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Self-Schemas and Judgments about Others
Abstract
Previous research has shown that self-schemas (cognitive generalizations about the self) influence the processing of information about the self. The present study examined the effects of self-schemas on processing information about other people. I n the first portion of the study, extravert schematics (those having self-schemas for extraversion), introvert schematics (those having self-schemas for introversion), and aschematics (those having neither self-schemas for extra-version nor self-schemas for introversion) were asked to find out about another person. To accomplish this, subjects selected questions from a list of questions that were designed to elicit information about extraversion, introversion, or dimensions unrelated to either. Results supported the hypothesis that people tend to seek information about others that is related to their self-schemas: Extravert schematics selected more extravert questions, and introvert schematics selected more introvert questions. In the second portion of the study, subjects listened to two tape-recorded interviews and then rated the interviewed persons on a number of traits, also indicating their confidence in the ratings. Extravert and introvert schematics were significantly more confident than aschematics only when their ratings were on schema-relevant dimensions. Results of the study are interpreted by suggesting that schematics are “experts” in their schematic domains.
Previous research has shown that self-schemas (cognitive generalizations about the self) influence the processing of information about the self. The present study examined the effects of self-schemas on processing information about other people. I n the first portion of the study, extravert schematics (those having self-schemas for extraversion), introvert schematics (those having self-schemas for introversion), and aschematics (those having neither self-schemas for extra-version nor self-schemas for introversion) were asked to find out about another person. To accomplish this, subjects selected questions from a list of questions that were designed to elicit information about extraversion, introversion, or dimensions unrelated to either. Results supported the hypothesis that people tend to seek information about others that is related to their self-schemas: Extravert schematics selected more extravert questions, and introvert schematics selected more introvert questions. In the second portion of the study, subjects listened to two tape-recorded interviews and then rated the interviewed persons on a number of traits, also indicating their confidence in the ratings. Extravert and introvert schematics were significantly more confident than aschematics only when their ratings were on schema-relevant dimensions. Results of the study are interpreted by suggesting that schematics are “experts” in their schematic domains.
... Individuals tend to evaluate others on the dimensions that are important to themselves (Hirschberg & Jennings, 1980). Appearance-schematic individuals have substantial experience in evaluating people on the same dimension and thus are more confident than appearance-aschematic individuals when judging another person's appearance investment (Fong & Markus, 1982). In addition, "having a self-schema for a particular trait will make people perceive others as likewise having that trait" (Baumeister, 1999, p. 11). ...
... A generalization takes place where people evaluate others on the basis of the important features of their own personalities (Hirschberg & Jennings, 1980). Therefore, self-relevant traits are commonly employed in describing others, and even others are assessed more extremely when selfrelevant traits are used (Fong & Markus, 1982). Therefore, self-relevant traits are crucial when evaluating others' vulnerability to the media's influence. ...
... Therefore, self-relevant traits are crucial when evaluating others' vulnerability to the media's influence. Moreover, self-schemas increase the confidence in judgments and inferences about others that are based on self-relevant information (Fong & Markus, 1982). ...
Exposure to Instagram Fitspiration images creates negative perceptions toward one’s body. Drawing on third-person effect (TPE) theory, this study aims to explain such feelings among viewers and examine the effect of appearance self-schema as an underlying cause of negative body image and the perceived impact of Fitspiration images on the self and others. A total of 301 university students who were viewers of Fitspiration images were recruited to complete a survey on demographic characteristics, body image, appearance self-schema, and the perceived impact of Fitspiration images on the self and others. Results show that the perceived effect of Fitspiration is greater on others than on the self. Appearance self-schema and the perceived impact of the media on others are negatively correlated with body image. Moreover, appearance self-schema positively counts for the perceived impact of Fitspiration images on the self and others. The robustness of TPE theory was confirmed in the context of Fitspiration images. Theoretically, TPE theory was expanded by introducing appearance self-schema as a predictor of first- and third-person perceptions. Some practical recommendations were made for young viewers and educationalists about the physical and mental health education related to the findings of this study.
... Markus and others' work on schematicity (e.g., Lewicki, 1983;Markus, 1977;Fong and Markus, 1982;Markus and Sentis, 1982;Markus, Smith, and Moreland, 1985; Markus et a l ., 1982) makes a parallel set of predictions. ...
... Although an alternative argument for using low cognitive complexity respondents as the standard for judgmental accuracy can be made, it should also be noted that neither the work on attitude development (e.g., Tesser, 1978;and Tesser and Leone, 1977) nor schematicity (e.g., Lewicki, 1983;Markus, 1977;Fong and Markus, 1982;Markus and Sentis, 1982;Markus, Smith, and Moreland, 1985;Markus et a l ., 1982) is concerned with accuracy or distortion per se. Thus, more extreme judgments need not necessarily be considered less accurate or more distorted. ...
... Given this assumption, the next question becomes whether judgments of low or high cognitive complexity respondents should be used as the standard for accuracy here. However, social judgment theory could also be synthesized with Tesser's work on attitude development (e.g., Tesser, 1978;Tesser and Leone, 1977) and Markus' and others' work on schematicity (e.g., Lewicki, 1983;Markus, 1977;Fong and Markus, 1982;Markus and Sentis, 1982;Markus, Smith, and Moreland, 1985;Markus et a l ., 1982) to make the counter-argument that low cognitive complexity neutral respondents should be used as the standard for judgmental accuracy instead. Because the "aschematic" low cognitive complexity neutral respondents have the least attitude and fewest focused thoughts, we could therefore predict that their judgments will be less extreme than any of those made by the other "schematic" For these reasons, it therefore seems best to make separate comparisons using judgments of both low and high cognitive complexity neutral respondents as the standard for accuracy. ...
