Inferring interpersonal processes such as perspective-taking and empathy from text is a valuable yet not widely developed tool to study inter-individual differences in social interaction. Going beyond lexical categorization, more pragmatically oriented classification procedures can profit from insights from traditional qualitative tools in social-cognitive research, especially narrative coding. In this short paper, I briefly discuss the concept of perspective-taking and its points of contact with language. I then illustrate a specific narrative coding system (Feffer's decentring scales) and make suggestions as to how this system offers targets for automatized classification procedures, offering impulses for the integration of natural language processing and research into social interaction.

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