Self-awareness, Perspective-taking, and Egocentrism

AbstractThe present experiment examined the effect of self-awareness on adult perspective-taking and egocentrism. After having indicated their own opinion on an ecology-related topic, university students estimated a fellow student’s opinion on the same matter. Participants did so either in front of a mirror or not, and either after having received a cue for the fellow student’s most probable opinion—his perspective—or not, resulting in a 2 (self-awareness: Low vs. high) × 2 (cue: Yes vs. no) between persons design. As expected, self-aware participants were more likely to correctly estimate the fellow student’s most probable opinion, reflecting perspective-taking, if a cue for his/her perspe…