A major implication of political sophistication research is that most Americans lack the knowledge necessary to make informed, rational judgments about issues, candidates, or parties they are voting for (e.g., Campbell et al., 1960; and Converse, 1964). Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock (1991) challenge this view by arguing that voters can make accurate judgments by using attitude in place of knowledge. However, not all evidence supports their argument. To explore accuracy of policy judgments in greater depth, the following research question was asked: How do respondents' own attitudinal position and cognitive complexity as well as candidates' overall stated positions (which span a continuum of possible positions) lead to either distorted or accurate judgments about those same candidates' specific but unstated policy positions? Schema research offers conflicting answers to this question, so results were left open-ended. Two subsidiary research questions regarding recall and judgments of candidates' overall positions were also asked so that hypotheses from research on expertise and social judgment theory, respectively, could be used to interpret the open-ended results. The issue of abortion was selected to operationalize the study. Using an experimental design, a questionnaire was administered to 134 undergraduates. The pre-test measured abortion attitudes and cognitive complexity. The stimulus was a simulated newspaper article in which three different unknown candidates stated their positions on abortion (pro-choice, neutral, or pro-life) and women's health care (the distractor). The post-test measured factual recall, judgments of overall position, and judgments of position on specific abortion-related policies not addressed directly in the candidate's statement. For recall, higher levels of cognitive complexity, measured by knowledge, differentiation, or integration, predicted, as hypothesized, greater accuracy. Attitude and knowledge predicted accurate recall best overall, though influence from the former differed across candidate conditions. For judgment of candidates' overall positions, assimilation and contrast effects were found as hypothesized initially among pro-choice respondents only. Additional tests using the knowledge variable revealed assimilation and contrast effects among pro-life respondents and suggested that judgmental distortions occur most often among low knowledge respondents. For judgments of candidates' specific but unstated policy positions, schematic respondents were significantly more extreme than aschematic respondents at every statistical level. Schematic respondents were also found to have significantly higher levels of differentiation than aschematic respondents. Implications from these results are discussed in terms of conceptualization and measurement of accuracy.
... As a result, numerous factors have been found to impact or mediate the perceptions of leadership and behavior. ILTs are shaped by an inward process linked to the perceivers' self-concept (Catrambone et al., 1996;Engle & Lord, 1997;Fong & Markus, 1982;Offermann et al., 1994) through an ongoing comparative process by which individuals simultaneously process information and search for similarity of characteristics and behavior in "the other" (D. Byrne, 1971;Dulebohn et al., 2017;Engle & Lord, 1997). ...
... Children's ILT development theory is contextually dependent and influenced by their self-concepts (Catrambone et al., 1996;Engle & Lord, 1997;Fong & Markus, 1982;Offermann et al., 1994), which links to other developmental theories such as identity theory that sees development via two lenses; one is externally guided by the influence of social structures over the self (Stryker, 1968), and the other is internally guided by how selfverification affects social behavior (Stets & Burke, 2000). In this sense, identity theory stands at the intersection between the self and society. ...
Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) are people’s lay theories, definitions, or conceptualizations of leadership. In adults, they determine what actions we perceive as leadership, influence to whom we grant leadership status, and shape our own behaviors when we want to be seen as leader. Naturally, there has been an enduring interest in how these ILTs develop in children. Current theorizing on the development of leadership conceptualizations in children aligns with a stepwise progression mirroring Piaget’s stage-based approach to cognitive development. However, contemporary approaches to cognitive development, such as Siegler’s overlapping waves theory (OWT), acknowledge that children’s development is linked to cognitive success and failure. This article integrates the findings from empirical studies into children’s leadership conceptualizations and reinterprets them against OWT. This reinterpretation resolves findings that align poorly with a stepwise approach and demonstrates a strong fit with OWT. As such, children’s leadership conceptualizations develop by generating and testing cognitive approaches—physical-spatiotemporal, functional, socioemotional, and humanitarian—and instead of progressing through these in order and according to age, they display variation and selection, that with experience and exposure, lay down selective combinations, which often engage multiple dimensions simultaneously. Consequently, the development of children’s understanding of leaders is nonlinear, can be multidimensional, and is based on trial and error largely in response to their experiences. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for future research and practice.
... Studies examining the effect of self-relevant information on social perceptions of unfamiliar or newly encountered individuals have relied on more explicit self-report measures that imply the proposed organization but do not characterize it at a cognitive level. For example, when tasked to acquire information about a new individual, participants who identified strongly with a particular aspect of self-concept or self-schema (e.g., introversion, masculinity) chose to ask questions eliciting information related to that schema (Fong & Markus, 1982). Participants are also more likely to exaggerate differences and therefore make more extreme judgments of others for traits that are considered important to their sense of self (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1964). ...
... Most of the participants in our experiment were unaware that the characters varied with respect to self-similarity and yet they were highly sensitive to this manipulation, representing self-similar and self-dissimilar individuals with varying association strength to a self-exemplar. This observation implicates selfrelevance as a dimension upon which exemplars are encoded, providing support for Smith and Zárate (1992) model, as well as the finding that social perceptions are generally based on dimensions and traits that participants possess, find desirable, or for which they have expertise (Fong & Markus, 1982;Lewicki, 1983;Markus et al., 1985). ...
Implicit measures have revealed that cognitive representations of familiar individuals share associations with self-concept; however, this has yet to be established for novel individuals. We examined how self-similarity affects representation of information learned about new individuals. A novel version of the implicit association test (IAT), the self-similarity IAT, was developed to estimate the extent to which cognitive representations of new self-similar and self-dissimilar individuals are associated with self-representation. Categorization was faster when the self-similar individual was paired with self, not only for trait words related to the novel individuals, but also for unrelated demographic information pertaining only to self. This provides the first evidence using an implicit task that self-similarity may act as a heuristic for creating representations of new individuals.
... Research immediately following the catalyzing article by Markus (1977) concentrated either on replicating the findings on the effects of self-knowledge on response speed in various trait domains (e.g., Kuiper & Derry, 1981;Lewicki, 1984;Markus, Crane, Bernstein, & Siladi, 1982;Mueller, 1982) or on exploring how the processing of self-knowledge can affect social perception (e.g., Fong & Markus, 1982;Kuiper, 1981;Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985). Although this early work addressed topics central to person perception and social cognition, it did not address the issue that makes self-schemas potentially important for understanding personality: Do self-schemas and their associated cognitive processes contribute to the manifestation of trait characteristics and thereby help explain some of the regularities observed in behavior? ...
... A second factor that can compromise self-peer agreement is the distorting influence of the peer's own self-schema on the schema he or she develops of the target individual. There is ample evidence that self-schemas often guide our attention in social perception and influence the way we interpret and organize information about new acquaintances (Fong & Markus, 1982;Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985), although they become relatively less important as the person being judged becomes better known (Funder, Kolar, & Blackman, 1995). Moreover, people may be motivated to overestimate the degree of similarity between themselves and others, especially those they consider friends (i.e., a "balance" effect, see Heider, 1958;Insko, 1984). ...
