Cargando…

Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically

This paper examines a cognitive mechanism that drives perspective-taking and egocentrism in interpersonal communication. Using a conceptual referential communication task, in which participants describe a range of abstract geometric shapes, Experiment 1 shows that perspective-taking and egocentric c...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rogers, Shane L., Fay, Nicolas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4954652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437694
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159570
_version_ 1782443803994488832
author Rogers, Shane L.
Fay, Nicolas
author_facet Rogers, Shane L.
Fay, Nicolas
author_sort Rogers, Shane L.
collection PubMed
description This paper examines a cognitive mechanism that drives perspective-taking and egocentrism in interpersonal communication. Using a conceptual referential communication task, in which participants describe a range of abstract geometric shapes, Experiment 1 shows that perspective-taking and egocentric communication are frequent communication strategies. Experiment 2 tests a selection heuristic account of perspective-taking and egocentric communication. It uses participants’ shape description ratings to predict their communication strategy. Participants’ communication strategy was predicted by how informative they perceived the different shape descriptions to be. When participants’ personal shape description was perceived to be more informative than their addressee’s shape description, there was a strong bias to communicate egocentrically. By contrast, when their addressee’s shape description was perceived to be more informative, there was a strong bias to take their addressee’s perspective. When the shape descriptions were perceived to be equally informative, there was a moderate bias to communicate egocentrically. This simple, but powerful, selection heuristic may be critical to the cumulative cultural evolution of human communication systems, and cumulative cultural evolution more generally.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4954652
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-49546522016-08-08 Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically Rogers, Shane L. Fay, Nicolas PLoS One Research Article This paper examines a cognitive mechanism that drives perspective-taking and egocentrism in interpersonal communication. Using a conceptual referential communication task, in which participants describe a range of abstract geometric shapes, Experiment 1 shows that perspective-taking and egocentric communication are frequent communication strategies. Experiment 2 tests a selection heuristic account of perspective-taking and egocentric communication. It uses participants’ shape description ratings to predict their communication strategy. Participants’ communication strategy was predicted by how informative they perceived the different shape descriptions to be. When participants’ personal shape description was perceived to be more informative than their addressee’s shape description, there was a strong bias to communicate egocentrically. By contrast, when their addressee’s shape description was perceived to be more informative, there was a strong bias to take their addressee’s perspective. When the shape descriptions were perceived to be equally informative, there was a moderate bias to communicate egocentrically. This simple, but powerful, selection heuristic may be critical to the cumulative cultural evolution of human communication systems, and cumulative cultural evolution more generally. Public Library of Science 2016-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC4954652/ /pubmed/27437694 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159570 Text en © 2016 Rogers, Fay http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Rogers, Shane L.
Fay, Nicolas
Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title_full Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title_fullStr Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title_full_unstemmed Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title_short Stick or Switch: A Selection Heuristic Predicts when People Take the Perspective of Others or Communicate Egocentrically
title_sort stick or switch: a selection heuristic predicts when people take the perspective of others or communicate egocentrically
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4954652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437694
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159570
work_keys_str_mv AT rogersshanel stickorswitchaselectionheuristicpredictswhenpeopletaketheperspectiveofothersorcommunicateegocentrically
AT faynicolas stickorswitchaselectionheuristicpredictswhenpeopletaketheperspectiveofothersorcommunicateegocentrically