Through examining the variables that contribute to the natural process of language and cognition, a promising path is paved for researchers to identify the variables that influence higher order skills, such as perspective taking, empathy and altruism. The current study implemented the PEAK Relational Training System Transformation Module Pre-Assessment Expressive portion (PEAK-T PA) as an objective behavior measure of relational framing complexity. Two additional self-report assessments were used with all subjects, including a multi-dimensional measure of empathy, referred to as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ). A Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between PEAK-T PA scores and IRI subscale scores. Additional Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine a relationship between PEAK-T scores and VLQ scores. A statistically significant relationship was determined between one of the relational frame subareas of the PEAK-T PA and the perspective taking IRI subscale scores. Results, limitations and future research areas associated with relational framing abilities are discussed.

Gamification offers methods for influencing human behaviour that are not available with other approaches to behaviour-change interventions. Its widespread and successful use in business, education, and health care notwithstanding, it has so far not been extensively used for improving sustainability, nor have its underlying psychological principles been studied in depth. This dissertation investigates gamification with a special focus on the role of perspective taking and emotion. A gamified behaviour-change app was compared with a standard app and a webpage for its effect on participants’ sustainable behaviours. During the one month period the participants engaged with the intervention, they kept diaries about their experience with sustainability and the technology. Furthermore, the influence of dramatic elements was tested through an augmented reality approach. Gamification encourages longer engagement with the intervention, thereby influencing behaviour. Specifically, gamification increases knowledge about and willingness to invest effort into sustainable behaviours. Dramatic elements, using the power of narrative persuasion and immersion, are important aspects to consider in gamification. The theory of behavioural choice can fruitfully serve as a psychological model of how gamification affects behaviour. / Graduate

As the world continues to diversify and we begin to move towards a majority-minority America, it becomes ever critical for organizations to utilize diversity training effectively to create a more equitable work environment. This is especially true when considering the growth of Latino immigrants in the work force and how majority group members may view this as a threat to their group dominance, resulting in experiences of discrimination and prejudice towards minorities. However, research regarding the best methods to utilize to reduce prejudice against specific targeted groups has been inconclusive, and little work has been done to investigate personality characteristics as potential boundary conditions of diversity training effectiveness. Thus, the goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of two diversity training methods, perspective taking and imagined contact, specifically for trainees low in Openness to Experience who may be especially resistant to training. To test this over two time points (two weeks apart), we recruited White participants ( N= 471) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, highlighted the demographic changes occurring in the modern workforce, randomly assigned them to either the perspective taking, imagined contact, or control condition, and then measured their Openness to Experience, intergroup anxiety, prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. Results revealed no significant interactions with Openness to Experience, thus resulting in its omission from the final model. Results also did not provide evidence for the training methods having a significant direct effect on the reduction of prejudice and the increase in behavioral intentions towards Latino immigrants. However, there was support found for intergroup anxiety such that it mediated the relationship between the diversity training methods and prejudiced attitudes and behavioral intentions. Exploratory analyses also revealed imagined contact to be more effective at reducing prejudice and increasing positive behavioral intentions via a reduction in intergroup anxiety compared to the perspective taking condition. Implications, future research, and limitations are discussed.

Creativity has received significant interest in variety of fields and disciplines with a major focus on individual level creativity. As more and more achievements started originating from groups, researchers turned their attention to creativity on group level. Current thesis explores the group creativity as well as flow experience in collaboration. It explores the group creativity phenomena and its correlates in different contexts, age groups and cultures. The overarching aim of the thesis is to extend our knowledge on group creativity and contribute to open questions in the field such as - How does (group) creativity develop? Which interpersonal and motivational processes play a role in group creativity? How can we measure group creativity? In four studies, the present research found that (social) flow can be explained by empathy and motivation of group members as well as domain of performance. To build on these results, the role of interpersonal processes in group creativity was explored with adults. While closeness was found to benefit group creativity, combination of closeness with perspective taking was harmful on creative performance. Moreover, with an aim to understand how group creativity develops, this thesis explored group creativity in children and adolescents from England and Turkey. Across these two samples, group creativity performance developed with age and advances in social perspective coordination was one mechanism explaining that development. Additionally, study conducted with Turkish children found task cohesion as a facilitator of group creativity. Major similarities in findings obtained from two samples implicated cultural universality in development of group creativity, however, slight differences in results pointed to the possibility of culture-specific differences in processes underlying group creativity. Finally, the current thesis contributed to literature by adopting and validating a collaborative story writing method as a promising measurement of group creativity. Overall, the studies presented in this thesis illustrate the role that interpersonal and motivational process play in group creativity practices of different age groups and cultures. Findings lead us to the next steps on the adventurous discovery of group creativity.

Team conflict research, taken as a whole, has produced some conflicting results, especially regarding task conflict, which has demonstrated substantial heterogeneity across situations and an overall near-zero effect. Accordingly, several groups of scholars have called for new ways to study conflict. In this dissertation, I extend past conflict asymmetry research, which has considered only agreement between two parties, by investigating whether the two parties’ conflict inferences of each other are accurate. To do so, I draw from the Truth and Bias model of judgment to understand the biases and inaccuracies associated with conflict inferences. Further, I incorporate the partner’s conflict communication and the actor’s perspective taking as moderators to shed light on the contingencies of accurate conflict perceptions. To highlight the bottom-line implications of achieving accuracy, I use polynomial regression and link various aspects of accuracy to important dyadic outcomes. To test my dissertation model, I collected data from ongoing student project teams using a time-lagged round-robin design. Results from the social relations modeling indicate that dyadic conflict inferences are inaccurate, being characterized by a negative directional bias, a significantly stronger bias force than the truth force, and low levels of actual similarity. Further, moderation analysis identifies the partner’s suppressive conflict communication as a contingency factor that can weaken the truth force, suggesting that more open communication can help dyad members achieve accuracy. Exploratory analysis also shows that perspective taking can strengthen the bias force. Further emphasizing the importance of accuracy, the polynomial regression results indicate that conflict inference accuracy (versus inaccuracy) is associated with higher levels of attributional confidence and problem-solving behaviors. Moreover, the level of accuracy in task conflict perceptions has an inverse U-shape relationship with problem-solving behaviors, whereas higher levels of accuracy in both task and relationship conflict perceptions are associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. Supporting the benefit of positive illusions, under-perception (versus over-perception) is related to higher levels of attributional confidence and relational satisfaction. In contrast to the importance of achieving accuracy (versus inaccuracy), agreement (versus disagreement) is not associated with positive outcomes. Supplementary analysis indicates that these dyadic outcomes, when aggregated to the team level, are strongly associated with team satisfaction and effectiveness. Overall, this research suggests that focusing solely on the team level risks overlooking the existence and the various sources of inaccuracy in dyadic conflict perceptions. Further, the accuracy of the dyad partners’ conflict inferences of each other plays an important role in shaping their subsequent interactions. To the extent that conflict is a relational, multilevel phenomenon, dyadic conflict inferences should become an integral part of scholarly understanding of conflict; this perspective holds promise for not only accounting for the conflicting results in the conflict literature, but also informing managerial practices that are conducive to effective conflict management in the workplace.

Scientific literacy is concerned with the informed citizens' ability to negotiate scientifically-related societal issues. The suite of skills necessary to negotiate these complex issues is referred to as Socioscientific Reasoning (SSR). SSR requires, among other things, perspective-taking abilities in order to consider the multi-faceted nature of these open-ended, debatable socioscientific issues (SSI). Developing interventions and instruments to foster and measure perspective taking in support of SSR is therefore critical to the promotion of functional scientific literacy through both research and practice. Although widely studied in many disciplines, perspective taking is a particularly tangled construct that has been used to describe a range of activities representing different psychological domains and applied interchangeably with related constructs such as role taking, empathy, and theory of mind. This ambiguity makes it difficult to ensure construct validity and prevents science education researchers from honing in on the precise skills they wish to study and promote. To clarify the construct of perspective taking, this study undertook a conceptual analysis to operationalize perspective taking, drawing comparisons and distinctions between it and related constructs. Further, by applying a method known as conception development, perspective taking was positioned in the context of SSR, particularly as it relates to moral development, in order to devise a more precise construct relating perspective taking to SSR called socioscientific perspective taking (SSPT). It is asserted that SSPT requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift, and a moral context comprised of reflective and reflexive judgment. Finally, in order to identify promising interventions for promoting SSPT in the science classroom, the newly-developed SSPT construct was applied to a series of extensively researched curricular frameworks that promote perspective taking in three non-science disciplines including historical empathy (social studies education), method acting (theater education), and autism intervention (special education). The aim of this theoretical inquiry was to translate successful perspective-taking interventions into SSI contexts, yielding an array of promising approaches for fostering SSPT while assessing the feasibility of each of these fields as potential sources for novel and expansive work in SSI to promote scientific literacy. Implications for science education research and practice are discussed.

General tax officers are important assets of government organization. Tax officers provide frontline service for people, therefore, their service quality and work performance have an influence on government image. The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between tax officers¡¦ perceived organizational support (POS) and organization citizenship behavior (OCB). Furthermore, we want to realize whether tax officers¡¦ voluntary workers motivations (VWM) have mediation between POS and OCB. In this study, expectations through literature review and empirical study to explore the POS,VWM , and OCB on the view of the perspective taking with prosocial motivation, providing suggestions to the tax authorities and the relevant organization. This study is the case of Revenue Service East and West District Office, Kaohsiung City. There are 481 valid questionnaires, including directors and staff. By means of reliability, validity, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, correlate analysis, we use hierarchical regression to realize research variables and verify hypothesis. The main conclusions of this study are as below: 1.Tax officers are able to develop highly OCB. There are no significant difference in staff cognition themselves as well as in directors¡¦ cognition to staff. 2. Tax officers¡¦ lower POS results in lower in-Role Behavior. 3. There is a certain difference in correlation between VWM and OCB. 4. Tax officers¡¦ attitude, cognition and behavior towards their work will produce significant change after participating in voluntary activities. According to the conclusion of this research, we propose suggestions to relative organizations as a reference.

If Aristotle was right in claiming that the aim of moral philosophy is to help us determine how we ought to live, then part of the aim of moral philosophy must be to help us improve our prescriptive accounts of moral decision making--our accounts of how we should make moral decisions. In my dissertation I examine implications of empirical research in cognitive science, social psychology, and decision theory for issues in moral decision making. I argue that empirical evidence suggests that principled guidance is in fact beneficial for decision making, which calls into question particularist prescriptive accounts. I also argue that contrary to the prevailing view, research suggests that taking a first-person perspective when making judgments about what we ought to do might actually help us make better moral judgments. Additionally, I argue that jurors will be more likely to make fairer and more accurate judgments by taking the perspective of the defendant than by trying to maintain a detached and 'objective' point of view.

The three components model of empathy proposed by Decety and Jackson (2004) is currently the dominant model of empathy. The three components include: 1) the affective component (Simulation Theory), 2) emotional perspective taking, and 3) emotion regulation (self/other distinction). The purpose of the current study was to examine whether empathic perspective taking is dependent on context and to provide a behavioral basis for a follow-up fMRI study. More specifically, we wanted to know how body contexts (e.g. mood) and situational contexts (e.g. perceived fairness of a partner) affect emotional perspective taking. To examine the interaction between mood and perceived fairness of a partner, a 2 (mood group: neutral vs. negative) × 2 (fairness condition: unfair partner vs. fair partner) between-groups experimental design was employed. Mood induction videos were employed for the mood manipulation and participants played either a fair or unfair preprogrammed partner in a modified ultimatum game. After both manipulations, three measures were used to assess perspective taking and several post-game behavioral measures were also employed. Results were obtained from 73 participants (age: 18-22; female = 46, ~18 in each condition). The results demonstrated that participants in the negative mood had more difficulty empathizing with unfair partners and had a greater desire for revenge against them than participants in a neutral mood in the same unfair situations. Therefore, human empathy is not constant, but varies depending on a variety of contexts. We can now use this paradigm for a future fMRI study to investigate the neural substrates underlying this context dependency with a particular emphasis on the frontopolar cortex and the nucleus accumbens.

Perspective taking, the main cognitive component of empathy, is considered within the psychological literature to be a significant part of human interaction. Despite extensive investigation into the outcomes of this construct, the process by which people take another's psychological point of view has received comparatively little attention. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate in three studies what the individual does when attempting to take the perspective of another person. The first study investigated the particular strategies which individuals use when engaging in perspective-taking behaviours. Dominant themes to emerge from this qualitative assessment of the perspective-taking process were the use of self- (e.g., switching places) and other-information (e.g., targets personal characteristics), of which the former appears to play the central role. Further elements of the perspective-taking process were also identified with the self-information theme. Of these, having experienced a situation similar to that of a target (similar past experience) was found to be a particularly strong aspect of the perspective-taking process and subsequently informed the rationale for the remaining two studies. In view of the findings from Study 1, the second study tested whether past experiences made it easier for participants to take the perspective of another person in a new, but similar situation and the extent to which other aspects, such as switching places with the target, made the perspective-taking process less effortful. Results revealed that similar past experience was the strongest predictor of the ease of the perspective-taking task. Moreover, the extent to which similar past experience increased ease of the perspective-taking process was moderated by the extent to which the participant reflected on that past experience. The final study in this thesis picked up the notion of reflection and examined whether increasing the extent to which an individual engages in self-reflection leads to a concomitant increase in the tendency to take another perspective and the ease with which this can be accomplished. After completion of an intervention program which had a strong focus on self-reflection and understanding of self, there was a noticeable trend for participants to improve on their capacity for self-reflection. The findings also revealed that individuals with a tendency to self-reflect in an insightful and non-ruminative manner demonstrated a similarly high level of general perspective-taking propensity and ease of perspective taking. The studies support the vital role of reflection on similar past experience to that of a target when engaging in perspective taking. This research underscores the importance of examining perspective taking as a process.