Research on "self-schemes" has extensively documented the effects of these hypothesized cognitive structures on the processing of self-knowledge, but it has neglected to establish whether these structures correspond to knowledge other persons possess about an individual's personality traits and whether this peer-knowledge is represented by cognitive structures similar to self-schemes. In the present study "schematic" measures such as response time in self-ratings were compared with traits attributed to participants by well-acquainted peers. Peer-ratings were nearly as accurate as self-ratings in predicting response-time patterns in self-description. Moreover, extreme self-ratings by the target individual were predictive of extreme peer-ratings and quick peer-judgments for the trait in question. This pattern of convergence did not depend on any similarity between the peer's own self-ratings and those of the target. These results indicate that the content and processing characteristics of knowledge structures developed of individuals by well-acquainted peers are remarkably similar to the content and properties of the individual's own self-schemes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Far from being operationalized in only one way, recent assessments of selfschematicity have used different variants of the classical measurement of schematic and aschematic individuals (e.g., Avants, Margolin, & Kosten, 1996;Forehand, Deshpandé, & Reed, 2002;Froming, Nasby, & McManus, 1998). The early social psychological researchers were primarily concerned with contrasting the difference in information processing patterns between schematic and aschematic people in various personality traits in understanding information processing and behaviors (e.g., Bruch, Kaflowitz, & Berger, 1988;Fong & Markus, 1982;Kendzierski, 1990;Kuiper & Rogers, 1979;Ruvolo & Markus, 1992;Stein, Roeser, & Markus, 1998;Thompson, 1985). Also, researchers in various applied psychological fields have borrowed this 13 concept to understand human cognitions, affect and behaviors (e.g., Cash & Labarage, 1996;Estabrooks & Courneya, 1997;Stein, 1994). ...
... In the different empirical investigations referred to above, it has been found that when a well-articulated schema about the self is present, a consistent pattern can be found in that domain with respect to people's decisions and behaviors, as well as their assessments of themselves and others (e.g., Roediger, Mead, & Bergman, 2001). Further, schematic people are being more likely to notice self-schematic traits in others (e.g., Fong & Markus, 1982). Finally, the results substantiate that information congruent with a self-schema is processed faster and more accurate whereas stimuli that are incongruent to a self-schema will be resisted. ...
... Personally, I sit somewhat agnosticically with the above. On the one hand, belief systems do not have to be true to be applied to our judgments and worldview (e.g., Fong & Markus, 1982;Krahe, Temkin, & Bieneck, 2007;Narvaes & Bock, 2002). Certainly, reviewing these articles proves that. ...
... As self-schemas can guide judgements of others (e.g., Alicke & Largo, 1995;Fong & Markus, 1982), we also assessed participants' self-perceptions of personal branding and intrapreneurship behaviours (note that human capital was already captured with educational level and work experience). We measured participants' personal branding with the 12-item scale (strategic and differentiated factors) developed by Gorbatov et al. (2019). ...
The changing context of contemporary knowledge work, including the massive adoption of home office work arrangements and a great resignation, calls for new research on the employability of knowledge workers. In this paper, we suggest that knowledge workers can no longer rely on developing their human capital and being intrapreneurial at work to secure their employability. With the aim to offer a new perspective, we test the incremental validity of personal branding in predicting employability over and above established predictors (i.e., human capital and intrapreneurship behaviours) and test the relation- ships in three studies (total N = 883), consisting of a supervisor sample (Study 1), a student sample (Study 2), and a time-lagged employee sample (Study 3). Results show that personal branding explains variance in employability over and above human capital and intrapreneurship behaviours. The results also show that the relationship between personal branding and employability is fully mediated by personal brand equity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the opportunities the concept of personal branding offers for employability research in the context of the contemporary world of work.
... Typically, when a construct is triggered before a stimulus person is encountered, the newly encountered target is perceived in terms of the construct by being assimilated into it in the subsequent impression of the target (e.g., Higgins et al., 1977;Stangor, 1988;Stangor, Lynch, Duan, & Glass, 1992;. This effect has been obtained using target 3 Although no literature up until recently has existed on the role of significant-other exemplars in social perception, which we argue is the basis of transference (Andersen & Baum, 1994;Andersen & Cole, 1990), an extensive experimental literature exists on the exemplar of the self and its role in memory and encoding not only about the self (e.g., Bargh &Tota, 1988;Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982;Bellezza, 1984;Bower & Gilligan, 1979;Greenwald, 1980Greenwald, , 1981Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984;Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984;Kihlstrom etal., 1988;Markus, 1977;Markus&Wurf, 1987;Prentice, 1990;Rogers, 1981), but also about other persons as well, which implies projection or false consensus (e.g., Bramel, 1962;Campbell, Miller, Lubetsky, & O'Connell 1964;Chronbach, 1955;Dornbusch, Hastorf, Richardson, Muzzy, & Vreeland, 1965;Edlow & Kiesler, 1966;Fong & Markus, 1982;Holmes, 1968;Lemon & Warren, 1974;Marks & Miller, 1987;Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985;Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). Of course, the role of familiar-other representations in memory and in the speed of judgments about the familiar others themselves has been shown to be reliable (e.g., Prentice, 1990;Rogers, 1981). ...
Research has shown that the activation and application of a significant-other representation to a new person, or transference, occurs in everyday social perception (S. M. Andersen & A. Baum, 1994; S. M. Andersen & S. W. Cole, 1990). Using a combined idiographic and nomothetic experimental paradigm, two studies examined the role of chronic accessibility of significant-other representations in transference. After learning about 4 fictional people, 1 of whom resembled a significant other, participants' recognition memory was assessed. Both studies showed greater false-positive memory in the significant-other condition, relative to control, even in the absence of priming. Study 2 showed that although the effect was greater when the significant-other representation was concretely applicable to the target information, it occurred even when no such applicability was present. Results implicate the chronic accessibility of significant-other representations in transference.
... Thus, it has been shown that depressed subjects' realism has precise boundaries. Such boundaries seem to be located in the most important point of reference that subjects have for categorizing events: the self (Fong & Markus, 1982;Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984;Rogers, 1981). In fact, Lewinsohn, Larson, and Munoz (1982) have found, through factoring a number of selfscales, that the items that most differentiated depressed from nondepressed subjects were those that alluded to the self-evaluation of personal abilities. ...
