Registered Replication Report: Re-examination of the Relationship between Spatial and Empathic Perspective-Taking

Abstract

Empathic perspective-taking, usually measured with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, refers to the tendency to adopt the psychological viewpoint of others; whereas spatial perspective-taking, measured with a cognitive task, is the ability to mentally rotate oneself into another’s spatial perspective. Erle and Topolinski (2015, study4) found these two ways of perspective-taking to be correlated, suggesting a shared mechanism between them. However, this finding was not supported by a replication study. We conducted an additional replication study by adding improvements to the replication study (e.g., a-priori power analysis), which again did not find a correlation between the two types of perspective-taking.