The Effects of Gender and Gender (In)congruency on Level-2 Visuo-Spatial Perspective-Taking Performance: An Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis

Level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking (VPT) helps us to understand how the world appears for another person. The process has been linked to conceptual forms of perspective-taking, such as empathic perspective-taking. The present study tested whether similarity to the target of the process, as indicated by gender (in)congruency, affects its embodiment and conclusively answers the question whether there are gender differences in VPT performance. To address these questions, data of N = 2,226 female and male participants, completing K = 107,535 trials of a Level-2 VPT task involving female and male targets, were subjected to an independent participant meta-analysis. Confirmatory analyses revealed that gender (in)congruency did not affect Level-2 VPT performance, speaking against an effect of perceived similarity on the embodiment of Level-2 VPT. Additionally, we observed a significant performance advantage for female participants. Exploratory analyses showed gender-congruency effects can be detected if attentional task demands are low, likely making it easier for participants to process target features such as their gender. These findings clarify the disputed nature of gender differences in Level-2 VPT performance and inform theorizing about embodied and nonembodied strategies used to solve Level-2 VPT tasks, as well as process models of Level-2 VPT performance more generally. Public Significance Statement We show that it is not easier to imagine how the world visually appears to a person of one's own gender. However, we do find that women are better at imagining this than men. Additional analyses revealed that it is indeed easier to take the perspective of a same-sex individual when the perspective-taking task does not pose high demands on a person's attention. This might be because processing of gender information is task irrelevant for perspective-taking, and therefore is only attended to when cognitive capacity is available to do so.