In this research I investigated whether the use of relevant affective outcomes influences depressed and nondepressed subjects' judgment of contingency. Similar to previous studies (Alloy & Abramson, 1979, Experiments 1 and 2), Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that when the outcome is affectively neutral (i.e., the onset of a light) depressed subjects make accurate judgments of contingency, whereas nondepressed subjects show (in noncontingent situations) a significant illusion of control. In Experiments 3 and 4 (a contingency situation and a noncontingency situation, respectively) different types of sentences (negative self-referent, negative other-referent, positive self-referent, positive other-referent) were used as outcomes. Although depressed subjects were more reluctant to show biased judgments than were the nondepressed subjects, in noncontingency situations depressed subjects made overestimated judgments of contingency when the outcomes were negative self-referent sentences. Results are discussed with regard to current cognitive theories of depression, particularly the learned helplessness model.
... The experimental studies show that in social perception the Self schema is considered to be both the habitual reference point (Codol, 1979;Codol & Leyens, 1982;Karyłowski, 1990) and the basis for judgments about others (Fong & Markus, 1982;Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985). On the basis of our studies showing manifestations of the egocentric biases in the END groups in absence of such biases in the EXO ones, it can be posited that the Self also plays a role of prototype in pro-social perception. ...
... Thus, when encountering someone new who is similar to the self on some negative characteristic, participants may be motivated to process details about those individuals less deeply because dwelling on such negative characteristics has the possibility of lowering ones' self-esteem. Overall, although much of the prior work has assessed self-other similarity only along one or two dimensions (extroversion, Fong & Markus, 1982;political leaning, Krienen, Tu, & Buckner, 2010;independence, Markus, 1977;masculinity, Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985;intelligence, honesty, Sedikides & Green, 2000), we observed these impression memory effects across a range of trait characteristics. ...
The present studies investigated whether similarity to the self influenced memory for impressions of others. We predicted that similarity to the self would facilitate impression memory for others, paralleling the self-reference effect found when information is processed relative to the self. We were interested in how the initial valence of the impression, whether positive or negative, affected impression memory. Across two experiments, participants formed impressions while viewing faces paired with traits and behaviors. After recognition, participants rated the self-descriptiveness of the studied traits allowing impression memory to be sorted into high-, medium-, and low-self-similarity. For positive impressions, similar others were remembered better than dissimilar others. For negative impressions, similar others were remembered more poorly than dissimilar others. These results illustrate that similarity to the self has multifaceted effects on person memory, leading to memory enhancement in the case of people given positive impressions, but reducing memory for people associated with negative impressions.
... Although the evidence that self-schemas influence the way that individuals interact with others is consistent, the evidence about how self-schemas influence the interpretation of others is mixed. Fong and Markus (1982) found that self-schemas influenced the types of information that individuals tried to gather about a target. For example, individuals who rated themselves as extraverted were more likely to select extravert-oriented questions for a target. ...
George Kelly was an influential psychologist who offered the Personal Construct Theory (PCT; 1955) to the field of personality psychology. PCT proposed a theoretical perspective of how people make sense of their worlds through the continuous testing and refinement of personal constructs in an effort to achieve a sense of mastery over their environment for the purpose of creating a greater sense of predictability and understanding of themselves and the people and events around them. PCT was also used by Kelly as the bases of personality assessment with the development of the Role Construct Repertory Test and his therapeutic approach to helping individuals with psychological problems understand and modify their maladaptive constructs.
... One question that has not been addressed is the extent to which NFA and NFC are linked with individuals' perceptions of their own central traits, which we refer to as the selfevaluation effect. Previous studies have found that people tend to judge others on dimensions that are personally important to themselves (Fong & Markus, 1982, Lewicki, 1984Markus & Wurf, 1987). As applied to the current context, we reasoned that if affective people rely upon warmth-relevant traits when evaluating others, they should evaluate themselves very highly on warm traits relative to cold traits -accentuating differences on this dimension. ...
... One question that has not been addressed is the extent to which NFA and NFC are linked with individuals' perceptions of their own central traits, which we refer to as the self-evaluation effect. Previous studies have found that people tend to judge others on dimensions that are personally important to themselves (Fong & Markus, 1982, Lewicki, 1984Markus & Wurf, 1987). ...
... Mother and infant schemas are examples of person schemas [245] or personal constructs [246] that operate consciously or unconsciously to organize thought, mood, and interpersonal behavior. Otherschemas tend to be biased toward self-schemas: people tend to be more interested in what others have in common with them than with differences [247]. Also relevant is the relational schema [248] and spontaneous attraction toward potential sexual partners. ...
What triggered the emergence of uniquely human behaviors (language, religion, music) some 100,000 years ago? A non-circular, speculative theory based on the mother-infant relationship is presented. Infant “cuteness” evokes the infant schema and motivates nurturing; the analogous mother schema (MS) is a multimodal representation of the carer from the fetal/infant perspective, motivating fearless trust. Prenatal MS organizes auditory, proprioceptive, and biochemical stimuli (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, body movements, biochemicals) that depend on maternal physical/emotional state. In human evolution, bipedalism and encephalization led to earlier births and more fragile infants. Cognitively more advanced infants survived by better communicating with and motivating (manipulating) mothers and carers. The ability to link arbitrary sound patterns to complex meanings improved (proto-language). Later in life, MS and associated emotions were triggered in ritual settings by repetitive sounds and movements (early song, chant, rhythm, dance), subdued light, dull auditory timbre, psychoactive substances, unusual tastes/smells and postures, and/or a feeling of enclosure. Operant conditioning can explain why such actions were repeated. Reflective consciousness emerged as infant-mother dyads playfully explored intentionality (theory of mind, agent detection) and carers predicted and prevented fatal infant accidents (mental time travel). The theory is consistent with cross-cultural commonalities in altered states (out-of-body, possessing, floating, fusing), spiritual beings (large, moving, powerful, emotional, wise, loving), and reports of strong musical experiences and divine encounters. Evidence is circumstantial and cumulative; falsification is problematic.
... According to personality theories and the self-schema model (Kirsh and Kuiper 2002;McCrae and Costa 1991;Rosenberg 1965;Scheier and Carver 1985;Young and Lindemann 1992), cognitive generalizations about the self could influence the processing of information about oneself and others. In addition, individuals usually seek information about others which is consistent with their own self-schemas (Fong and Markus 1982). For this reason, personal resources, such as optimism and self-esteem, were initially proposed in the present study as antecedent variables, humor styles and perceived social support as mediators, and different types of well-being as outcome variables. ...
