Developing a Perspective-Taking Task for Social Anxiety

Abstract

Perspective-taking refers to one’s ability to infer one’s own and others’ mental states. The existing perspective-taking tasks mainly focus on healthy individuals and overlook the potential confounding effect of prompt type. The current study developed a perspective-taking task for social anxiety research by including both ambiguous and unambiguous prompts and a social context. Analysing two community samples with either ambiguous (N = 69) or unambiguous (N = 89) prompts found that both prompts cued self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking as required. However, while unambiguous prompts cue perspective switching, the ambiguous prompts failed to do so. Thirty-two participants of the two samples completed the tasks with both prompt types and showed no differences in perspective-taking. Findings suggest that the newly developed task measures self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking as prompted, regardless of prompt type. Furthermore, the unambiguous prompts may be more sensitive and appropriate for measuring perspective switching and offer greater applicability in neural research.

Keywords

perspective-taking task social anxiety ambiguity self-perspective other perspective perspective switch

Perspective-Taking

Perspective-taking is an important concept of Theory of Mind (ToM), defined as one’s ability to infer one’s own and others’ mental states (Ballespí et al., 2019). Mental states are seen as the manifestation of cognition such as beliefs, desires, intentions, thoughts and feelings (Conway et al., 2019). According to Hiatt and Trafton’s (2010) cognitive model of ToM, ToM develops through one’s ability to obtain available and relevant information about others in a given situation. Individuals use this information to predict other people’s mental states and behaviours. A similar process is involved when individuals reflect on and infer their own experiences.

To accurately discern and reason about others’ mental states and behaviours, the information gathered needs to be relevant to others, which requires one to adopt another’s perspective (an other perspective, i.e., interpreting situations through the perspective of other people). Similarly, to obtain information about the self, a self-perspective is necessary (i.e., interpreting what the person themselves would experience in the situation) (Ruby & Decety, 2004). Another key aspect of perspective-taking is perspective switching. To engage both self-perspective and other perspectives, individuals need to switch between the two perspectives to make appropriate interpretations of a given situation where these two perspectives are inherently intertwined.

The Observer Perspective in Social Anxiety

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) refers to unreasonable fear and anxiety over social situations such as social interaction and speech performance where negative evaluation or criticism by others is perceived (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The observer perspective in social anxiety is characterised by taking the perspective of the perceived audience in a social situation to determine a mental representation of oneself (Spurr & Stopa, 2003). It can be seen as a form of an other perspective, where an individual attempts to adopt another person’s viewpoint concerning their own self-image (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014), making it interchangeable with the other perspective.

Of the literature on the relationship between perspective-taking and social anxiety, studies have found that individuals with SAD were more likely to adopt an observer perspective when recalling difficult social situations, but not non-social situations (Coles et al., 2001; Hackmann et al., 1998; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999). Similarly, Hignett and Cartwright-Hatton (2008) found that levels of social anxiety were positively associated with taking on the observer perspective. These results support the cognitive-behavioural models, which suggest that socially anxious individuals engage in the observer perspective and that the observer perspective is context-dependent in social situations. However, according to Clark (2001), socially anxious individuals tend to use biased internal information such as their feelings, bodily sensations and thoughts to construct an image of their own that they perceive to be an accurate perspective of others. Thus, the observer perspective is their own fears visualised rather than the viewpoint of the audience. This distorted observer perspective is an important biased information process proposed as a key factor that contributes to the development and maintenance of social anxiety disorder (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014).

Given that the observer perspective in socially anxious individuals is theorised to be grounded in distorted internal self-focused information (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014), it may reflect their difficulties in taking the self-perspective and/or other perspective. As previous studies have only focused on the observer perspective without comparisons between self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking (e.g., Coles et al., 2001; Hackmann et al., 1998; Hignett & Cartwright-Hatton, 2008; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999), it is unclear whether the observer perspective in social anxiety could be due to a biased self-perspective or difficulties in adopting an other perspective. Therefore, research into social anxiety should investigate how accurately socially anxious individuals engage with the self-perspective and other perspective to provide insight into the role of perspective-taking in social anxiety.

Measuring Perspective-Taking

When investigating perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety, it is important to use an appropriate task to accurately assess both the self-perspective and other perspective and their relationships with social anxiety. Typically, perspective-taking has been indirectly assessed through ToM tasks measuring social interpretations (see Eddy, 2019, for a review). However, these tasks only assess one’s ability to predict other people’s perspectives without addressing one’s interpretations of the information about themselves. In addition, these tasks do not include prompts to guide participants to adopt a self-perspective or other perspective when interpreting a social event, thereby limiting a direct conclusion about perspectives. Thus, a task that prompts both self-perspective and other perspective would ensure an accurate assessment of the two perspectives and their effects on subsequent interpretations.

In addition to prompting a self-perspective and other perspective, the task should also be suitable for collecting both behavioural and neural data. There has been a lot of research investigating differences in brain functioning between self-perspective and other perspective using both metabolic-based (e.g., fMRI) and electrophysiological-based (e.g., EEG) brain imaging techniques (Bradford et al., 2019; Corradi-Dell’Acqua et al., 2008; Finlayson-Short et al., 2021; Jääskeläinen & Kosonogov, 2023; McCleery et al., 2011; Rochas et al., 2023; Ruby & Decety, 2001, 2004; Van der Meer et al., 2011; Van Veluw & Chance, 2014; Vogeley et al., 2001; Wang et al., 2021). However, no study has investigated these neural differences in self-perspective and other perspective related to social anxiety. A common focus in neural research in relation to social anxiety is on self-processing and other referential processing (Burklund et al., 2017; Finlayson-Short et al., 2021; Heitmann et al., 2014; Holt et al., 2016; Kessler et al., 2011; Komulainen et al., 2018; Nakao et al., 2011; Pujol et al., 2013; Yoon et al., 2016; Ziv et al., 2013). Although similar constructs, self-processing and other referential processing characterise who the information is about, while perspective-taking is about whose point of view is being used to judge that information (D’Argembeau et al., 2007; Forster et al., 2019). Furthermore, these studies did not directly prompt participants to adopt a self-perspective or other perspective but rather assessed their subjective experience of the stimuli. Thus, this methodology does not capture processing of accurate information from each perspective (Northoff et al., 2006). Accordingly, a task that accurately measures the neural and behavioural correlates when socially anxious individuals are directly prompted to adopt a self-perspective or other perspective is warranted. In addition, as perspective-taking involves the process of switching between perspectives, which reflects a temporal process, the electroencephalogram (EEG) would be the most appropriate to investigate the neural correlates of both perspective-taking and switching. This is because the EEG is known to have high temporal resolution and can better pinpoint the timing of responses (Luck, 2014).

