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When teachers struggle to understand students’ thoughts, feelings, and motivations, the teacher–student relationship typically suffers. Better social perspective taking—understanding the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others—should facilitate these relationships. In this preregistered field experiment, teachers (N = 105) from a kindergarten-to-ninth-grade charter school network participated in a new social perspective-taking induction aimed at helping them better understand their most perplexing students. Regression analyses showed that the induction caused treatment teachers to put more effort into understanding these students (Cohen’s d = .51) and perceive more positive (Cohen’s d = .41) and less negative (Cohen’s d = −.52) relationships with these students. Meanwhile, students of treatment teachers perceived more positivity in their relationships with their teachers (Cohen’s d = .82) and obtained higher course competency scores (akin to grades; Cohen’s d = .45). This preregistered study complements exploratory, laboratory-based studies with empirical evidence from real-world classroom settings. Implications of this research center on the promise of social perspective taking to improve teacher–student relationships and other important student outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
