Acting, behaving, and the selfless basis of metaperception.

The desire to create a particular impression of oneself to others is a fundamental interpersonal motive that should be followed by an assessment of the success of the self-presentation. The authors integrate the areas of self-presentation and metaperception in the present research by assigning participants to enact roles during 2 dyadic interactions and measuring the actors' metaperceptions and their partners' trait judgments. They found a high level of accuracy in actors' metaperceptions but no accuracy in partners' trait judgments of the actors. Instead, partners' trait judgments corresponded closely to the actors' interpersonal behavior, indicating that there was little or no "personality leakage" in the actors' behavior. Random assignment to role created a situation in which private self was uncorrelated with public self. Results indicate that actors were able to disregard their self-concepts when determining the impressions they created. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem and perceptions of conveyed impressions: Is negative affectivity associated with greater realism?

Two studies examine the notion that negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984) is associated with more accurate perceptions of conveyed impressions in social interactions. In Study 1 (n?=?160), low self-esteem (LSE) and high self-esteem (HSE) subjects were paired with either an LSE or an HSE partner. After a 15-min interaction, they rated themselves, their partners, and how they believed their partners would rate them on 20 adjectives related to social competence. Study 2 (n?=?40) was identical except that each interaction was observed by 2 observers who rated each participant, and participants also rated how they believed an observer would rate them. LSE subjects exhibited greater accuracy only with respect to the elevation component of observers' ratings; HSE subjects overestimated the positivity of observers' evaluations, whereas LSE subjects were relatively accurate. However, LSE subjects exhibited less overall accuracy with respect to their partners' ratings. We argue that when these results are considered with earlier research, there is no support for the notion of depressive realism in assessing conveyed impressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the actor's traits: forming impressions of actors, targets, and relationships from social behaviors

Perceivers who observe social behaviors may form impressions not only of actors' traits but also of people as targets and of interpersonal relationships. In Study 1, Ss read about 4 individuals' behaviors under instructions to form actor-, target-, and relationship-based impressions. Ss then read additional behavioral information that they later tried to recall. Ss accurately perceived actor, target, and relationship effects in the presented information, and they better recalled subsequent behaviors that were consistent with all 3 types of impressions. In Study 2, Ss thought of 4 people they knew and judged how much each liked the other 3. These ratings revealed actor, target, and relationship effects as well as individual and dyadic reciprocity. Perceivers can form relatively accurate impressions of people as actors and as targets and accurate impressions of relationships between people, and these impressions influence memory for further behaviors.     

Value revelations: Disclosure is in the eye of the beholder.

In interpersonal interactions ranging from job interviews to romantic dates, it is common for people to tell each other about what they care about and value. Six experiments explored the general hypothesis that people view their disclosures about what they value as more revealing of themselves than do others. This effect is demonstrated across a variety of contexts, ranging from the brief and anonymous to the more in-depth and social. A source of it is explored in actors' feeling that their most important values are especially important to them. Studies suggest that this feeling involves actors' sense of the intensity with which they hold their values, as opposed to their beliefs about the uniqueness of those values. Studies also show that actors' tendency to view value disclosures as more revealing than do observers is somewhat specific to value disclosures--that is, actors do not view their relatively off-the-cuff responses (Study 4) or their disclosures of their nonvalues (Study 6) as more revealing. Implications of this research for self-other differences and for interpersonal intimacy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Awareness of influences on one's own judgments: The roles of covariation detection and attention to the judgment process.

Forty-eight actor participants examined profiles of target persons and judged how much they would like each target. Initial-attention actors were instructed before judging any of the profiles to attend to how target factors influenced their liking judgments. Delayed-attention actors received these instructions after judging the first block of profiles and before judging the second. No-attention actors did not receive these instructions at all. After judging the target profiles, actors estimated how each of several target factors had influenced their liking judgments. Access to covariation information greatly increased the accuracy of observers' causal reports. Covariation detection appeared to make less of a contribution, however, to actors' own causal reports, which displayed a substantial level of accuracy even after we controlled statistically for the possible contributions of covariation detection and shared theories. Contrary to expectations, the attention instructions actually decreased the accuracy of actors' self-reports for the first block of judgments but had no effect on accuracy for the second block of judgments. Results show that some form of privileged self-knowledge contributed to the accuracy of actors' causal reports. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Edward E. Jones: Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards for 1977.