Existing Tasks That Measure Perspective-Taking and Their Limitations

There are currently two tasks that directly measure perspective-taking that are suitable for collecting both behavioural and neural data through the EEG. The first was by Bradford and colleagues (2015, 2019). Bradford and colleagues developed an experimental task investigating the effect of perspective switching on the attribution of mental states, specifically beliefs. In this task, participants were provided with three containers (e.g., a teapot, a cookie jar and a coin jar) and were asked which of the containers they or another person (i.e., self-perspective or other perspective, respectively) would look for a specific object (e.g., a cookie). The participants were then shown the container the object was in and were asked what they or another person believed was inside the container before the answer was revealed, choosing again between three options (e.g., tea leaves, cookies, coins). However, the task is unable to assess the congruency between perspectives because participants would interpret the question the same regardless of which perspective they adopted, given that no explicit instructions were provided to distinguish between self-perspective and other perspectives. Moreover, the prompts were written in sentences. In EEG studies, it is not recommended to present sentences on the screen all at once because eye movements and differences in reading speed can make it difficult to time-lock electrical activity in the brain in response to certain stimuli (Beres, 2017).

In response to these limitations, Wang and colleagues (2021) developed a different task measuring perspective-taking. In this task, participants were shown a character (representing an other perspective) who is in front of two boxes on the screen, with one box containing a red ball. The character was then blindfolded, and the ball was transferred to the other box. Next, the blindfold was removed from the character and two conditions were set here with either the box being closed or the box being open shortly to let the character see inside before being closed. In the condition where the box was closed, the character did not know that the ball had moved, but in the condition where the box was open just before closing, the character was able to see that the ball had moved. Participants are then prompted to identify which box they or the character believed the ball was in (self-perspective or other perspective, respectively). This experimental task measures self-perspective and other perspective-taking, using one-word perspective prompts reflecting self-perspective and other perspectives and includes conditions where the character and the participant hold different perspectives about which box the ball is in, enabling investigation of the effects of congruency between perspectives. However, this task does not include a perspective-switching aspect, which is crucial for perspective-taking. For individuals to adopt different perspectives, they need to be able to switch between their own and others.

To address these limitations of existing tasks, it is necessary to develop a task that better assesses both self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking and switching, as well as congruency between self-perspective and other perspective. Most importantly, the existing tasks to measure perspective-taking have primarily focused on healthy individuals (Bradford et al., 2015, 2019; Wang et al., 2021). They are not appropriate for assessing perspective-taking in the context of social anxiety, given the lack of a social evaluation component to reflect the core fear of social anxiety (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Social situations are a key part of social anxiety as they are identified as threats for possible negative evaluation from others (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014) and literature has suggested that individuals with SAD tend to adopt an observer perspective when recalling social, but not non-social situations (Coles et al., 2001; Hackmann et al., 1998; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999). Therefore, to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and perspective-taking, the task should include a social evaluation component. Furthermore, the task should be suitable for collecting both behavioural and neural data to provide a comprehensive investigation of self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking in social anxiety.

Further to addressing these gaps, de Bézenac and colleagues (2018) argued that information can be misconstrued to be related to another person’s or one’s own perspective. This may be due to differences in how information is inherently attributed to the self-perspective or other perspective. However, many perspective-taking tasks in the existing literature, including Bradford and colleagues (2015, 2019) and Wang and colleagues (2021), used unambiguous terms (e.g., ‘you’/‘name of another person’) to prompt self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking. It was assumed that these unambiguous prompts would allow individuals to adopt either the self-perspective and/or other perspective as expected. However, even unambiguous terms can still be perceived through varying individual perspectives. For instance, clinical populations may have different perspectives even if they are shown unambiguous terms due to difficulties distinguishing between information related to the self versus others. A typical example is those who experience hallucinations misattribute inner speech and their own thoughts and actions as others’ (Bentall et al., 2010; Jeannerod, 2009). In the context of social anxiety, research has shown that socially anxious individuals respond differently to ambiguous versus unambiguous stimuli, such as neutral faces vs. positive or negative faces (e.g., Lange et al., 2012; Kuckertz et al., 2016). However, these results have been mixed (see Chen et al., 2020 and Lacombe et al., 2023 for review). Thus, examining ambiguous cues alongside unambiguous ones in the context of social anxiety is crucial to determine perspective-taking ability from the inherent prompt-based associations.

The current study aimed to address this issue by comparing unambiguous terms (i.e., ‘SELF’/‘OTHER’) to ambiguous terms not inherently related to either perspective (i.e., ‘PERSON’/‘ACTOR’) to determine the most suitable prompts for perspective-taking tasks. Given that individual differences in task responses may reflect variation in stimulus comprehension rather than differences in perspective-taking ability, perspective-taking tasks should consider unambiguous and ambiguous prompts. Ambiguous prompts are not inherently tied to a particular perspective and therefore allow perspective-taking to be assessed through participants’ interpretations rather than through pre-existing prompt-based associations. de Bézenac and colleagues (2018) suggest that experiencing ambiguous stimuli that prompt self-perspective and other perspectives can facilitate adaptive perspective-taking and reduce the use of ready-made attributional biases. Consequently, ambiguous stimuli promote a more objective adoption of self and other by reducing the potential for preconceived attribution biases, which may impact perspective-taking.

The Current Study

The current study aimed to develop a perspective-taking task suitable for social anxiety research that incorporates a social-anxiety-relevant context while eliciting self-perspective, other perspective and perspective-switching responses as those reported in established general-population tasks. Specifically, the primary aim was to examine the appropriateness of the prompts and measure potential congruencies between self-perspective and other perspective when a social evaluation component was included. The task was expected to be suitable for collecting both neural and behavioural data. The developed task was adapted from Wang and colleagues’ (2021) task by including a social evaluation component and a perspective-switching aspect. Wang and colleagues’ (2021) task was chosen over Bradford and colleagues’ (2015, 2019) because it allows for a modification for single-word prompts, which is suitable for neural research. The differences between the newly developed task from the current study and tasks from Bradford and colleagues (2015, 2019) and Wang and colleagues (2021) are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Comparison Between the Adapted Task and Similar Tasks.

Newly developed task in the current study	Bradford and colleagues (2015; 2019) task	Wang and colleagues (2021) task
Compatible with Behavioural and Neural Data
Y	Y	Y
Individual Prompts for Self-Perspective and Other Perspective
Y	Y	Y
Visual Trials
Y	N	Y
Congruent/Incongruent Self-Perspective and Other Perspectives Aspect
Y	N	Y
Perspective-Switching Aspect
Y	Y	N
Social Aspect
Y	N	N

Note. ‘Y’ equates to Yes and ‘N’ demonstrates No.

