Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: a merging of self and other

Two experiments examined the possibility that perspective taking leads observers to create cognitive representation of others that substantially overlap with the observers' own self-representations. In Experiment 1 observers receiving role-taking instructions were more likely to ascribe traits to a novel target that they (observers) had earlier indicated were self-descriptive. This pattern was most pronounced, however for positively valenced traits. In Experiment 2 some participants received role-taking instructions but were also given a distracting memory task. In the absence of this task, role taking again produced greater overlap--primarily for positive traits--between self- and target representations. In the presence of the memory task, the degree of self-target overlap was significantly reduced for all traits, regardless of valence. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.