This study examined the relationship between humor styles, positive personality (optimism and self-esteem), social support and both subjective and psychological well-being. Structural equation modelling was used with a sample of 468 adults; some had a good health status while others suffered from different medical conditions. The best model is the one that proposes that humor styles were associated with SWB and PWB through personality characteristics and social support. This model indicated that humor styles had an indirect effect on SWB through optimism and an indirect effect on PWB through self-esteem. The component of self-oriented humor explained well-being to a greater extent than the component oriented towards interpersonal relations. However, the relationships between the variables included in the model depended on individual differences in gender and health status. Results showed that self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor predicted SWB through optimism and predicted PWB through self-esteem and social support for women and healthy individuals. Practical implications of the present findings are discussed.
... Following procedures used in previous research, across all studies we included control variables thought to influence facial attractiveness ratings that might also be related to competition/cooperation. First, we measured participants' self-perceived attractiveness. As mentioned earlier, people often judge others using themselves as a frame of reference (Dunning, 2000;Fong & Markus, 1982). How people perceive their own attractiveness might therefore influence how they evaluate the attractiveness of others. ...
Whereas the influence of facial attractiveness (FA) on social judgments has been well documented, much less is known about the converse influence of social exchanges on FA judgments. Previous research has shown that social dimensions inherently related to the face judged, such as status, can affect such judgments. However, we found that facial attractiveness ratings were affected by social exchanges unrelated to the face judged. In three experiments, we examined how competitive and cooperative financial exchanges influence subsequent facial aesthetic judgments. Compared to cooperation, competition decreased women's (but not men's) ratings of men's facial attractiveness; this pattern of effects also occurred for ratings of buildings, suggesting that competition suppressed aesthetic appreciation. However, women'sresponses towomen's faces followed aninverse pattern, as competition (rather than cooperation) elevated womenfaces' attractiveness ratings. Introducing self-affirmation, a psychological mechanism that alleviates the effects of social competition, restored attractiveness ratings. This finding suggests that women's own-gender judgments in a competitive environment are affected by a perception of threat induced by social comparison. Overall, this study suggests that aesthetic judgments are not immune to social conditions. Such moderating effects contribute to our understanding of how sociocultural environments dynamically regulate aesthetic preferences.
... The current meta-analysis is aligned with this perspective on the importance of personality in the construal of situations (Sherman et al., 2013) and how people approach and perceive others (e.g. Felfe & Schyns, 2010;Fong & Markus, 1982). ...
Interdependent situations are pervasive in human life. In these situations, it is essential to form expectations about the others' behaviour to adapt one's own behaviour to increase mutual outcomes and avoid exploitation. Social value orientation, which describes the dispositional weights individuals attach to their own and to another person's outcome, predicts these expectations of cooperation in social dilemmas—an interdependent situation involving a conflict of interests. Yet, scientific evidence is inconclusive about the exact differences in expectations between prosocials, individualists, and competitors. The present meta-analytic results show that, relative to proselfs (individualists and competitors), prosocials expect more cooperation from others in social dilemmas, whereas individualists and competitors do not significantly differ in their expectations. The importance of these expectations in the decision process is further highlighted by the finding that they partially mediate the well-established relation between social value orientation and cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas. In fact, even proselfs are more likely to cooperate when they expect their partner to cooperate. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology
... Operationally to define subjects with and without self-schemas, Markus had subjects rate themselves on three scales for self-descriptiveness and personal importance (Markus, 1977;Markus et al, 1982, Study 2;Fong & Markus, 1982) and/or with related existing inventories (Markus et al, 1982, Study 1). However, because she did not make a distinction between self-cognition and selfschemas, she assumed that these scales and personality inventories are interchangeable in operationally defining the possession of selfschemas. ...
The purpose of the present study was to elucidate the role of self-cognition in efficiently activating one's self-schemas for processing self-relevant information. Nine self-cognition (SC) and 12 non self-cognition (NSC) subjects were asked to judge each of 44 introverted and extraverted adjectives in one of three ways of processing: Structural, semantic, and self-referent. They were then exposed to surprise tests for recall and recognition confidence. The main findings were as follows:(1) For old items, the SC group produced significantly higher recognition confidence in favor of their self-schemas than the NSC group;(2) for new items, the NSC group showed differential recognition bias in favor of their self-schemas, while there was no such recognition bias in the SC group; and (3) for extraverted items, self-referent processing was superior in recall and recognition confidence to semantic and structural processing, whereas for introverted items, self-referent processing was equivalent to or less than semantic processing. These findings were discussed in relation to allocation of mental resources, and concepts of self-cognition and self-schemas.
... This activation may occur so instantaneously in response to a particular topic that it occurs without conscious awareness (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006;Graf & Masson, 1993;Wegner & Vallacher, 1977). Scholars assert that implicit cognitive structures are used spontaneously and habitually across situations (Fong & Markus, 1982;Kelly, 1963). As such, beliefs about romantic relationships are thought to involve both emotional, automatic processes that occur outside awareness, or implicit processes (Fletcher, Rosanowski, & Fitness, 1994), and explicit, conscious beliefs and expectations about the self and relationships that are used to process relationship information and guide relationship behaviors (Fincham & Bradbury, 1990). ...
The scientist-practitioner training model in doctoral clinical and counseling psychology programs encourages reliance on data, rather than personal opinion, to inform decision-making processes. This study provided unique experimental evidence that this standard is being met. Doctoral students in clinical and counseling psychology (N = 162) reviewed a brief manuscript, presumably submitted for publication, that described a new suicide assessment measurement procedure. Respondents were randomly forwarded one of five manuscript versions that varied only in the theoretical rationale used to justify the proposed assessment procedure. Theoretical incongruence between respondents and "authors" were expected to lower ratings of manuscript quality and data merits. Only modest rating variation was ultimately attributed to theoretical incongruence. Students from varied backgrounds and programs instead focus attention on the data, rather than the theoretical underpinnings, presented in their assigned manuscript. This evidence of objectivity in student manuscript analysis generalized across gender, training specialty, level of scholarly productivity, and career aspiration.
This book chapter is available upon request (alan.king@und.edu).
... Este efecto también se encuentra a la hora de valorar una cara negativa, ya que los participantes con pocos síntomas le atribuyen más entusiasmo que los del grupo de síntomas elevados. Esta distorsión en la valoración también puede ser explicada por el efecto de congruencia del afecto, así como por los trabajos clásicos sobre la relación entre los auto-esquemas y la percepción de otros (Fong & Markus, 1982;Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985). ...