As outlined in Table 1, the key changes from previous tasks used by Bradford et al. (2015, 2019) and Wang et al. (2021) were the inclusion of a social aspect and a perspective-switching component (see more details of the developed task in the ‘Methods’ section). The current study investigated (a) whether the prompts cue participants to adopt certain perspectives (i.e., whether participants adopt the self-perspective or other perspective when prompted to), (b) whether the trials cue perspective switching when required and (c) whether there are differences in task performance with two types of prompts when comparing unambiguous prompts (‘SELF’ and ‘OTHER’) and ambiguous prompts (‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’). Our hypotheses are as follows:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Participants would take a self-perspective or an other perspective when prompted accordingly.

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Participants would not switch perspectives in the trials that they were not required to and switched perspectives for trials where they were instructed to.

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Participants would better adopt the self-perspective and other perspective as required when using PERSON/ACTOR than SELF/OTHER prompts.

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Participants would better switch perspectives as required when using PERSON/ACTOR than SELF/OTHER prompts.

Methods

Participants

A priori analysis using G*power (Faul et al., 2007) indicated that 35 participants were required to detect a medium effect size with 80% power at α = .05 for t-tests to assess individual prompt types. Two community samples were recruited through a research survey platform Prolific, to test the newly developed task with two types of prompts. For SELF/OTHER prompts, 89 participants provided informed consent (M_age = 27.80, SD = 7.85, range = 18–58 years). For the PERSON/ACTOR prompts, 69 participants provided informed consent (M_age = 26.70, SD = 8.76, range = 18–68 years). Participants were screened to ensure they were over 18 and spoke fluent English since assessing one’s ability to understand mental states can be affected by one’s language fluency (Mato, 2012). Participants’ demographic information is presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Participants’ Demographic Characteristics.

Demographic variables	Number of participants
Demographic variables	Self/other	Person/actor	Completed both types of trials
Gender
Male	38	39	14
Female	47	27	17
Other	4	3	1
Ethnicity
White	33	27	14
Mixed	3	3	2
Greek	4	2	2
Irish	0	2	0
Polish	3	6	2
Latino/Portuguese	18	15	4
Hispanic	9	5	2
African	14	7	5
Southeast Asian	2	1	1
Northeast Asian	2	0	0
Swedish	1	0	0
Dutch	0	1	0

Among the two samples, 32 provided informed consent to complete both types of trials (M_age = 28.19, SD = 8.93, range = 20–58 years) for comparison between trial types.

Measures

Demographic Variables and Social Anxiety

Participants answered questions about their gender, age and ethnicity. The Social Phobia Inventory (Connor et al., 2000) was used to measure participants’ social anxiety levels. The inventory measures avoidance, fear of negative evaluation and somatic symptoms associated with social phobia. It is a self-rated questionnaire with 17 items and each question uses a 5-point Likert-type rating scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely). A score of 19 and above is the indicative clinical cutoff for social anxiety disorder. The inventory has optimal specificity and sensitivity at 84.30% and 72.50%, respectively. In addition, it has shown adequate convergent and divergent validity and good test–retest reliability at .78. The internal consistency of the inventory is high (α = .94) (Connor et al., 2000). The internal consistency was similarly high in the current sample for the SELF/OTHER prompts (α = .95) and PERSON/ACTOR prompts (α = .93).

Experimental Tasks

Theory of Mind and Perspective-taking. The newly developed task was adapted from Wang and colleagues (2021) and included a social situation and a perspective-switching aspect. An example of the task is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Example of task trial.

To incorporate a social threat with potential negative evaluation (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014), participants were instructed at the beginning of the task to imagine that both they and a character on the screen (named Sam to be gender ambiguous) have just finished presenting a speech to an audience, with the audience’s emotion presented (i.e., a happy or sad face) on the screen. The character ‘Sam’ represented another person to assess an other perspective. The happy or sad face reflects the audience’s reaction to the speech, so the task has the potential for positive (i.e., a happy face) and negative (i.e., a sad face) evaluation, respectively. Speeches have been found as an anxiety-provoking task to socially anxious individuals (Morrison et al., 2016). Moreover, imagery of a potentially socially threatening situation has been shown to be positively correlated with social anxiety (Thunnissen et al., 2022).

There were two types of tasks with respective SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts. In both task types, the trials began by asking the participant to look at a character on the screen, who was presented with either a happy or a sad face on a dark grey rectangle representing a monitor (half of the trials started with a happy face and the other half, a sad face). The character was then blindfolded (black rectangle over the eyes), and the emotion on the ‘monitor’ changed (if it started with a happy face, it switched to a sad face and vice versa). Participants were told that the character could not see the change when blindfolded. There were two conditions after this point. In one condition, when the blindfold was removed, the reaction of the audience (i.e., happy or sad face) appeared on the ‘monitor’. In the other condition, when the blindfold was removed, ‘the monitor’ did not show the emotion, thus the character would believe the emotion of the audience remained the same as what they saw before they were blindfolded. However, as the participant would have observed the change, in the latter condition, participants would have a different perspective to the character. Therefore, the task can assess congruency between the participant and character’s perspective (self-perspective and other perspective, respectively). Afterwards, a word prompt appeared on the screen (either ‘SELF’ or ‘OTHER’). Participants were instructed that when they saw the word ‘OTHER’, they answered based on what the character believed the emotion of the audience was. However, if they saw the word ‘SELF’, they answered based on what they themselves believed the emotion of the audience was. This assessed the effect of perspective type (i.e., self-perspective vs. other perspectives). Each image was presented for 1,000 ms while the word prompt was presented for 2,000 ms.

Following this, the participants were prompted a second time with the word (‘SELF’ or ‘OTHER’). In half of the trials, the second prompt was different to the first prompt (i.e., ‘SELF’, then ‘OTHER’ or vice versa), requiring a perspective switch from self to other or other to self, forming the perspective switch condition. In the other half, the second prompt was the same as the first (i.e., ‘OTHER’, then ‘OTHER’ or ‘SELF’ followed by ‘SELF’) which formed the no perspective switch condition. After each prompt, participants chose either a happy or a sad face when responding to the prompt word ‘SELF’ or ‘OTHER’. For the task using ‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’ prompts, the same procedures were applied, with participants instructed that ‘ACTOR’ referred to the character’s belief, whereas ‘PERSON’ reflected their own belief. Therefore, there were two sets of prompts for comparison: the unambiguous terms of ‘SELF’ and ‘OTHER’, and the ambiguous terms of ‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’ to reflect the self-perspective and other perspective, respectively. Practice trials were provided for the participants to ensure that they understood the instructions and the stimuli to reduce the risk of random errors. Each task culminated in 16 different trial types (see Section A of the Supplementary Document for details) repeated four times (four blocks), totalling 64 trials.

