

Simulating other people changes the self.

Meghan L Meyer¹, Zidong Zhao², Diana I Tamir²

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General

|April 30, 2019

Summary

Simulating others can change your self-perception, making your identity more like the person you imagine. This research shows how easily self-knowledge can be influenced by imagining others.

Area of Science:

Psychology
Cognitive Science
Social Psychology

Background:

The self is dynamic, with identity evolving across development and situations.
Existing research highlights factors influencing self-perception, but the impact of simulating others remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether simulating other people can cause changes in an individual's self-knowledge.
To determine if self-knowledge is susceptible to incorporating information from simulated others, akin to post-event information effects.

Main Methods:

Eight studies were conducted where participants recalled personal information (traits, memories).
Participants then simulated other individuals in similar contexts.
Personal information was re-assessed after the simulation to measure changes in self-knowledge.

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Main Results:

Consistently, simulating others led to changes in self-knowledge, making participants' self-perceptions more similar to the simulated individuals.
This effect was observed for both personal traits and episodic memories.
The changes in self-knowledge were evident in both self-report and linguistic measures and persisted for at least 24 hours.

Conclusions:

Simulating others is a novel cause of self-change, demonstrating that the self is malleable.
Self-knowledge is susceptible to misinformation effects, similar to semantic and episodic memory.
Imagining others can lead to an assimilation of their traits and experiences into one's own self-concept.