Effects of one’s own emotional state on perspective taking and prosocial behaviour

Bukowski, Henryk [UCL] Samson, Dana [UCL]

Little is known about the influence of our emotional state on our ability to take another’s perspective. Moreover, emotions elicited through classical paradigms (video, music, autobiographical recall) are often not directed towards the person whom we are supposed to take the perspective of. We designed a pseudo-interactive virtual card game in order to induce either guilt, anger or mild joy (control condition) through the interaction with the game partner. After performing the card game, each participant completed a visual perspective-taking task in which they were asked to judge their own or the perspective of their game partner. Participants also completed a tombola tickets sharing task to measure prosocial behaviour. Physiological recordings and retrospective self-reports confirmed that the guilt and anger induction were successful and resulted in emotional responses. As expected from previous studies examining the effect of guilt and anger on prosocial behaviour, participants in the guilt condition shared more tombola tickets with their game partner than participants in the anger condition. Interestingly, the emotional state had not only effects on prosocial behaviour but also on participants’ performance in the visual perspective taking task: participants in the anger condition gave more weight to their own perspective than their partner’s perspective whereas the opposite was found for the participants in the guilt condition. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that emotions can influence perspective taking even its most cognitive aspects and in very different ways depending on the emotion.

(eng) Little is known about the influence of our emotional state on our ability to take another’s perspective. Moreover, emotions elicited through classical paradigms (video, music, autobiographical recall) are often not directed towards the person whom we are supposed to take the perspective of. We designed a pseudo-interactive virtual card game in order to induce either guilt, anger or mild joy (control condition) through the interaction with the game partner. After performing the card game, each participant completed a visual perspective-taking task in which they were asked to judge their own or the perspective of their game partner. Participants also completed a tombola tickets sharing task to measure prosocial behaviour. Physiological recordings and retrospective self-reports confirmed that the guilt and anger induction were successful and resulted in emotional responses. As expected from previous studies examining the effect of guilt and anger on prosocial behaviour, participants in the guilt condition shared more tombola tickets with their game partner than participants in the anger condition. Interestingly, the emotional state had not only effects on prosocial behaviour but also on participants’ performance in the visual perspective taking task: participants in the anger condition gave more weight to their own perspective than their partner’s perspective whereas the opposite was found for the participants in the guilt condition. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that emotions can influence perspective taking even its most cognitive aspects and in very different ways depending on the emotion.