Manipulation Checks

Of the 16 trial types assessing a self-perspective, other perspective, perspective switch and no switch, one trial from each type was followed by a manipulation check, and this was repeated four times across the four blocks. Based on similar manipulation checks used in previous studies (Hackmann et al., 1998; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1999) for a self-perspective or other perspective trial, participants were asked to rate the perspective they took from a 7-point scale, ranging from −3 (self-perspective: ‘viewing the situation as if looking out through their own eyes’) to +3 (other perspective: ‘viewing the situation through someone else’s eyes’), with 0 being neutral, respectively. For trials that involve a switch in perspective (other to self and/or self to other), the manipulation check was a yes or no question in which participants were asked whether they did engage in switching perspectives in the trial.

Procedure

The study was conducted through an online research platform Qualtrics, with consent informed through a submission button. Participants were introduced to the study aims, required time commitment and eligibility. Ineligible participants were directed to the end of the survey, whereas eligible participants filled out their demographics and completed the Social Phobia Inventory to measure their levels of social anxiety. To minimise possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, participants were asked to answer a yes or no multiple-choice question to assess if their levels of social anxiety were due to COVID-19 (‘In your opinion, are these behaviours/feelings mainly due to covid?’). Following this, participants completed one of the experimental tasks (i.e., with either Self/Other or Person/Character as prompts) and were debriefed on completion of the experiment. Participants were then invited to complete the other experimental task, aiming to compare the different sets of prompts across the same individual.

Statistical Analysis

All statistical analyses were conducted using JASP 0.17.2.1. Following Hackmann and colleague’s (1998) analysis, participant ratings for manipulation check questions in both self-perspective and other perspective trials were averaged, with −3 being completely from the self-perspective to 3, completely from the other perspective (see a visual diagram of the statistical analysis for each hypothesis in Section B of the Supplementary Document).

To test H1, (1) the difference between mean perspective-taking scores in self-perspective and other perspective trials was calculated for each participant, and a one-sample t-test was run to compare the difference to a null result (i.e., no significant difference). (2) If there was a significant difference from a null result, chi-square tests were then run to test the difference in the proportion of participants that adopted a neutral (average perspective-taking score of 0), other (positive average perspective-taking score) or self-perspective (negative average perspective-taking score) to an equal distribution (e.g., 33% across all three perspectives). This proportion was used to examine if a majority of participants adopted a self-perspective for self-perspective trials and an other perspective for other perspective trials.

To assess H2, first, a total number was generated out of the eight manipulation check questions for perspective switching (i.e., perspective switch = 1, no perspective switch = 0, range: 0–8). Second, (1) the difference in the mean number of perspective switches was calculated between perspective switch trials and no-switch trials. A one-sample t-test was used to compare the difference to a null result (i.e., no significant difference). (2) Given that there is no existing benchmark, if there was a significant difference from a null result, the mean from the respective trial was used as the benchmark to determine the proportion of participants who switched and did not switch under the switch and no-switch trials. In other words, using the mean number of switches from the switch trial, participants who reported above this mean were allocated into the switch group, with those under this mean score allocated into the non-switch group. A similar procedure was applied to the no-switch trial. Binomial tests were run to test whether the majority of participants switched perspectives in perspective switch trials and did not switch in no perspective trials (i.e., proportions above chance at 50%).

To test H3, namely whether there were any significant differences between the two types of prompts when adopting self-perspective and other perspectives (i.e., SELF/OTHER vs. PERSON/ACTOR), a within-subjects ANOVA was run to compare the average scores between prompt types for self-perspectives and other perspectives. Moreover, a chi-square test was run to compare the proportion of participants who on average, took a self-perspective, other perspective and neutral perspective between the two prompt types. To assess differences in perspective switching between SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts (H4), a paired samples t-test was run to compare the average number of perspective switches. In addition, a contingency test was also run to compare SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR on the proportion of participants that switched or did not switch in perspective switch and no-switch trials. Non-parametric equivalents were run if assumption checks were violated.

Results

Preliminary Analysis

Three preliminary analyses were performed for participants who tested the SELF/OTHER prompt (N = 89), those who tested the PERSON/ACTOR prompt (N = 69) and for those who participated in both prompts (N = 32) (see Section C of the Supplementary Document for more details). To test whether the manipulation check questions would be different due to age, gender and ethnicity, a series of analyses were performed with age, gender and ethnicity as independent variables and participants’ manipulation check ratings as the dependent variable (for details, see Section D in the Supplementary Materials). There were no age, gender and ethnicity differences on manipulation check questions; therefore, these variables were not included as covariates in the subsequent analyses.

For both prompt types, there was no missing data. For SELF/OTHER prompts, analysis of outliers yielded 0 multivariate outliers and 2 univariate outliers with no indications of multicollinearity. For PERSON/ACTOR prompts, analysis of outliers yielded 0 multivariate and 2 univariate outliers with no multicollinearity. Analysis with and without these outliers did not change the interpretation of results, and thus, they were included in the analysis. For the analysis of participants who participated in both prompts, no multicollinearity, multivariate or univariate outliers were found. Several variables had significant deviations from normal. However, as they were within variables that were not expected to be normally distributed, and chi-square tests and binomial distributions do not have the assumption of normality, all cases were included in the analysis with non-parametric analyses run if assumption checks were violated for corresponding t-tests and ANOVAs.

Manipulation Checks: Do the Prompts Cue Participants?

Table 3 shows the proportion of participants who took a neutral, self-perspective or other perspective when using SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts, respectively.

Table 3.

Proportion of Participants Who Adopted Self/Other/Neutral Perspectives Across Word Prompts in Self-Perspective and Other Perspective Trials.

Perspectives	Percentage of participants
Perspectives	Self/other (%)	Person/actor (%)
Self-perspective trials
Neutral	11.24	17.39
Other perspective	11.24	15.94
Self-perspective	77.53	66.67
Other perspective trials
Neutral	15.73	14.49
Other perspective	50.56	53.62
Self-perspective	33.71	31.88

Self-Perspective and Other Perspectives

For SELF/OTHER prompts, the difference between the mean perspective-taking score for self-perspective and other perspective trials (Mdn = .50) was significantly different to 0, z = 2,169.50, p < .001, indicating that the manipulation was effective in prompting different perspective-taking in both trials. On average, participants took a self-perspective in self-perspective trials as indicated by the negative mean perspective-taking scores (M = −1.36, SD = 1.28) and an other perspective in other perspective trials as indicated by the positive mean perspective-taking scores (M = .27, SD = 1.80). Moreover, chi-square tests found that the proportion of participants that adopted the different perspectives (i.e., self or other and neutral) was significantly different to equal proportions in self-perspective trials, χ²(2) = 78.22, p < .001 and other perspective trials, χ²(2) = 16.20, p < .001. As shown in Table 3, in self-perspective trials, the majority of participants took a self-perspective (77.53%), whereas for other perspective trials, the majority of participants took an other perspective (50.56%).

