Putting yourself in someone else's shoes does NOT help you understand what they are thinking, a series of 25 experiments has shown.
It debunks one of the most commonly used ways to work out what other people are thinking.
In fact, putting yourself in someone else's shoes only gives you the impression that you know them better.
Far better, to just ask them.
The study's author's explain:
"We incorrectly presume that taking someone else's perspective will help us understand and improve interpersonal relationships.Across 25 different experiments, people were asked to put themselves in someone else's shoes and imagine all kinds of things about them, such as:
If you want an accurate understanding of what someone is thinking or feeling, don't make assumptions, just ask."
- whether they were truly smiling,
- whether they were lying,
- and what they were really feeling.
"Initially a large majority of participants believed that taking someone else's perspective would help them achieve more accurate interpersonal insight.Dale Carnegie popularised this way of understanding other people in his bestseller 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'.
However, test results showed that their predictive assumptions were not generally accurate, although it did make them feel more confident about their judgement and reduced egocentric biases."
The only benefit to imagining you are someone else is in reducing the 'egocentric bias'.
This is the tendency people have to rely too much on their own opinions in order to satisfy their own egos.
Imagining you are someone else helps people take into account other perspectives and reduces reliance on egotistical opinions.
What it doesn't do, though, is let you read other people's minds.
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Eyal et al., 2018).
Reader Comments
What do they understand, "Putting yourself in another person's shoes" to mean?
Because that's a trick of perception which has fairly broad parameters.
Example:
Trying to imagine what your life might be like if your house burned down may not allow you to know what a person is thinking when they smile or frown. But it probably IS an excellent way to gain some understanding what it might feel like if your house burned down.
For goodness sake!
Tangent:
I remember reading a study which concluded that human intuition was a ruse, didn't work, was a lie. -They used a meticulously designed series of studies which asked trick questions, including the Monty Hall Problem, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem). -And concluded after all the study participants (predictably) gave the wrong answer which nonetheless felt right, that "Intuition obviously doesn't work."
Good lord.
Their definition of "Intuition" isn't the same as mine.
But 'A' for effort.
Is your understanding of the word intuition, along the lines of teaching from within, i.e, in-tuition, ...know 'thyself'?
Imagine a game show. The Contestant is brought up on stage and faced with Three Doors. Behind one of the doors there is a Hungry Bengal Tiger which, upon release, will wreak bloody havoc. Behind another of the doors is a Valuable Prize. -And behind the remaining door, a pot of petunias.
The Contestant must play. He picks one of the doors and stands before it, awaiting his fate.
Monty Hall throws a switch and one of the other two doors slides open. The pot of petunias is revealed. The Valuable Prize is behind one of the two remaining doors, and the Bengal Death Cat is behind the other! (Oooh! Tingles!)
The Contestant is now given the following choice:
He can either, A) open the door he is currently in front of,
or...
B) He can change his mind, and open the other door instead.
The question we are faced with is this: "Should he switch doors?"
The answer, as it happens, is YES, he should absolutely switch doors. There are excellent, inarguable reasons for this.
The problem is that those excellent reasons tend to be confusing to the layperson not versed in probability maths, and thus people tend to think that changing doors cannot make any difference when really it does. The study authors call this false assumption a product of, "Intuition".
However...
I think that's a faulty deduction because the Contestant's decision, even the wrong one, was reached through an exercise in critical contemplation. He had to consciously think about it, to engage reason.
Now, what I call intuition is that force which causes the hairs on the back of your neck, or the pinch in your stomach, or the voice in your head to whisper sharply when you reach out for the wrong door, and which says, "Danger."
Not to denigrate them. I really do wonder.
In my youth, that is exactly what "Putting Yourself in Their Shoes" meant. Its success depended in a significant way, on having learned empathy through a father's interaction with his young children. It never meant to us knowing what a person was really going through. Only that we gained sufficient insight into their world to gain an appreciation for their struggles.
As usual, it is the psycho profession that is the last to come around to the insights of the ancestors.