Figure 1.
Examples of the priming sentences in the scrambled-sentence task and the hand movement stimuli in the finger-taping task.
Each time participants had to complete one page of scrambled sentences describing pro/anti/non-social behaviours on a booklet and then one block of finger tapping task on a computer where they had to respond to a number cue in the middle of the screen and ignored a congruent/incongruent/still hand movement stimuli on the background. They had to complete twelve pages of scrambled-sentence task and twelve blocks of finger tapping task alternately.
Figure 2.
(A) Mean Congruency Effect (CE) for the three types of priming (prosocial antisocial and non-social). Asterisks represent the statistically significant difference between two bars. Vertical bars indicate standard error. (B) Mean Reaction Time in milliseconds (ms) for participants in each of the three priming groups on congruent, incongruent and baseline trials. Italic numbers indicate standard deviation.
Figure 3.
(A) Mean reaction time in milliseconds (ms) for participants in each of two perspective-taking groups (3rd person and 1st person), each of three priming groups (prosocial, antisocial and non-social), and each of three congruency conditions (congruent, incongruent and baseline trials). Italic numbers indicate standard deviation (B) Mean CE for participants in each of two perspective-taking groups and each of three priming groups. Asterisks represent the statistically significant difference between two bars. Vertical bars indicate standard error.
Figure 4.
Pro/antisocial cartoons in Experiment 3.
(A) In scenario A, participants saw a character (the ‘triangle shape’) initially at the bottom of a hill and attempted to push a football up onto the hill twice, each time falling back to the bottom of the hill. On the third attempt, the ball-pusher was either aided up by a helper (the ‘sphere’ shape) who pushed it from behind (‘prosocial scene’), or was resisted by a hinderer (the ‘pentagon’ shape) who pushed the ball down to the bottom of the hill (‘antisocial’ scene). There was also a bystander (the ‘square’ shape) standing at the top of another hill, watching the whole pro/antisocial behavior happening. (B) In Scenario B, participants saw a character (the ‘square shape’) initially outside of a doughnut house and then repeatedly attempted to get into the house by pushing the stone out of the way to the entrance. On the third attempt, the stone-pusher was either aided by a helper (the ‘triangle’ shape) who pushed it from behind (‘prosocial’ scene), or was resisted by a hinderer (the ‘sphere’ shape) who pushed the stone from the opposite direction (‘antisocial’ scene). There was also a bystander (the ‘pentagon’ shape) standing at the left-bottom corner, watching the whole pro/antisocial behavior happening. In all scenarios, the participant was asked to describe the story from the point of view of the yellow shape, which could be either the helper/hinder (first-person) or the bystander (third-person).
Figure 5.
(A) Mean reaction time in milliseconds (ms) for participants in each of two perspective-taking groups (3rd person and 1st person), each of two priming groups (prosocial and antisocial), and each of three congruency conditions (congruent, incongruent and baseline trials). Italic numbers indicate standard deviation (B) Mean CE for participants in each of two perspective-taking groups and each of two priming groups. Asterisks represent the statistically significant difference between two bars. Vertical bars indicate standard error.