Increasing self-other integration through divergent thinking

Psychon Bull Rev. 2013 Oct;20(5):1011-6. doi: 10.3758/s13423-013-0413-4.

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests that people may cognitively represent themselves and others just like any other, nonsocial event. Here, we provide evidence that the degree of self-other integration (as reflected by the joint Simon effect; JSE) is systematically affected by the control characteristics of temporally overlapping but unrelated and nonsocial creativity tasks. In particular, the JSE was found to be larger in the context of a divergent-thinking task (alternate uses task) than in the context of a convergent-thinking task (remote association task). This suggests that self-other integration and action corepresentation are controlled by domain-general cognitive-control parameters that regulate the integrativeness (strong vs. weak top-down control and a resulting narrow vs. broad attentional focus) of information processing irrespective of its social implications.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Attention / physiology*
  • Executive Function / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Psychomotor Performance / physiology*
  • Random Allocation
  • Thinking / physiology*
  • Young Adult