For PERSON/ACTOR prompts, the difference between the mean perspective-taking scores from the self-perspective and other perspective trials (Mdn = .50) was significantly different to 0, z = 1,068.50, p < .001, indicating that the manipulation was effective in prompting different perspectives in both trials. Participants took a self-perspective in self-perspective trials (M = −1.01, SD = 1.52) and an other perspective in other perspective trials (M = .24, SD = 1.71) as indicated by a negative mean perspective-taking score and a positive mean perspective-taking score, respectively. Chi-square tests found that the proportion of participants adopting a neutral, self-perspective or other perspective was significantly different from equal proportions for self-perspective trials, χ²(2) = 34.52, p < .001, and other perspective trials, χ²(2) = 15.91, p < .001. Table 3 illustrates that the majority of participants took a self-perspective in self-perspective trials (66.67%) and an other perspective in other perspective trials (53.62%).

Overall, the results showed that both types of prompts effectively elicited the intended perspectives, with participants taking a self-perspective or other perspective as prompted. Thus, H1 was supported.

Perspective Switch or No Switch

Table 4 depicts the proportion of participants in perspective switch and no-switch trials, using both SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts. Analyses were only conducted on the second prompt for each trial as measuring perspective switches occurs only after the adoption of a perspective as prompted, aligning with previous analyses by Bradford and colleagues (2015, 2019).

Table 4.

Proportion of Participants’ Perspective Switches Across Word Prompts in Perspective Switch and No-Switch Trials.

Perspectives	Percentage of participants
Perspectives	Self/other (%)	Person/actor (%)
Perspective switch trials
Switched	60.67	50.72
Did not switch	39.33	49.28
No perspective switch trials
Switched	34.83	28.99
Did not switch	65.17	71.01

For SELF/OTHER prompts, the difference between the mean number of switches in perspective switch trials versus no-switch trials (Mdn = 2.00) was significantly different to 0, z = 2,342.50, p < .001. The mean number of perspective switches for perspective switch trials (M = 4.51) was higher than the mean number of perspective switches for no-switch trials (M = 1.34). This indicates that the prompt was effective in eliciting perspective switching in perspective-switch trials when compared to those in the no-switch trials, where no perspective switch was required. Using 4.51 and 1.34 as benchmarks, a binomial test comparing the switched versus did not switch groups in the perspective switch trials found that the proportion of participants that switched (60.67%) was significantly higher than 50%, p < .05. Similarly, a binomial test found that the proportion of participants that did not switch in no-switch trials (65.17%) was significantly higher than 50%, p < .001.

For PERSON/ACTOR prompts, the difference between the mean number of perspective switches in perspective switch trials versus no-switch trials (Mdn = 1.00) was significantly different to 0, z = 1,391.00, p < .001. The mean number of perspective switches for perspective switch trials (M = 4.14) was higher than that for no-switch trials (M = 2.03). This indicates that the prompt was effective in eliciting perspective switching in perspective switch trials when compared to those in the no-switch trials, where no perspective switch was required. Using 4.14 and 2.03 as benchmarks, a binomial test comparing the switched versus did not switch groups in the perspective switch trials found that the proportion of participants that switched (50.72%) was not significantly higher than 50%, p = .50. A secondary independent samples Welch t-test was run to assess the mean scores between groups within perspective switch trials. Results showed a significant difference between switched (M = 6.71, SD = 1.13) and not switched (M = 1.50, SD = 1.64) groups, t(58.34) = 15.37, p < .001. For no-switch trials, a binomial test comparing the switched versus did not switch groups found that the proportion of participants that did not switch (71.01%) was significantly higher than 50%, p < .001.

Overall, H2 was supported for SELF/OTHER prompts, as the majority of participants switched their perspective following the trial requirements, that is, switching when required and not switching when not required. Perspective switch trials also effectively prompted more perspective switching when compared to no-switch trials. However, for PERSON/ACTOR prompt, H2 was partially supported. In the no-switch trials, the majority of participants did not switch perspectives as required and reported less perspective switching when compared to perspective switch trials. Conversely, while perspective switch trials effectively prompted perspective switching as compared to no-switch trials, the proportion of participants that switched in perspective switch trials was not significantly higher than chance.

Comparison Between the Two Types of Prompts

Mean Perspective-Taking Scores

Table 5 shows the mean perspective-taking scores and the proportion of participants who adopted a neutral, self-perspective or other perspective across the self-perspective and other perspective trials when using the two prompts, SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR.

Table 5.

Mean Perspective-Taking Scores and Proportion of Participants Who Adopted Self/Other/Neutral Perspectives Across Word Prompts in Self-Perspective and Other Perspective Trials.

Perspectives Taken per Trial Type	Percentage of participants
Perspectives Taken per Trial Type	Self/other	Person/actor
Self-perspective trials
Mean perspective-taking score	–1.38	–1.02
Neutral	15.63%	15.63%
Other perspective	9.38%	12.50%
Self-perspective	75.00%	71.88%
Other perspective trials
Mean perspective-taking score	0.51	0.44
Neutral	15.63%	9.38%
Other perspective	56.25%	62.50%
Self-perspective	28.13%	28.13%

Repeated-measures ANOVAs found no significant differences between the two types of prompts in mean perspective-taking scores for both self-perspective and other perspective trials, F(1, 31) = 1.16, p = .29 and F(1, 31) = .03, p = .86, respectively. Table 5 shows that in both types of prompts, a negative mean perspective-taking score was observed in the self-perspective trials, whereas a positive mean perspective-taking score was observed in the other perspective trials. In addition, chi-square tests found that the proportion of participants who took self, other and neutral perspectives was not significantly different between SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts in both self-perspective and other perspective trials, χ²(4) = 3.18, p = .53 and χ²(4) = 1.04, p = .87, respectively.

Thus, H3 that participants will adopt more self-perspective and other perspectives in response to PERSON/ACTOR prompts compared to SELF/OTHER prompts, was not supported.

Mean Perspective Switch

Table 6 shows the mean number of perspective switches and proportion of participants who reported perspective switches within perspective switch and no-switch trials across the two prompts, SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR.

Table 6.

Mean Number of Perspective Switches and Proportion of Participants’ Perspective Switches in Perspective Switch and No-Switch Trials.

Perspective Switches per Trial Type	Percentage of participants
Perspective Switches per Trial Type	Self/other	Person/actor
Trials requiring a perspective switch
Mean number of perspective switches	4.25	4.72
Switched	56.25%	59.38%
Did not switch	43.75%	40.63%
Trials not requiring a perspective switch
Mean number of perspective switches	1.28	2.00
Switched	34.38%	34.38%
Did not switch	65.63%	65.63%

A paired samples t-test found no significant difference in the mean number of perspective switches between SELF/OTHER (M = 4.25, SD = 3.33) and PERSON/ACTOR prompts (M = 4.72, SD = 2.80), t(31) = .67, p = .51, for perspective switch trials. Similarly, there were no significant differences between the mean number of perspective switches for SELF/OTHER prompts (M = 1.28, SD = 1.51) compared to PERSON/ACTOR prompts (M = 2.00, SD = 1.95), t(31) = −1.90, p = .07 for no-switch trials.

