Imagining Is Not Enough to Understand

Putting yourself in someone else's shoes does not improve accuracy. It was tested in 25 experiments, with no consistent improvement found.

In 2018, Eyal, Steffel and Epley measured precisely this: reading emotions from facial expressions, distinguishing fake smiles from genuine ones, detecting lies, and predicting a spouse's preferences. Most participants believed that perspective-taking would help. The overall trend was a slight decline in accuracy. Confidence in their judgments, however, sometimes increased.

The only thing that improved accuracy was new information. In the final experiment of the same study, learning about another person's perspective by talking directly with them increased accuracy. According to Atir, Wald and Epley's 2022 PNAS study, people systematically underestimate how much they will learn from a conversation. In other words, we underestimate the value of asking before we even begin.

The implications for close relationships have also been measured. In Fincham and Bradbury's study of 130 couples, people who attributed their spouse's negative behavior to ill-intentioned motives reported lower marital satisfaction one year later. In Williamson and colleagues' study of 2,347 people across four countries, including Türkiye, the same pattern emerged in all four countries.

The evidence is not unanimous. Perspective-taking interventions did not produce a reliable change in implicit bias. For some people, they even had the opposite effect. That is why I also included what does not work in the slides.

A note on boundaries: understanding the context does not mean excusing the behavior. This distinction must be maintained, especially when violence, abuse, and neglect are involved. The suggestion here is not to suspend judgment, but to avoid making judgments based on incomplete information.

Whose story have you not fully listened to over the past week?

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