Together with former SMU undergraduate Stejara Dinulescu, SCN Lab graduate students Talha Alvi and Cici Sunahara, as well as collaborators from SMU and UCLA, we recently published a paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science in which we conducted one of the largest studies ever examining the association between standardized assessments of self-referential processing and social cognitive ability (i.e., theory of mind and empathic accuracy). We found that self-referential processing was associated with both measures of social cognition, which provides additional behavioral support that filtering and understanding information through the self can assist in our ability to understand others.
Here is the in press reference:
Dinulescu, S., Alvi, T., Rosenfield, D., Sunahara, C. S., Lee, J., & Tabak, B. A. (in press). Self-referential processing predicts social cognitive ability. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620902281