Moreover, chi-square tests found no significant difference between the two types of prompts in the proportion of participants that switched versus did not switch for perspective switch trials, χ²(1) = .13, p = .72 and no-switch trials, χ²(1) = .00, p = 1.00. Therefore, H4, participants will switch perspectives more as required by PERSON/ACTOR prompts than SELF/OTHER prompts, was not supported.

Secondary Analyses

The aim of the current study was to develop a perspective-taking task suitable for social anxiety research by examining whether the word prompts reliably elicited self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking and perspective switching, comparable to those observed in established general-population tasks, even in the presence of social evaluation. The results found that participants responded as expected to both perspective prompts. A secondary analysis was therefore conducted to determine whether the word prompts elicited similar perspective-taking and switching responses across different levels of social anxiety. Ensuring comparable adoption of self-perspective and other perspectives regardless of social anxiety level is important so that any observed differences in behavioural outcomes in future research can be attributed to differences in indices such as accuracy, reaction time or neural correlates of perspective-based inferences, rather than to differences in perspective adoption elicited by the prompts.

Social Anxiety

Table 7 shows the number of participants and the mean social anxiety scores in the high versus low social anxiety group across both prompt types. The mean scores observed in the current study are consistent with those reported by (Connor et al., 2000), who found mean SPIN scores of 41.1 among individuals with social anxiety and 12.1 among those without. Thus, the current study successfully recruited two distinct groups with differing levels of social anxiety suitable for meaningful comparison.

Table 7.

Mean Social Anxiety Scores and Perspective-Taking and Switching Scores in High and Low Social Anxiety Groups.

Prompts	Social anxiety		χ² or F
Prompts	High (N)	Low (N)	χ² or F
Self/other	41.43 (69)	11.85 (20)
Self-perspective trials			χ²(2) = 3.41, p = .18
Neutral perspective	10.14%	15.00%
Other perspective	14.49%	0.00%
Self-perspective	75.36%	85.00%
Other perspective trials			χ²(2) = 3.14, p = .21
Neutral perspective	17.39%	10.00%
Other perspective	53.62%	40.00%
Self-perspective	28.99%	50.00%
Perspective switch trials			χ²(1) = 1.23, p = .27
Switched	63.77%	50.00%
Did not switch	36.23%	50.00%
No perspective switch Trials			χ²(1) = 1.10, p = .29
Switched	37.68%	25.00%
Did not switch	62.32%	75.00%
Person/actor	36.98 (54)	10.20 (15)
Self-perspective trials			χ²(2) = .38, p = .83
Neutral perspective	18.52%	13.33%
Other perspective	14.81%	20.00%
Self-perspective	66.67%	66.67%
Other perspective trials			χ²(2) = .03, p = .98
Neutral perspective	14.81%	13.33%
Other perspective	53.70%	53.33%
Self-perspective	31.48%	33.33%
Perspective switch trials			χ²(1) = .05, p = .82
Switched	50.00%	53.33%
Did not switch	50.00%	46.67%
No perspective switch trials			χ² (1) = .75, p = .39
Switched	31.48%	20.00%
Did not switch	68.52%	80.00%
Both prompts	40.31 (26)	11.00 (6)
Self-perspective trials			F(1, 30) = .01, p = .92
SELF/OTHER	–1.31	–1.67
PERSON/ACTOR	–0.93	–1.38
Other perspective trials			F(1, 30) = 1.15, p = .29
SELF/OTHER	0.76	–0.58
PERSON/ACTOR	0.48	0.25
Perspective switch trials			F(1, 30) = .06, p = .81
SELF/OTHER	4.39	3.67
PERSON/ACTOR	4.77	4.50
No perspective switch trials			F(1, 30) = .23, p = .63
SELF/OTHER	1.35	1.00
PERSON/ACTOR	2.15	1.33

Chi-square analyses comparing the proportion of participants who adopted self-perspective, other or neutral perspectives showed no significant variation by social anxiety level for either SELF/OTHER or PERSON/ACTOR prompts in both self-perspective and other perspective trials. Similarly, the proportion of participants who switched or did not switch perspectives did not significantly differ by social anxiety level in either perspective switch or no-switch trials for both SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts (see Table 7).

Furthermore, mixed ANOVAs were performed to compare mean perspective-taking scores in SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts across each trial type (i.e., self-perspective trials, other perspective trials, perspective-switch trials and no-perspective-switch trials) between high and low social anxiety groups. No significant interaction effect was found between social anxiety group (high vs. low) and prompt type (SELF/OTHER versus PERSON/ACTOR prompts) for mean perspective-taking scores across any of the trial types (see Table 7).

Overall, the results showed no significant differences in trial outcomes between participants with high and low social anxiety. Regardless of social anxiety level, participants adopted self-perspective and other perspectives when prompted and switched or maintained perspectives as required.

Discussion

The current study aimed to develop an experimental perspective-taking task by embedding a social evaluation context in which participants were prompted to adopt self-perspective or other perspectives, switch between perspectives and process both incongruent and congruent self-perspective and other perspectives. The inclusion of a social evaluation component was intended to enhance the task’s suitability for social anxiety research. Furthermore, the task was designed to be suitable for both neural and behavioural research, with the prompts focusing on singular terms to better pinpoint a timeline of perspective-taking for EEG analyses (Beres, 2017).

The second aim of this study was to examine whether the newly developed task could prompt participants to adopt and switch between perspectives as instructed. Specifically, two types of prompts were included in this examination to determine the most appropriate prompts by comparing those that are inherently associated with each perspective (i.e., SELF and OTHER) versus those that are more ambiguous (i.e., PERSON and ACTOR). The important implications of the results are discussed below.

Perspective-Taking

Testing H1 found that the prompts effectively cued self-perspectives and other perspectives, respectively, as instructed. In addition, regardless of the type of prompt (i.e., SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR), the majority of participants adopted a self-perspective for self-perspective trials and an other perspective for other perspective trials as prompted. These findings suggest that both types of prompts effectively guide participants to take the intended perspective.

Perspective Switching

Testing H2 found that regardless of the two prompt types, comparing the mean number of perspective switches in perspective switch and no-switch trials revealed that participants engaged in more perspective switching in perspective switch trials compared to no-switch trials. These results suggest the prompts effectively cued perspective switching as required, namely, perspective switch trials prompt switches effectively, and no-switch trials do not.

The two types of prompts are effective in guiding a majority of participants towards not switching in no-switch trials. However, for perspective switch trials, SELF/OTHER prompts are effective in cueing the majority of participants to switch perspectives in perspective switch trials, whereas PERSON/ACTOR failed to show such effects.

