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On reducing an empathy gap: The impact of self‐construal and order of judgment
Author(s) -
Woltin KarlAndrew,
Yzerbyt Vincent Y.,
Corneille Olivier
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02024.x
Subject(s) - empathy , psychology , social psychology , self construal , construal level theory , illusion , perspective taking , cognitive psychology , interdependence , political science , law
Empathy gaps, in which individuals exaggerate self–other similarities or differences, generate errors in social judgments. We investigated whether changing individuals’ self‐construal may reduce one specific empathy gap: the illusion of courage. Participants primed with independent or interdependent self‐construal made judgments about their own and other people's willingness to dance in public. Participants in the interdependence condition showed a reduction of the empathy gap, but only when judging the other first. This finding highlights that simple contextual manipulations have the potential to reduce egocentric biases in social judgments.