2022 Volume 93 Issue 1 Pages 1-9
This study explored the effects of perspective taking on the evaluation of others, using text mining to analyze narrative essays. The participants were assigned to either the perspective taking or control group and were asked to write a narrative essay about a photograph of an overweight man (i.e., target). Next, they were asked to provide their impressions of another overweight man. Based on the analysis using text mining, the words from the narrative essays were classified into two clusters. The first cluster focused on the target’s job, while the second focused on his figure. The ANOVA demonstrated that the participants in the perspective taking group refrained from using words pertaining to the figure cluster. In addition, the results of a path analysis suggested that the words used in the figure cluster may be a predictor of people’s evaluations of others.