The inconsistency in the two types of prompts in eliciting perspective switches could be due to the ambiguity of the PERSON/ACTOR prompts, given that both ‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’ terms are not inherently associated with a self-perspective or other perspective like SELF/OTHER prompts do. Gibson (1966) suggests that ambiguity can lead individuals to look for ‘information that will reinforce one or the other alternative’ (pp. 303–304) as there is insufficient information to determine the preferred perspective (see de Bézenac et al., 2018 for a conceptual analysis of ambiguity in relation to self-processing and other processing). As a result, participants may not strongly associate PERSON or ACTOR to one perspective and find difficulty consciously switching perspectives when prompted. In addition, as both ‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’ terms are not inherently associated with a self-perspective or other perspective, participants may need to use more cognitive effort, increasing the cognitive load to assign each term to a perspective. Qureshi and colleagues (2010) found that perspective-taking can be cognitively demanding and affected by cognitive load. Similarly, perspective-taking has been correlated with executive functioning tasks (Qureshi et al., 2020). Thus, the ambiguity of the PERSON/ACTOR prompts may increase the cognitive load, making it difficult to keep a stable perspective for each prompt and switch between perspectives. Given this, it is likely that the PERSON/ACTOR prompt may not be sensitive enough to guide participants to switch or not switch. However, a secondary analysis comparing the mean number of perspective switches for those who switched and those who did not switch in perspective-switching trials found a significant difference. This suggests that instead of assessing the proportion of participants who switched versus did not switch, mean scores may be an alternative benchmark to be used for determining perspective switching within perspective switch trials. Future research is needed to investigate the sensitivity of PERSON/ACTOR prompts.

Comparisons Between the Two Types of Prompts

Comparisons between SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts found no significant differences. These results suggest that the two types of prompts are equally effective in prompting individuals to adopt a self-perspective and other perspective, as well as switch and not switch perspectives as required. The non-significant difference between the two types of prompts could be due to the possibility that the inherent biases associated with the words ‘SELF’ and ‘OTHER’ do not impact the adoption process of each perspective. As such, ambiguous terms such as ‘PERSON’ and ‘ACTOR’ may not be necessary when investigating perspective-taking. Although the process of adopting perspectives is reflected as lower-level processing (Synofzik et al., 2008) and the literature does suggest differences in lower-level processing associated with each perspective (see David et al., 2008 & Sperduti et al., 2011 for a review), the current study suggests that those differences do not confound self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking in the context of this task. However, only a small sample of participants completed both types of prompts, and future research should include a larger sample to consolidate the current results.

An alternative explanation for the non-significance between the two types of prompts could be that the PERSON/ACTOR terms are not that much more ambiguous than SELF/OTHER. Although the terms might not directly reflect a self-perspective or other perspective, there may still be inherent biases associated with each perspective. For instance, participants may adopt a self-perspective with the term ‘ACTOR’ if participants believe the term to be descriptive of themselves. Descriptors are key examples that people use to develop a sense of self (Wheeler & Bechler, 2021). If one relates to ‘PERSON’ and ’ACTOR’ terms differently, it can lead them to adopt a self-perspective even if prompted to adopt an other perspective. Cognitive-behavioural models have suggested that socially anxious individuals particularly have difficulty taking on an other perspective due to a bias towards information about the self (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014). Chen and colleagues (2018) also found that when instructed to take the perspective of a stranger, there were no significant changes in perceived negative evaluation. This may further suggest that socially anxious individuals are unable to adopt an objective perspective in a given situation, which may inherently bias how the ambiguous prompts are interpreted. Unfortunately, the current study did not assess the terms on their ambiguity to make firm conclusions on whether the chosen terms were objective or not. Future research could look at assessing the two different word prompts on their ambiguity and whether socially anxious individuals have difficulty adopting self-perspective and other perspectives.

Overall, the current study results suggest that both SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts are interchangeable when prompting a self-perspective or other perspective. Although the two types of prompts produced similar effects, when considering the most appropriate prompt terms for neural research, the ambiguity in the PERSON/ACTOR word prompts can be a limiting factor when investigating neural correlates. For example, the EEG has good temporal resolution (Luck, 2014) and is beneficial for time-locking cognitive processes. However, with ambiguous terminology, it is likely that the time taken to associate each perspective with the word varies more among individual participants (e.g., Surtees et al., 2011). As such, using more ambiguous terms may confound results as differences in neural correlates may reflect either differences in perspective-taking or differences in individual processing time to associate each term with a specific perspective. Thus, using the SELF/OTHER task may be preferable when collecting neural data to reduce the potential confounding effects due to ambiguity, to better isolate the relationship between social anxiety and perspective-taking. Upon addressing the gap in the literature, future research can build on this task by exploring its application in neural research to examine how different prompts may influence perspective-taking.

Generalisability

There were no significant gender differences in perspective adoption, as measured by manipulation check questions, for either prompt type. Similar results were found for ethnicity and age. These results suggest that prompting perspectives is not affected by gender, ethnicity or age. Much research on perspective-taking has found significant gender differences between males and females in adolescents (e.g., Van der Graaff et al., 2014; see Hollarek & Lee, 2022, for review). However, very limited research has investigated gender differences in perspective-taking in adults. A study by Kessler and colleagues (2014) found gender differences in a visuospatial perspective-taking task in a European adult population. The inconsistency between the current and Kessler et al.’s (2014) results may be due to the different constructs of perspective-taking assessed. Kessler et al. (2014) focused on visuospatial perspective-taking (i.e., how a scene looks physically between self-perspective and other perspectives whereas the current study emphasised interpretations of self-perspective and other perspectives in relation to emotions as opposed to material in space. While similar processes, Gunia and colleagues (2021, 2024) have found differences between visuospatial perspective-taking and judgements based on self/other perspective-taking. Thus, gender differences may occur for perspective-taking concerning location and orientation-based interpretations, but not for social interpretations such as inferring emotions.

Current literature on the impact of ethnicity has been mixed, with some literature suggesting that culture does impact perspective-taking (e.g., Hall et al., 2021; Wu & Keysar, 2007), whereas others suggest no meaningful differences (Chopik et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2019). However, overall, literature reviews found that culture significantly impacts perspective-taking (see Aival-Naveh et al., 2019 for a review), which is inconsistent with the current study. The inconsistency could be due to the small number of ethnicities (i.e., only 12 different ethnicities) assessed in the current study, with limited representative samples. Future studies should include diverse ethnic groups to better understand any cultural differences that could affect perspective-taking.

