Studies in the social cognition literature indicate that several strategies play a role in how observers understand an observed actor, including by simulating the actor's perspective (identification), and/or an audience member projecting their own perspective onto the actor's mind (egocentric projection). In processing story characters, there is evidence that taking a character's perspective and projecting one's own perspective are distinct psychological mechanisms used to understand a character. Manipulating a common and much studied narrative feature—character morality—we examined how morality influences the way audience members process story characters. Three experiments consistently found that audience members tend to have higher levels of both egocentric projection and identification with the character when interpreting moral characters, compared to immoral characters. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that egocentric projection and identification are two distinct constructs.

对社会认知文献的研究表明，有几种策略在观察者如何理解被观察的演员方面发挥着作用，包括通过模拟演员的视角（认同）和/或观众成员将自己的视角投射到演员的思想上（自我中心投射）。在处理故事人物时，有证据表明采用人物的视角和投射自己的视角是用于理解人物的不同心理机制。操纵一个常见且研究较多的叙事特征——角色道德——我们研究了道德如何影响观众处理故事人物的方式。三个实验一致发现，与不道德的角色相比，观众在解释道德角色时往往具有更高水平的自我中心投射和对角色的认同。验证性因素分析表明，以自我为中心的投射和认同是两种截然不同的结构。