Perspective Taking and Mind Reading Accuracy

People routinely wonder about what others think and feel but are rarely accurate in actually making these inferences. Are laypeople right in suggesting that deliberately putting oneself in other people’s shoes is likely to increase accuracy in knowing other people's thoughts and feelings? I will present a series of experiments demonstrating that perspective taking is not successful in making people better mind readers and in some cases it even decreases mind reading accuracy. Two alternate strategies—matching construal and perspective getting —are more effective when trying to intuit others' thoughts. Specifically, considering more abstract features that match an observer’s level of construal, increases people's accuracy in intuiting how others evaluate them. In addition, simply asking others what they think increases accuracy in intuiting their thoughts.