Exploring the Gaps: Enhancing Perspective-Taking Skills in Psychology

National security practitioners need to understand the motives, mindsets, and intentions of adversaries to anticipate and respond to their actions effectively. Although some authors have argued empathy helps build an understanding of the adversary, research points to its cognitive component of perspective taking as the more appropriate skill for national security practitioners to have. In this podcast, Dr. Allison Abbe synthesizes previous research on the development and application of perspective taking in analysis and decision making and recommends four ways strategists and practitioners can enhance their ability to gain insight into adversaries.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/9/

Keywords: perspective taking, strategic empathy, political psychology, military education, cognitive bias

Episode Transcript: Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on national security affairs. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I’m talking with Dr. Allison Abbe today, author of “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security,” which was published in the Summer 2023 issue of Parameters. Abbe is a professor of organizational studies at the US Army War College. Her research focuses on the development of leadership and intercultural skills in national security personnel.

Welcome to Decisive Point, Dr. Abbe.

Dr. Allison Abbe

Thanks for having me.

Host

Your article synthesizes research on perspective taking in analysis and decision making and recommends four ways strategists and practitioners can enhance their ability to gain insight into adversaries. Will you please explain perspective taking in the context of strategic empathy?

Abbe

Sure. So, strategic empathy has been talked about in terms of understanding adversaries and competitors and being able to better anticipate their actions. And in psychology, the topic of empathy has been more in the context of helping relationships between clinicians and patients, or clinicians and clients in the context of mental health. And so, there’s a rich literature on empathy but in a slightly different context than in the national security arena.

In psychology, empathy is talked about in terms of empathic concern for the other person or party, motivation to engage in empathy, and then perspective taking. So those three components are not as equally applicable in the national security arena as they might be in a one-on-one relationship—an interpersonal relationship like in a romantic relationship or a patient-practitioner medical kind of context. So, focusing on perspective taking allows us to pull just the really relevant skills about empathy that can be applied in the national security context and focus more on how it is people can go about understanding the cognitive perspective of someone else without taking on the emotions of another party or really wanting to help the other party. You can maintain your own interests while understanding the perspective of the adversary, or even a partner.

Host

How can leaders and strategists develop perspective taking as a skill?

Abbe

So, perspective taking as a basic ability develops in childhood. We know from the developmental psychology literature that we’re capable of it as small children. But it’s a very cognitively demanding skill, and so people don’t automatically engage in it. Your default is to use your own perspective, and then you only take on someone else’s perspective with additional cognitive effort. And so, even though people have the capability to do it, they aren’t necessarily applying it in day-to-day life. And so, it takes a lot of intention to use perspective taking and to get better at understanding other people’s perspectives.

You can really only take on someone else’s perspective if you understand their context and you understand the person. And so, it’s important to have the background knowledge that would enable you to really understand their perspective. You have to have that information available to be able to do that effectively. So, study of another party’s decision-making patterns, the influences—cultural or regional influences—on their decision making would be important, as well as having the time and energy to engage in that perspective-taking skill.

Host

What unique challenges and opportunities are there in the national security context of perspective taking?

Abbe

One of the unique challenges is the distance often from the other party. And so, you’re trying to take on the perspective of somebody that you don’t have an opportunity to interact directly with. And so, you could watch their speeches, you can read what they’ve published, what they’ve written (or at least what their speech writers have written for them). But in the national security context, you don’t necessarily have the opportunity to ask them questions so you can better understand their perspective the way that you would if you were a doctor interviewing a patient (or in an interpersonal relationship) to try to better understand the other’s perspective. And so, that distance and the lack of opportunity to interact directly is certainly one limitation or challenge. So, then you have to use other sources of information to try to gain that perspective.

I think one of the unique opportunities that we haven’t always engaged in this context is that perspective taking can really help make better decisions and choose among courses of action. So, if you understand the other party, whether it’s an individual foreign leader or it’s a local population in a village, and you’re trying to help them counter terrorism influences in their community, you have to understand what they care about, what they’re motivated by, what their interests are . . . in order to make better decisions about how to interact with them and how to advance US interests.

Host

Are there any research gaps or challenges that we need to consider regarding this topic?

Abbe

One of the research gaps is we’ve had difficulty in psychology, at least, in developing measures of perspective-taking ability. So, that’s one limitation. The typical way to go about measuring it is to use a self-report questionnaire, which is really good for assessing people’s motivation to engage in perspective taking. But it’s not as good at measuring their accuracy and doing it as a skill. As a really important cognitive skill, we should have better tools to go about measuring how well people are engaging in perspective taking (and) how accurate they are in engaging perspective taking. And so, that’s one research gap that could be addressed in the behavioral sciences.

Another one is just on the development and application of perspective taking. How is it that we can encourage practitioners to engage these skills as they’re acquiring other skills at the same time? I’ve talked about it in the article in terms of its relationship to systems thinking, which is another important cognitive skill set.

Cross-cultural competence is another area where there’s intersection. And so, then, how do we develop this skill in practitioners at the same time that they’re developing these other important skills that are applicable to their work?

Host

I think we have a few extra minutes if you have any concluding thoughts that you’d like to share before we wrap it up.

Abbe

One of the interesting areas for further research is looking at various tools to develop perspective-taking skill. There’s some interesting research, in college students, at least, that shows that reading literary fiction is one way to develop perspective taking. Literary fiction helps you take on the perspective of the characters in the novel and can help people develop perspective taking. And it doesn’t develop from just watching movies or reading popular fiction. There’s something about the challenging nature of literary fiction and requiring cognitive effort and really diving into characters that seems to help. There’s limited research on that, but that’s really one interesting avenue.

Studying history, of course, is one way to develop better perspective-taking skills. So, there might be some interesting research avenues for that as well.

Those are two good ways of potentially developing that people can use in their own free time, as reading is, you know, one common hobby. So, directing people to the kinds of sources that might help them develop the skill set and understanding how that develops would be an interesting area for further research.

Host

You can read more about perspective taking and empathy at press.armywarcollege.edu. Look for volume 53, issue 2.

Dr. Abbe, thank you so much for making time for me today. This was really interesting.

Abbe

Thank you so much.

Host

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About the author: Allison Abbe, PhD, is a professor of organizational studies at the US Army War College. Her research focuses on the development of leadership and intercultural skills in national security personnel. She previously worked as a research psychologist and program manager in defense and intelligence organizations and holds a PhD in social and personality psychology from the University of California, Riverside. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Joint Force Quarterly, Government Executive, War Room, Parameters, Military Review, and Police Practice and Research.