“Perspective Taking and Communication Satisfaction in Coworker Dyads,” an article by Amber Raile, assistant professor of communication, will be published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, an Institute for Scientific Information journal. The article was written with Hee Sun Park and will appear online and in print.
"Perspective taking is an individual’s ability to take another’s viewpoint and is a form of empathy central to successful interpersonal relationships," Raile said. "This study tested the utility of self-rated perspective taking by taking a sample of coworkers who had worked closely in teams for substantial time."
A sample of 114 participants, all coworkers at 27 kindergartens in Korea, provided data to form 350 dyads. The participants rated their own perspective-taking tendency, their coworkers’ perspective-taking tendency and how satisfied they were when communicating with each coworker.
According to the author, individuals reported higher communication satisfaction when they felt that their coworker took their perspective and understood them. Conversely, self-ratings of perspective taking ability had little relevance to coworker evaluations of perspective taking behavior. Raile said individuals might not be the best judges of their ability to take the perspective of others.
"Self-ratings also appear to have little impact on the communication satisfaction that others report with their communication with an individual," Raile said. "Self-ratings are a modal form of data collection in perspective taking research. This study suggests that this practice should be reconsidered to more accurately capture the conceptual definition of perspective taking."