Facial emotion recognition plays an important role in human communication and social interaction. This study aims to analyze the possibility of detecting depressive symptoms through facial recognition of emotions and if this possibility is similar in young and elderly people. Two groups of participants were assessed: one with subclinical symptoms of depression, and the control group. The MSCEIT facial emotion recognition task was administered to both groups. The main result is that there is an association between the recognition of a positive emotion in a neutral face and the level of depressive symptomatology, especially for people over 60 years old. This result is consistent with the mood congruent effect: participants with few depressive symptoms evaluate a neutral face in a more positive way, at least in terms of enthusiasm. In summary, this preliminary study provides data on how facial emotion recognition could be an indicator of subclinical depression, especially in the elderly.
Two studies compared representations of the self and of other people, guided by the hypothesis that self–other differences derive from one's greater familiarity with oneself than with others. For the first study, participants wrote open-ended descriptions of themselves, a familiar person, and an unfamiliar person, which were analyzed for the amount and types of information they contained and for consistency in specific content across stimulus people and situations. Participants returned for a second study 1 week later and made timed judgments of information taken from their written protocols. The response latencies for these judgments were used to infer how information is organized in self- and other-concepts. The results supported most of the predicted self–other differences, but almost all were matched by differences between familiar and unfamiliar others. Familiarity does provide a parsimonious explanation for many self–other differences.
Voters generally value competence in politicians. Four studies, all conducted in Germany, show that this is especially pronounced in people of higher compared with lower social class. The first study, with a representative sample (N1 = 2239), found that the reported importance of competence in politicians increased with increasing socioeconomic status (SES). This was mediated by self-perceived competence which was higher in participants of higher SES. In three further studies (two preregistered, N2a&2b = 396, N3 = 400) participants merely saw pictures of politicians’ faces. Perceived competence based on facial appearance increased the likelihood of voting for a politician. Again, this effect was stronger among participants of higher compared with lower SES. This moderation persisted after controlling for participants’ political orientation and politicians’ perceived warmth and dominance. We discuss implications for future research on the psychological underpinnings of social class as well as appearance effects in the political context.
Dysfunctional personality characteristics can derail the career of an otherwise competent executive. Personality predicts both leadership effectiveness and derailment, and assessment of these characteristics is critical for effective coaching and leader development. This paper reviews the relationship between personality and leadership and offers a taxonomy of flawed interpersonal strategies that can degrade a leader’s capacity to build and maintain high-performing teams. Assessment of these dysfunctional dispositions facilitates the coach’s ability to build an effective coaching relationship, enhance the executive’s strategic self-awareness, and identify appropriate targets and strategies for intervention.
To better understand the nature of American mass party identification, it is crucial to examine how voters understand terms used in measuring partisanship in public opinion surveys, such as “Democrat” and “Republican.” For this purpose, we conducted a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical profiles’ partisanship. We show that, in contrast to previous studies which rely on one theoretical perspective to understand mass partisanship, multiple theories are reflected in how voters understand labels representing their partisanship. Further, the results suggest that many Americans seem to equate party identification with vote choice, contrary to standard assumptions in American political behavior research that these are separate concepts.
This chapter describes the Egocentric Tactician Model. The model purports to account for the influence of the self on social thought. Such thought refers to the social world and those who inhabit it (i.e., characterizing or construing another's actions, predicting others’ preferences or behaviors, evaluating what is normative or right). The model posits that the influence of the self on social thought is contingent on both the content of the self-concept and the motives that work to maintain or increase the positivity of the self-concept. Two primary motives are self-enhancement and self-protection. The model further asserts that during social thought these motives affect, and are affected by, various cognitive processes and structures. Different chapter sections demonstrate that the Egocentric Tactician Model is empirically grounded, has a broad explanatory scope, is generative, and differs from other models in describing how the self affects social thought.
Schemas are cognitive structures that help organize new knowledge by integrating it with previous information or changing the underlying network. Immanuel Kant's initial work outlined how schemas help individuals learn, but it was not until the 1900s that empirical research began to examine how these structures develop and influence behavior. Schemas are particularly influential in interpersonal interactions because individuals want to maintain a consistent view of themselves but also of others. Self‐schemas are a major component of personality, and people are categorized as being schematic or aschematic on a dimension based on whether their ratings of that dimension are at the high end or low end of the scale and also endorsed as being important vs. at the midpoint of the scale and deemed unimportant.
In two role‐playing scenarios, we investigate how White male and female evaluators perceive an Asian American versus White job candidate on the dimensions of competence and social skills and how these perceptions affect evaluators' decisions in hiring and promotion. Specifically, Study 1 examines how the perceptions of competence and social skills affect Asian (versus White) college graduates' chance of obtaining a non‐technical (versus technical) position, and Study 2 tests how these perceptions affect Asians' probability of promotion relative to Whites'. Our findings suggest that female evaluators were less likely to select Asian than White candidates into positions involving social skills and were less likely to promote Asian than White candidates into these types of positions. Furthermore, female evaluators' perception that Asians were less socially skilled than Whites mediated both of these decisions. This paper contributes to the understanding of workplace discrimination of Asian Americans. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Schemas are cognitive structures that help organize new knowledge by integrating it with previous information or changing the underlying network. Immanuel Kant's initial work outlined how schemas help individuals learn, but it was not until the 1900s that empirical research began to examine how these structures develop and influence behavior. Schemas are particularly influential in interpersonal interactions because individuals want to maintain a consistent view of themselves but also of others. Self‐schemas are a major component of personality, and people are categorized as being schematic or aschematic on a dimension based on whether their ratings of that dimension are at the high end or low end of the scale and also endorsed as being important vs. at the midpoint of the scale and deemed unimportant.
Converging evidence indicates that distanced self-talk (i.e., using one's own name and other non-first person pronouns to refer to the self) promotes self-control and wise reasoning. However, no research has examined how this process affects how people conceptualize the self. We addressed this issue across two experiments. In Study 1, participants who were randomly assigned to describe themselves using their own name (vs. I) used more abstract descriptors and talked less about their social identities. Study 2 directly replicated these effects in a high-powered pre-registered experiment. It also demonstrated that using one's name to think about the self led to greater shifts in self-concept than those associated with thinking about other people (i.e., a “socially distant” target). Together, these finding demonstrate how subtle shifts in language that promote psychological distance influence the way people cognitively represent the self. They also highlight the need for future research to distinguish between self- and social distance.
