Through your partner’s eyes: Perspective taking tempers optimism in behavior predictions:

People tend to be overly optimistic when predicting their future behaviors. This research examines how taking someone else’s perspective affects predictions of relationship behaviors. Study 1 (N = 82) showed that taking the partner’s perspective when predicting how many relationship-enhancing behaviors one might perform over the next week reduced the number of predicted behaviors and consequently reduced optimistic bias. Study 2 (N = 244) replicated the reduction in predicted behaviors when taking the partner’s or a friend’s perspective. Study 2 also showed that predictions from another person’s view are similar to predictions for another person’s behavior. Study 3 (N = 149) replicated the reduction in predicted behaviors and the similarity to predictions for other people’s behavior. Furthermore, Study 3 suggests that one reason why adopting another’s perspective affects predictions is an attenuation of the link between forecasts and relationship quality and increase of the link of forecasts with conscien...