text: Considerations to Achieve Unity of Effort
  can reduce the accuracy of their understanding of others. Perspective taking efforts may be challenging
  when Soldiers interact with someone from a different organizational culture. Soldiers may be unaware of
  the effects their own organizational culture has on their perspective. To increase perspective taking
  accuracy, Soldiers need to be self-critical when trying to understand the perspective of someone else.
  Perspective taking is an aptitude that can be increased with training and practice.
  3-38. One method to increase social perspective taking is known as the ACTion approach to perspective
  taking (summarized in table 3-1). This approach illustrates a process Soldiers can use to improve
  perspective taking and to respond effectively to others. The ACTion approach involves three main steps:
  * Assess yourself, others, and the situation while managing your emotions.
  * Create guesses—based on information gathered—about the reasons for others’ behavior, and
  then test, refine, and prioritize the guesses.
  * Take a course of action selected after testing, refining, and ranking guesses about others’
  behavior and predicting the results.
  Table 3-1. The ACTion approach to social perspective taking
  Assess yourself, others, and the situation while managing your emotions.
  • Self: assess your biases and manage your emotions.
  • Others: assess a baseline and observe personal space, facial expressions, and signs of stress.
  • Situation: assess all relevant cultural and contextual information.
  Create guesses about the reasons for others’ behavior.
  • Testing: check your hypotheses against facts and an ongoing assessment of self, others, and
  the situation.
  • Refining: improve your understanding of others’ perspectives; adjust your hypotheses.
  • Prioritizing: rank your hypotheses according to probable correctness in terms of explaining the
  perspectives of others.
  Take the course of action most likely to yield desired results.
  • Selecting: determine the course of action most likely to be effective—based on your
  understanding of others’ perspectives and your estimate of consequences or costs.
  • Accomplishing: carry out your course of action.
  • Reassessing: continue gathering information.
  3-39. The ability to understand accurately another person’s words and behavior, and their reasons for them,
  depends on biases. Biases, or distortions in thought and perception, are the main reasons one can be
  incorrect when trying to understand the behavior and motivation of others. Common biases include—
  * The fundamental attribution error.
  * Naive realism.
  * Confirmation bias.
  * The in-group/out-group bias.
  3-40. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to personality rather
  than the situation. As a result, individuals tend to undervalue the importance of context to another person’s
  actions.
  3-41. Naive realism refers to an assumption that the world is seen as it truly is and that others have this
  same perception of the world. However, if others do not share the same view, one may incorrectly assume
  it is because they have not been given the proper information or are illogical in their interpretation.
  3-42. Confirmation bias refers to the tendency individuals have to gather evidence that supports their
  theories or ideas and to ignore information that may contradict their theories.
  3-43. In-group/out-group bias refers to the preferential treatment people will give to individuals they
  perceive as members of their own group. Further, people often perceive more diversity within the
  characteristics of their in-group members and engage in discriminatory behaviors against out-group
  members.