Despite recent growth in popular press about introversion and negative responses to introversion at work, academic work has yet to directly investigate this topic. This may be at least partly due to a sensitive issue: do negative responses to introversion at work purely constitute mistreatment, or are these legitimate responses to introversion? We propose a framework that incorporates both perspectives as interlinked explanations for this phenomenon: the Stereotype-Driven Process, which is driven by bias and associated with mistreatment, and the Target-Driven Process, which is driven by introversion itself and can be associated with legitimate responses to introversion. As such, this paper describes how negative responses to introversion come about, introduces perceived introversion mistreatment, examines negative outcomes associated with negative responses to introversion, and delineates numerous testable propositions that can guide future research on the topic.
This paper investigates the literature and theoretical underpinning of the concept of “willingness to pay” (WTP) for green infrastructure (GI) with consequences for residential development. The benefits of GI in urban settlements include improved air quality, attenuation of the urban heat island, thermal insulation and lower energy bills for green roofs and walls, the creation of social amenity space, a habitat for biodiversity, and stormwater water attenuation. Collectively, these benefits are termed eco-system services and enhance sustainability. The role of GI, the “lungs of the planet”, is heavily correlated to atmospheric conditions; high levels of GI improve air quality, which is acknowledged widely with many cities increasing GI to make them more resilient to future predicted challenges with respect to heat and poor air quality. In addition, there is evidence that the biophilia effect enhances human well-being. There are some studies claiming that purchasers pay a premium for property with good GI. However, there is little research about the process in consumers’ minds leading to such a premium—if, how, when (under what circumstances), and then to what extent are consumers willing to pay for GI. This process, if better understood, may enable sellers or policy makers to influence the amounts of GI in developments, thus making it possible to enhance the value of GI to buyers. There is some research pointing to factors to be considered when modeling such processes. For developers, knowing the optimum amount of GI would enable them to design and construct developments with maximum purchaser appeal. To do this, stakeholders need to predict the level of WTP amongst potential purchasers for which they need to understand the decision processes behind WTP. In this way, sustainability in residential property development could be optimized. The paper analyzes the literature and theories concerning WTP, focusing on dwellings and GI. Our findings are that some quantitative evidence exists that purchasers pay more for residential property with high levels of GI in some cities, but they do so without any understanding of the possible decision processes leading to those premiums (if, how, when, and then to what extent). The paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual model that may explain buyers’ WTP for a dwelling based on a presumed cost–benefit analysis performed by buyers, which has been extended here to include GI and psychological factors. Thus, the paper has a consumer perspective. The model may be used to select variables and test them in empirical studies, and by integrating with other factors in the model, it can attain a more comprehensive understanding of WTP for GI in residential development.
Whereas the influence of facial attractiveness (FA) on social judgments has been well documented, much less is known about the converse influence of social exchanges on FA judgments. Previous research has shown that social dimensions inherently related to the face judged, such as status, can affect such judgments. However, we found that facial attractiveness ratings were affected by social exchanges unrelated to the face judged. In three experiments, we examined how competitive and cooperative financial exchanges influence subsequent facial aesthetic judgments. Compared to cooperation, competition decreased women's (but not men's) ratings of men's facial attractiveness; this pattern of effects also occurred for ratings of buildings, suggesting that competition suppressed aesthetic appreciation. However, women's responses to women's faces followed an inverse pattern, as competition (rather than cooperation) elevated women faces' attractiveness ratings. Introducing self-affirmation, a psychological mechanism that alleviates the effects of social competition, restored attractiveness ratings. This finding suggests that women's own-gender judgments in a competitive environment are affected by a perception of threat induced by social comparison. Overall, this study suggests that aesthetic judgments are not immune to social conditions. Such moderating effects contribute to our understanding of how sociocultural environments dynamically regulate aesthetic preferences.
Die bisherigen Analysen verdeutlichen die Bedeutung der Markenpersönlichkeit. Als metaphorische Abstraktion des Konsumentenwissens ist das Konstrukt eine Darstellung des Markenbildes. Zudem ist die Markenpersönlichkeit ein zentraler Treiber der Wertschätzung des „Partners“ Marke und damit des Kaufverhaltens. Sowohl die Praxis als auch die Wissenschaft sind daher an näheren Erkenntnissen zu diesem Konstrukt interessiert. Bisher konnte jedoch kein allgemeines Begriffsverständnis etabliert werden. Eine mögliche Ursache hierfür könnte in der Tatsache liegen, dass in der Realität keine einheitliche Zusammensetzung und Struktur der Markenpersönlichkeit existiert. Sollten einzelne Marken aus Sicht unterschiedlicher Konsumenten eine eigenständige Persönlichkeit besitzen, so wäre der Kontext (Gültigkeitsbereich) zu berücksichtigen.
Transformational leadership reflects charismatic, but ethical, influence on followers. However, leadership ultimately occurs through the perceptual and attribution processes within followers. Accordingly, the perception and evaluation of transformational leadership is likely to be influenced by followers' moral reasoning, which is the ability that allows individuals to identify and interpret ethically-salient issues in social environments. As predicted by social-cognitive principles of self-schemas, observers' moral reasoning positively related to the perception and positive evaluation of transformational leadership behavior, but not to positive affective reactions towards that behavior. These same relationships did not occur for the perception and evaluation of transactional leadership behavior. Implications for whistle-blowing behavior, organizational ethics, and the measurement of transformational leadership are discussed.
Rationality adj. Manifesting or based upon reason; logical.
The paper adopts the European Values Study as an example to investigate the relationship between ethics and sociological research. The study confirms the “not neutrality” hypothesis through three aspects that refer to internal drivers. We enlighten an “historical-positional” evidence, that refers to the original willing of the study and the theoretical perspective adopted for measuring the social change; a “thematic-instrumental” evidence, regarding the change in the space dedicated to each domains of human values in the questionnaire; a “practical-communicative” argument, that mainly refers to the operationalization process adopted for the empirical translation of concepts.
In addition we consider also an external driver, that is the international scientific community’s interest: when EVS data-users decide to study particular issues and values (and not others), they express their own choice that, in the long period, can have an impact in the EVS 'data-givers’ decisions (ie regarding the relevance of topics/items to keep or change in the questionnaire). We investigated this aspect exploring the EVS Repository using T-Lab.
