Perspective-Getting, Not Perspective-Taking

Minutes

To understand what another person thinks or wants, ask them and listen, instead of imagining yourself in their shoes; imagining feels insightful but in controlled tests does not improve accuracy, while asking does.

How to do it

  1. 1Catch the substitution. "If I were them I would feel..." is a statement about you. Treat any confident belief about what someone else thinks as a hypothesis until they have confirmed it.
  2. 2Ask an open question about the specific thing you want to know, and make it safe to answer: "What worries you most about this?" "What would a good outcome look like for you?"
  3. 3Reflect back what you heard in your own words and ask whether you got it right. Correct it until they say yes.
  4. 4For groups you do not belong to, go to first-hand accounts and representative surveys before commentary about them, and especially before commentary from their opponents.
  5. 5Hold your prediction up against the answer. Writing down what you expected before you ask is a fast way to learn how inaccurate your mind-reading is.
  6. 6When someone tells you what a third party "really thinks" or "really wants", ask how they know and whether the third party has been asked.

What to say

  • “I realize I have been guessing at what you think. Can you tell me in your own words?”
  • “Let me check I have this right: you are less worried about the cost and more about being left out of the decision. Is that it?”
  • “Have you asked her, or is that what you imagine she feels?”

When to use it

  • •Conflicts at home, at work, or in a community group where each side is sure it knows the other's motives.
  • •Before negotiating, giving a gift, designing a service, or writing policy for people whose lives differ from yours.
  • •When media or a group leader describes what "those people" want.
  • •When you feel certain you understand someone you have not actually spoken to.

Counters

Naive RealismFalse Consensus EffectFundamental Attribution ErrorIllusion of TransparencyCurse of KnowledgeIn-Group/Out-Group BiasEnemy Image ConstructionNutpickingStraw ManTriangulationProjectionDivide and ConquerDehumanizationPluralistic Ignorance ExploitationReactive Devaluation

Evidence and how strong it is

Eyal, Steffel & Epley (2018) ran 25 experiments testing whether deliberately taking another person's perspective improves accuracy in predicting their emotions, preferences, and opinions, with strangers, friends, and spouses. It did not, and in some cases it reduced accuracy while increasing confidence. The only manipulation that reliably improved accuracy was perspective-getting: asking the person directly. Epley (2014) reviews the wider literature showing that people overestimate how well they read others, including long-term partners. In the intergroup setting, Kalla & Broockman (2023) compared narrative strategies in field and survey experiments and found that hearing about an outgroup member's actual experiences (perspective-getting) durably reduced prejudice, whereas being asked to imagine their perspective did not add to it. Evidence strength: strong for the accuracy claim (many preregistered experiments), good for the prejudice-reduction claim (field experiments); perspective-taking retains documented benefits for empathy and goodwill, so the point is about accuracy, not about kindness.

Cautions
  • Asking only works if answering is safe. People with less power than you (employees, children, a partner who is afraid) may tell you what you want to hear; consider anonymous channels or a trusted intermediary.
  • What people say is evidence, not the whole truth. People sometimes do not know their own reasons and sometimes misreport them; combine asking with observing what they do.
  • Do not make individuals spokespeople for a group. One person's account is one account.
  • If someone is using claims about what others think to isolate you from them, asking those others directly is a good check. If doing so is unsafe because a partner monitors your contacts, talk to a domestic-violence advocate first (US: 1-800-799-7233, thehotline.org; elsewhere, your national helpline), since confrontation can escalate danger.
  1. 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
    Twenty-five experiments showing that imagining another's perspective does not improve accuracy while asking them does.
  2. Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. Knopf
    Review of research on overconfidence in reading other minds, including those of close partners.
  3. Kalla, J. L., & Broockman, D. E. (2023). Which Narrative Strategies Durably Reduce Prejudice? Evidence from Field and Survey Experiments Supporting the Efficacy of Perspective-Getting. American Journal of Political Science, 67(1), 185-204
    Field and survey experiments showing that hearing an outgroup member's experiences reduces prejudice durably, unlike imagined perspective-taking.
Last reviewed

More in Civic and political life

Sunlight Against Astroturf

When a "grassroots" campaign, citizens' coalition, or flood of public comments appears, establish who organized and paid for it and make that public, because manufactured support loses most of its force once the audience knows it is manufactured.

Moral Reframing

When you argue across a political or cultural divide, make your honest case in terms of the values the listener actually holds, not your own, because arguments grounded in the other side's moral vocabulary are heard as arguments while those grounded in yours are heard as noise.

Deep Canvassing

A structured ten-to-twenty-minute conversation in which you ask someone's view without judgment, invite a story from their own life, share one of yours, and let them do the reasoning aloud; it is one of the few approaches shown in field experiments to shift attitudes durably.

Metaperception Correction

Check what you believe the other side thinks of your side against actual survey data, because partisans in many countries greatly overestimate how much their opponents dislike, dehumanize, and wish to obstruct them, and that exaggerated belief itself drives hostility.

Superordinate Goals and Structured Contact

Reduce hostility between groups by having them work together, as equals, toward a goal that both want and neither can reach alone; mere exposure or exhortation does little, but cooperative contact under the right conditions reliably lowers prejudice.

The Spirit of Motivational Interviewing

When you want to help someone reconsider a belief or a habit, stop arguing for the change and instead draw out their own reasons for and against it, because people are persuaded by what they hear themselves say and push back against what they are told.