How to seem telepathic: enabling mind reading by matching construal.
People can have difficulty intuiting what others think about them at least partly because people evaluate themselves in more fine-grained detail than observers do. This mismatch in the level of detail at which people construe themselves versus others diminishes accuracy in social judgment. Being a more accurate mind reader requires thinking of oneself at a higher level of construal that matches the observer's construal (Experiments 1 and 2), and this strategy is more effective in this context than perspective taking (Experiments 3a and 3b). Accurately intuiting how others evaluate themselves requires the opposite strategy-thinking about others in a lower level of construal that matches the way people evaluate themselves (Experiment 4). Accurately reading other minds to know how one is evaluated by others-or how others evaluate themselves-requires focusing one's evaluative lens at the right level of detail.
Eyal
Tal
T
Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. taleyal@bgu.ac.il
Epley
Nicholas
N
D001504:Beauty; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D019545:Intuition; D007600:Judgment; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors; D012938:Social Perception; D013067:Speech Perception; D013688:Telepathy