Jumping to negative conclusions about other people’s traits is judged as morally bad by many people. Despite this, across six experiments (total N = 2,151), we find that multiple types of moral evaluations—even evaluations related to open-mindedness, tolerance, and compassion—play a causal role in these potentially pernicious trait assumptions. Our results also indicate that moralization affects negative—but not positive—trait assumptions, and that the effect of morality on negative assumptions cannot be explained merely by people’s general (nonmoral) preferences or other factors that distinguish moral and nonmoral traits, such as controllability or desirability. Together, these results suggest that one of the more destructive human tendencies—making negative assumptions about others—can be caused by the better angels of our nature.
It is a truism of human existence that people are seldom open-minded. We approach new situations and people, bringing to bear all our past experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and feelings about similar situations and people. For example, we go to a sporting event with a wealth of knowledge about the game, the players’ positions, and individual plays. That knowledge, which may have been gained through direct experience or secondhand sources, provides us with a variety of expectations about what will happen, who will be there, and what they will be like. It also guides our attention and interpretations of information while we are at the event and our memory of it after we leave.
Prior work has shown that whether or not someone is similar to the self influences person memory-a type of self-reference effect for others. In this study, we were interested in understanding the neural regions supporting the generation of impressions and subsequent memory for targets who vary in similarity to the self. Participants underwent fMRI scanning while forming positive or negative impressions of face-behavior pairs. We tested participants' memory for their generated impressions and then back-sorted the impression trials (encoding) into different levels of self-similarity (high, medium, low) using a self-similarity posttest that came after recognition. Extending prior behavioral work, our data confirmed our hypothesis that memory would be highest for self-similar others and lowest for self-dissimilar others. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity increased with self-similarity (high > medium > low) to targets, regardless of later memory for them. An analysis of regions supporting impression memory revealed a double dissociation within medial temporal lobe regions: for similar others, amygdala recruitment supported memory, whereas for dissimilar others, hippocampal activation supported memory. These results suggest that self-similarity influences evaluation and memory for targets but also affects the underlying neural resources engaged when thinking about others who vary in self-similarity.
How Audiences Decide: A Cognitive Approach to Business Communication is a comprehensive introduction to persuasive communication in the context of business. it summarizes relevant theories and findings from the fields of cognitive science, social cognition, leadership, team cognition, psycholinguistics, and behavioral economics. By illuminating the thought processes of many different audiences, from consumers to Wall Street analysts to CEOs, it helps communicators better understand why audiences make the decisions they make and how to influence them. The book covers a broad range of communication techniques—including those concerning persuasive speaking and writing, interviews and group meetings, content and style, typography and nonverbal behaviors, charts and images, rational arguments and emotional appeals—and examines the empirical evidence supporting each of them.
This chapter explores the present status of the memory self-efficacy (MSE) research in social cognitive context and suggests new research directions. MSE refers to a dynamic, self-evaluative system of beliefs and judgments regarding one's memory competence and confidence. MSE has evolved since the mid-1980s to its present identity and status in the cognitive aging and adult developmental research literature. Self-efficacy theory and methods provide a rich theoretical network of testable, falsifiable hypotheses. Some hypotheses have received strong empirical support, such as those applied to achievement domains, including mathematics, and writing. Research on mediational effects supports the reciprocal nature of self-efficacy and goal setting/attainment, although not equivocally. The theoretical strengths and empirical yield of mainstream self-efficacy research have guided the MSE research efforts. This chapter presents MSE research from the lab that has been conducted from the orienting framework of self-efficacy theory and methodology. To realize the full potential of MSE as an important adult developmental and cognitive aging research constructs, MSE researchers need to move beyond their emphases on measurement and modeling.
Theory building and research on resilient family systems has evolved over time, beginning with family stress theory focused on factors that protected the family system from entering into a crisis. With the addition of the postcrisis recovery processes of adjustment and adaptation, the foundation of family resilience theory was established (for an overview of over 2 decades (1976–2003) of family systems theory building and research see Hansen and Johnson (1979), McCubbin and McCubbin (1996a, 1996b), Patterson (1988, 2002), and Walsh (1996, 2002, 2003)). With the rapid development of psychological theories and research on resilient children and adults, family scholars drew from these theories and research methods to advance their own body of work on ethnic family systems and their resilience. Research on ethnic family systems followed along the psychology-guided pathway with the inclusion of dimensions of ethnicity as categorical variables inserted in the equation to explain variability in the chosen indices of resilience. Consequently, the in-depth study of ethnicity in family systems and the advancement of a systems theory of resilience have been limited.
Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the self-efficacy beliefs in memory aging. It reviews theory and research relating to self-efficacy. It showed that several other constructs related to self-efficacy are also useful, and that all of them are necessary in order to understand metamemory. Unfortunately, as the review of the methodological literature showed, few researchers have developed strong indexes of self-efficacy, and even fewer have attempted to build theoretical frameworks incorporating the empirical work. Much remains to be done. It is believe that there is much to be gained by examining how self-efficacy has been applied to other content areas. In this way, one may be able to avoid some of the pitfalls and make important advances in the near future. It is convinced that self-efficacy and its related constructs prove to be the key to understanding memory performance in the elderly.
The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that exposure to nonviolent pornography would prime a heterosexuality subschema in gender schematic males and thus lead these males to view and treat a woman as a sexual object. In a 2 × 2 design, 60 male subjects, half gender schematic and half gender aschematic, watched either a pornographic or a control video prior to being interviewed by a female research assistant. Although she was blind to condition, the female experimenter found the gender schematic males who had viewed the pornographic video to be significantly more sexually motivated than subjects in the three other conditions. Further, in the first minute of a free recall task given after the interview, 72% of the information recalled by this group of males concerned the physical features of the female experimenter, as compared with 49% for the males in the other conditions. The implications of these findings for real-world settings are discussed.
Teaching from an evidence-based perspective relies on bringing the best scientific evidence to the classroom. However, research shows that people may not believe even well- documented research findings in management and other areas. Among the reasons that people might reject particular research results, we focus on the potential role of self- motivated mechanisms triggered by findings that may have an impact on people’s self- concepts. We investigated such processes by examining college students’ responses to research findings suggesting that employers should hire for intelligence because it is the best predictor of job performance. Consistent with our predictions based on self-concept related theories, students with lower grade point averages (GPA) showed lower acceptance of the findings than did those with higher GPAs. Test anxiety mediated this effect, as it also mediated the impact of emotional stability. Further, students’ rationales for their responses to the scholarly argument about the importance of intelligence suggested that self- enhancement and self-protection processes play roles in the acceptance or rejection of research findings. Implications for future research and for management teaching are discussed.
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