Abstract
People can have difficulty intuiting what others think about them at least partly because people evaluate themselves in more fine-grained detail than observers do. This mismatch in the level of detail at which people construe themselves versus others diminishes accuracy in social judgment. Being a more accurate mind reader requires thinking of oneself at a higher level of construal that matches the observer's construal (Experiments 1 and 2), and this strategy is more effective in this context than perspective taking (Experiments 3a and 3b). Accurately intuiting how others evaluate themselves requires the opposite strategy-thinking about others in a lower level of construal that matches the way people evaluate themselves (Experiment 4). Accurately reading other minds to know how one is evaluated by others-or how others evaluate themselves-requires focusing one's evaluative lens at the right level of detail.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 700-705 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Psychological Science |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 25 Jun 2010 |
Keywords
- Construal level
- Mind reading
- Perspective taking
- Social perception
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology