It is often assumed, by laypeople and researchers alike, that people shift visual perspective in mental images of life events to maintain a positive self-concept by claiming ownership of desirable events (first-person) and disowning undesirable events (third-person). The present research suggests that people shift perspective not according to the pictured event’s desirability but according to whether they focus on the experience of the event (first-person) or on the event’s coherence with the self-concept (third-person). This explains why self-change promotes third-person imagery of prechange selves (Studies 1 and 2). And, the same mechanism determines perspective apart from self-change, in both memory and imagination (Studies 3 and 4). By demonstrating that people shift perspective according to whether they focus on the experience of an event or its self-concept coherence, these results suggest how perspective may function more broadly in social cognition, and specifically in the construction and maintenance of the temporally extended self.
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