This study investigated whether an explicit and stimulatedattention to the mental states of an uninformed other fostersperspective-taking. The experimental aim of this study wastwofold. First, we aimed to replicate Keysar’s (1994) curse ofknowledge effect, indicating how privileged information biasescorrect perspective-judgments. The second aim was toinvestigate whether this curse of knowledge effect diminishesby explicit instructions to become aware of another person’sperspective. Findings showed that we replicated Keysar’s(1994) curse of knowledge effect. Perceivers were more likelyto impute their perception of speaker’s sarcasm onto anuninformed addressee when their privileged informationsuggested that the speaker was being sarcastic rather than beingsincere. Findings further revealed that perceivers were just aslikely to overestimate the extent to which their privateperspective was shared by an uninformed addressee, regardlessof their explicit and stimulated attention to this addressee’sperspective.

Two experiments examined whether an explicit attention toanother’s perspective fosters perspective-taking. The firstexperiment attempted to replicate Todd et al.’s (2010) findingsthat a mind-set focusing on self-other differences incitesrespondents to adopt another person’s perspective in asubsequent task. Results showed that perceivers focusing onself-other differences were just as likely to describe an object’slocation from their egocentric perspective as perceiversfocusing on self-other similarities. The second experimentintensified perceivers’ awareness of self-other differences byallocating them to one of the perspective-settings (none, self-focus, other-focus). Participants in the perspective-settingsreceived explicit instructions to regard their own (self-focus)or another person’s (other-focus) viewpoint during theperspective-taking task. Findings revealed that other-focusedrespondents were more likely to adopt another person’sperspective than self-focused respondents. Compared to thebaseline, however, an explicit self- or other-focus did not fosterperspective-taking. Our findings indicate the robustness ofrespondents’ egocentric bias.

Previous studies have shown that readers often overestimatethe similarity between their perspective and the perspective ofprotagonists in a story. This egocentric projection is argued tooriginate from readers’ tendency to use their own knowledgeas a frame of reference from which they (insufficiently) adjustaway to account for protagonists’ less informed perspective.This experimental study demonstrated that readers usefeedback about protagonists’ knowledge status to drawinferences that are more accurate on future perspective-takingtrials. Readers who were given the opportunity to learn throughfeedback not only adjusted their perspective-judgment morethan those who did not receive feedback, these readers alsoshowed less egocentric projection on future assessments.

We investigated whether speakers’ referential communication benefits from an explicit focus on addressees’ perspective. Dyads took part in a referential communication game and were allocated to one of three experimental settings. Each of these settings elicited a different perspective mindset (none, self- focus, other-focus). In the two perspective settings, speakers were explicitly instructed to regard their addressee’s (other- focus) or their own (self-focus) perspective before construing their referential message. Results indicated that eliciting speakers’ self- versus other-focus did not influence their reference production. We did find that speakers with an elicited egocentric perspective reported a higher perspective-taking tendency than speakers in the other two settings. This tendency correlated with actual referring behavior during the game, indicating that speakers who reported a high perspective-taking tendency were less likely to make egocentric errors such as leaking information privileged to speakers themselves. These findings are explained using the objective self-awareness theory.