Attachment and Empathy as Predictors of Perspective-Taking Efficiency

In this study we probe the relation between empathy, perspective taking and styles of attachment. It was hypothesized that basic emotional responsivity towards experiences of others, will result in greater empathic understanding and more efficient suppression of egocentric inferences in a communication task. Group of students (N=60) filled out a set of self-report measures and completed a reaction time communication task. The results do not support the main hypothesis, they show however an interesting relation between the emotional component of empathy and perspective taking. Basic interpersonal emotional responsivity is detrimental to performance in a communication task when perspectives of the participants differ i. e. when there is a need to adopt the perspective of someone else. Empathetic emotional responsivity is, on the other hand, positively related to performance in a communication task where helping another individual is possible without adopting his or her perspective.