Check your version of them by asking
Treat your picture of someone else’s view as a hypothesis, and get their perspective directly before acting on it.
Pourquoi ça marche
People estimate others’ views by starting from their own and adjusting away from it, and they tend to stop adjusting too soon. Imagining harder does not add new information about the other mind; asking does. The second-person perspective becomes accurate when it is checked against the actual second person.
Comment faire
- Take the guesses you marked when writing their account, or list three things you believe they think about the situation.
- Turn each into an open question: "What did that meeting look like from where you were?"
- Ask, and listen to the end of the answer before responding.
- Note which guesses were right, which were wrong, and which you had not even thought to make.
Données probantes
Epley and colleagues (2004) found that people adopt others’ perspectives by serially adjusting from their own, that egocentric bias grows under time pressure, and that adjustment tends to stop once a plausible estimate is reached. Eyal, Steffel and Epley (2018) reported 25 experiments in which perspective-taking failed to improve accuracy; a final experiment found that getting another person’s perspective directly through conversation did increase accuracy. (rct)
The accuracy tasks were laboratory measures (for example predicting emotions, lies, or a spouse’s preferences). Asking only helps when the other person feels safe enough to answer honestly.
Sources
- Eyal, T., Steffel, M., & Epley, N. (2018). Perspective mistaking: Accurately understanding the mind of another requires getting perspective, not taking perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(4), 547–571.
- Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(3), 327–339.
Erreur fréquente
Asking leading questions that confirm the version you already hold ("You were angry about the deadline, right?"). That is first person wearing a question mark.
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Plus de pratiques pour First, Second, Third and Fourth Person Perspectives
- Walk one conflict through four perspectives
Write the same disagreement four times — as you, as the other person, as a neutral observer, and as someone seeing how context shaped all three.
- Write their account in their own voice
Tell the story of the disagreement in the first person as the other person, using the words they would use.
- Write the observer’s account
Describe your own conflict the way a fair bystander who knows both of you would, using names instead of "I" and "they".
- Notice what shaped every account, including the neutral one
Ask how background, role, culture and setting shaped your view, their view and the observer’s view alike.
- Take their perspective without taking on their feelings
Separate understanding what someone thinks and wants from feeling what they feel, and use the first when you need to solve something together.
- Separate the well-mapped steps from the speculative ones
When you read about person perspectives, sort each claim by what kind of evidence stands behind it.
- Hear which perspective you speak from
Read back what you wrote or said about a situation and mark each sentence by the perspective it speaks from.
Concepts associés
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- La théorie sujet-objet de Kegan, en pratique
Passer d'être mené par ses présupposés à pouvoir les examiner
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- La prise de distance vis-à-vis de soi : penser clairement à ses propres problèmes
Le paradoxe de Salomon, le dialogue intérieur à la troisième personne, et la science de prendre du recul