Neural Correlates of the False Consensus Effect: Evidence for Motivated Projection and Regulatory Restraint.

The false consensus effect (FCE), the tendency to project our attitudes and opinions on to others, is a pervasive bias in social reasoning with a range of ramifications for individuals and society. Research in social psychology has suggested that numerous factors (anchoring and adjustment, accessibility, motivated projection, etc.) may contribute to the FCE.

Modulating the neural bases of persuasion: why/how, gain/loss, and users/non-users.

Designing persuasive content is challenging, in part because people can be poor predictors of their actions. Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) activation during message exposure reliably predicts downstream behavior, but past work has been largely atheoretical. We replicated past results on this relationship and tested two additional framing effects known to alter message receptivity.

The mere green effect: An fMRI study of pro-environmental advertisements.

Self-report evidence suggests that consumers prefer green products (i.e., pro-environmental) to standard products, but this is not reflected in purchase behaviors.

Perceived perspective taking: when others walk in our shoes.

A great deal of psychological research has investigated the influence of perspective taking on individuals, indicating that perspective taking increases the extent to which people like, feel a sense of self-other overlap with, and help those whose perspective they take. However, previous investigations of the topic have been limited to the study of the perspective taker, rather than the individual whose perspective has been taken. The purpose of the current work is to begin to fill this large gap in the literature by examining the consequences of believing that another individual is taking one's perspective, a phenomenon we refer to as perceived perspective taking.