Regarding age, literature has reported age-related decline in other perspective-taking (see Henry et al., 2013 for a review), specifically difficulty adopting an other perspective due to disinhibiting from and a reliance on self-perspective (Bailey & Henry, 2008). Literature typically suggests that older generations are biased towards self-relevant information and often adopt a self-perspective (Mattan et al., 2017), which is inconsistent with current study findings. However, the current study included a young sample with the average age being around the late twenties. Research has suggested the magnitude of cognitive decline accelerates around the age of 60 (Salthouse, 2009). With only one participant aged over 60 in the current study, it is impossible to capture the age effects of the older generation on perspective-taking. Future research should address this gap by investigating age-related differences in the task developed in the current study before consolidating the conclusion.

Finally, the current study found no significant effect of social anxiety on perspective adoption or switching. Participants successfully adopted and switched perspectives as required, regardless of whether they were in the high or low social anxiety group. Together, these findings suggest that irrespective of social anxiety level (high or low), the task, including the social evaluation component, offers an appropriate measure of perspective-taking, for individuals with social anxiety and for social evaluative contexts in the general population. However, as the manipulation checks relied on self-report measures, it is possible that individuals with high social anxiety were unable to accurately determine the perspective they took when prompted. de Bézenac and colleagues (2018) highlight that socially anxious individuals have been found to have difficulties distinguishing between self and other. Consequently, while those with high social anxiety may report adopting the self-perspective during self-perspective trials, they may in fact have adopted the other perspective, and vice versa during other perspective trials. Future research should collect behavioural and neural data during task performance to examine whether perspective-based inferences differ as a function of social anxiety level, and to clarify whether socially anxious individuals accurately identify information relevant to the self-perspective and other perspective.

Practical and Theoretical Implications in Social Anxiety

The results of this study suggest that the task developed in the current study is suitable for assessing perspective-taking concerning social anxiety, which has yet to be developed. An important biased information process in social anxiety is the observer perspective (Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014). However, since perspective-taking encompasses both self-perspective and/or other perspectives (Hiatt & Trafton, 2010), the observer perspective in social anxiety could be due to difficulties in self-perspective-taking and/or other perspective-taking. To date, there has been no appropriate task to measure perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety, so inferences could not be made on the accuracy of the observer perspective, although its distortion was a core assumption of current cognitive-behavioural models (e.g., Clark, 2001; Heimberg et al., 2014). To address this gap, the current study developed a task that involves a social evaluation component, which is suitable for assessing perspective-taking in social anxiety. The task may benefit future research into the nature of the observer perspective in social anxiety through identifying behavioural (i.e., accuracy and reaction time) and neural differences in task performance between self-perspective-taking and other perspective-taking.

Limitations and Future Directions

The current study yields promising results for the newly developed task to measure perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety. However, the study does acknowledge several limitations. First, given that the primary aim of the current study was to develop a task and assess whether the prompts in the newly developed task elicit perspective-taking and switching even in the presence of added social context, we did not collect behavioural or neural response indices (e.g., response time). Future research should investigate whether perspective-taking guided by the two types of prompts leads to differences in behavioural and neural responses. Furthermore, future studies should use the newly developed perspective-taking task in conjunction with behavioural and neural measures to explore how social anxiety relates to perspective-taking. Second, although the results of the current study suggest that the developed task is suitable for assessing perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety, the current study did not directly assess the level of social threat perceived by participants. Drawing on cognitive-behavioural models of social anxiety, the task incorporated a social context in which participants could perceive the possibility of negative evaluation, conceptualised as a trigger for anxiety. Nevertheless, perceived social threats may vary across individuals, which can impact the perspective that people adopt (e.g., Coles et al., 2001). Future studies should incorporate a social threat manipulation check to determine whether the social context used in the current task was perceived as socially threatening by participants. The current task would also benefit from comparing it to similar tasks such as those by Bradford and colleagues (2015, 2019) and Wang and colleagues (2021) and between individuals with and without social anxiety.

Another limitation concerns the demographics of the current sample, which may not have adequately captured variation in age, gender and ethnicity that has been associated with differences reported in the existing literature (Ibanez et al., 2013; Mato, 2012; Ruitenberg et al., 2020). Although power analysis suggested sufficient power, age-related effects in perspective-taking could not be examined, as only one participant was over the age of 60, despite evidence of declines in older populations (Bailey & Henry, 2008; Henry et al., 2013; Mattan et al., 2017).

For gender and ethnicity, the sample size was small and the different prompt groups had unequal sample sizes. Accordingly, Bayesian analyses were conducted to accommodate smaller sample sizes (Smid et al., 2020). The current study only included 12 different ethnicities, with many other ethnicities underrepresented, which may result in the non-significant impact of ethnicity. Future research should include a larger sample size with broader ethnicity populations, greater variability in gender presentation and a wider age range that encompasses older adults to better assess the generalisability of the task.

Finally, as the task includes a social evaluation component, the results could be useful for measuring perspective-taking in social situations for social anxiety research and other clinical populations that are affected by avoidance of social situations such as depression (Kupferberg & Hasler, 2023) and autism spectrum disorder (Gates et al., 2023). Thus, future studies could extend this task further to investigate its use in other clinical populations.

Conclusion

The observer perspective is a key cognitive bias underlying social anxiety in several cognitive-behavioural models (see review by Wong et al., 2014 in Weeks). To our knowledge, there was no appropriate task to measure perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety that is feasible for collecting both behavioural and neural data. The current study developed a task appropriate for assessing perspective-taking in social anxiety, adapting from Wang and colleagues (2021) to ensure its use in collecting both behavioural and neural data. A key addition to the task was a social evaluation component that can be used to investigate perspective-taking in relation to social anxiety. The results of the current study showed that the majority of participants adopted and switched perspectives as cued by SELF/OTHER prompts. While PERSON/ACTOR prompts were appropriate to prompt self-perspective/other perspectives and effective in no-switch trials, they were not as effective in guiding the switch between perspectives as SELF/OTHER prompts. Coupled with the finding that SELF/OTHER and PERSON/ACTOR prompts are interchangeable when prompting self/other perspectives, the SELF/OTHER prompts may be more preferable for neural research. In addition, comparable results across high and low social anxiety groups suggest that the task provides a suitable measure of perspective-taking for individuals with social anxiety and, for social evaluative contexts in the general population. There were no effects of ethnicity, gender and age on the task. However, future research is needed to further consolidate the generalisability of the current task by including a larger sample size with ethnic diversity and age range. Overall, the task developed in the current study is effective and can be used to investigate perspective-taking in the context of social anxiety.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911261451789 – Supplemental material for Developing a Perspective-Taking Task for Social Anxiety

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911261451789 for Developing a Perspective-Taking Task for Social Anxiety by Maika Kumada and Junwen Chen in Assessment

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Maika Kumada

Junwen Chen

Ethical Considerations

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was granted by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Australian National University (#2022/653).

Consent to Participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

Data are available upon reasonable request from the authors

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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