The sense of self is a hallmark of the human experience, but it is also unstable. Even simulating another person – thinking about their traits or experiences – can shift how one thinks about their own traits or experiences. Simulating a target shifts self-knowledge such that it becomes more similar to the target; in six studies, we explore how extensively these changes occur. In all studies, participants first rated themselves in a specific context, then simulated another individual in the same context, and finally considered themselves again. We calculated how participants' self-knowledge changed by comparing similarity to the target before vs. after simulation. In Studies 1–2, participants' episodic memories shifted to be more similar to the simulated target; this change persisted at least 48 h. Studies 3–4 show that semantic self-knowledge changes after considering semantically related traits, while Study 5 shows that this effect extends to cross-language traits. Together, these results suggest that simulation causes durable, extensive changes across both episodic and semantic self-knowledge.

自我意识是人类经验的一个标志，但它也不稳定。即使模拟另一个人——思考他们的特征或经历——也可以改变一个人对自己的特征或经历的看法。模拟目标会改变自我知识，使其与目标更加相似；在六项研究中，我们探讨了这些变化发生的范围。在所有研究中，参与者首先在特定环境中给自己打分，然后在相同环境中模拟另一个人，最后再次考虑自己。我们通过比较模拟前后与目标的相似性来计算参与者的自我知识如何变化。在研究 1-2 中，参与者的情景记忆转变为与模拟目标更相似；这种变化至少持续了 48 小时。研究 3-4 表明语义自知在考虑语义相关特征后会发生变化，而研究 5 表明这种影响扩展到跨语言特征。总之，这些结果表明模拟会导致情景和语义自我知识的持久、广泛的变化。