Gaining perspective on spatial perspective taking

Spatial perspective taking is a term that encompasses a class of phenomena that assess the extent to which a perceiver can access spatial information relative to a viewpoint different from the perceiver's egocentric viewpoint (e.g. something on my right is on the left of someone facing me). We investigated whether spatial perspective taking that involves judging how objects are oriented around an agent is susceptible to alterations in social motivations. In all experiments, participants saw a picture of two objects and asked to judge the relationship between the objects when there was, or was not, an agent between them. Results from Experiment 1 showed that participants spontaneously described the objects from the agent's perspective when he was present. Experiments 2 and 3 explored whether this effect was altered by prior participant exposure to manipulations of social inclusion or social exclusion. Results from these two studies demonstrated that socially included participants and socially excluded participants did not differ in their tendencies to adopt the spatial perspective of another. These results are discussed in the context of the results of other studies showing that perspective taking can be influenced by social motivations.