Beyond the Self: Self-Other Perspective Alters Judgment Reversal More Than Confidence Weighting

Introduction: Updating social beliefs is asymmetric: people change their judgments more easily when a consultant confirms their point of view rather than when it is contradicted, and they adjust the scope of the review to the level of security of the consultant only in the event of an agreement (Kappes et al., 2020). It is not yet clear whether this asymmetry depends on the attribution of convictions. We have verified whether adopting an allocentric perspective – reasoning on behalf of someone else – reduces this bias. Methods: Fifty-two participants completed a belief-updating task in an within-subjects drawing. In Session 1, they assessed property prices and expressed their level of security (0-100). A week later, the participants reviewed the judgments divided into two categories: self-centered (their own previous judgments) and allocentric (the same judgments presented as belonging to fictitious individuals), each accompanied by the opinion and level of security of a consultant. The continuous updating of the security level (ΔConf) was analyzed with mixed linear models; the categorical review of judgments (probability of changing your mind) with generalized mixed linear models. Results: The manipulation of the perspective proved effective (p < 0.001). The H1 hypothesis was confirmed: in the self-centered condition, the sensitivity to the confidence of the consultant was greater in the evidence of agreement than those of disagreement (estimate = 0.282, p = 0.016), replicating the results of Kappes et al. (2020). The H2 hypothesis was not confirmed: the interaction Perspective × Concordance × Confidence of the consultant was not significant (p = 0.421; BF01 = 63.66). The H3 hypothesis was confirmed: the allocentric condition showed reduced asymmetry in the category change (OR = 1.74, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The asymmetric integration of trust in councils was consistent regardless of perspective, suggesting that it operates independently of personal involvement. However, the threshold for a categorical change of judgment was lower in an allocentric key, revealing a dissociation between the gradual integration of evidence and decision-making change as separable components of the belief review.