Edward E. Jones received a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for his contributions to basic knowledge of the processes by which the individual understands the social environment and acts upon it. His insightful and careful experiments reveal how individuals, as actors, govern their social behavior in anticipation of the impressions they make and the evaluative reactions they elicit. Other ingenious studies analyze the processes by which individuals, as observers, perceive the causes for other persons' behavior and attempt to ascertain their underlying dispositions. His theoretical views of the attribution process have given new directions to social perception research-directions that have proven to be extremely influential and productive. His concepts and empirical results regarding social perception, self-presentation, and personal attraction constitute a solid and broad foundation for the psychological analysis of social interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributes and attributions: Inferring stimulus properties, actors' dispositions, and causes.

Actors' and observers' use of sample base-rate data was explored in 3 experiments with a total of 176 undergraduates. Observers used sample base rates to infer the properties of actors' environments and, by comparing actors' behaviors with sample performance, the actors' attributes. Actors, on the other hand, ignored sample base rates when inferring the properties of stimuli to which they were responding but, surprisingly, used base rates to infer their own attributes. Observers' causal attributions were more sensitive to base-rate information than were actors'. In Exps I and II, actors attributed their behavior to environmental properties even though their behavior was always discrepant from that of the sample. Observers, on the other hand, attributed actors' nonnormative behavior to actors' dispositions. In Exp III, observers attributed actors' behavior more to stimulus attributes and less to actors' attributes when the behavior was similar to (normative) rather than discrepant from (nonnormative) that of the sample. Actors' attributions were not influenced by the consensus manipulation. Data are discussed in terms of the research and theory on the informativeness of consensus. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creating and undermining social support in communal relationships: The role of compassionate and self-image goals.

In 2 studies, the authors examined whether relationship goals predict change in social support and trust over time. In Study 1, a group of 199 college freshmen completed pretest and posttest measures of social support and interpersonal trust and completed 10 weekly reports of friendship goals and relationship experiences. Average compassionate goals predicted closeness, clear and connected feelings, and increased social support and trust over the semester; self-image goals attenuated these effects. Average self-image goals predicted conflict, loneliness, and afraid and confused feelings; compassionate goals attenuated these effects. Changes in weekly goals predicted changes in goal-related affect, closeness, loneliness, conflict, and beliefs about mutual and individualistic caring. In Study 2, a group of 65 roommate pairs completed 21 daily reports of their goals for their roommate relationship. Actors' average compassionate and self-image goals interacted to predict changes over 3 weeks in partners' reports of social support received from and given to actors; support that partners gave to actors, in turn, predicted changes in actors' perceived available support, indicating that people with compassionate goals create a supportive environment for themselves and others, but only if they do not have self-image goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing race and seeming racist? Evaluating strategic colorblindness in social interaction.

One strategy practiced by many Whites to regulate the appearance of prejudice during social interaction is to avoid talking about race, or even acknowledging racial difference. Four experiments involving a dyadic task investigated antecedents and consequences of this tendency. Observed colorblindness was strategic in nature: Whites' acknowledgment of race was highly susceptible to normative pressure and most evident among individuals concerned with self-presentational aspects of appearing biased (Study 1). However, this tendency was often counterproductive, as avoiding race during interracial interaction predicted negative nonverbal behavior (Study 1), a relationship mediated by decreased capacity to exert inhibitory control (Study 2). Two studies examining White and Black observers' impressions of colorblind behavior revealed divergent assessments of actors' prejudice in situations where race was clearly relevant (Study 3) but convergent assessments when race was less relevant (Study 4). Practical and theoretical implications for interracial interaction are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-presentational persona: Simultaneous management of multiple impressions.

Most research on self-presentation has examined how people convey images of themselves on only 1 or 2 dimensions at a time. In everyday interactions, however, people often manage their impressions on several image-relevant dimensions simultaneously. By examining people's self-presentations to several targets across multiple dimensions, these 2 studies offer new insights into the nature of self-presentation and provide a novel paradigm for studying impression management. Results showed that most people rely on a relatively small number of basic self-presentational personas in which they convey particular profiles of impressions as a set and that these personas reflect both normative influences to project images that are appropriate to a particular target and distinctive influences by which people put an idiosyncratic spin on these normative images. Furthermore, although people's self-presentational profiles correlate moderately with their self-views, they tailor their public images to specific targets. The degree to which participants' self-presentations were normative and distinctive, as well as the extent to which they reflected their own self-views, were moderated by individual differences in agreeableness, self-esteem, authenticity, and Machiavellianism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathic embarrassment: Situational and personal determinants of reactions to the embarrassment of another.

Two experiments investigated the reactions of observers to actors' embarrassments. The first study manipulated the nature of the prior interaction between actor and observer (cooperative, competitive, or independent) and the observational set of the observer (empathic or nonempathic). The observers' self-reports and measures of their skin potentials indicated that an empathic set and any prior interaction generally increased their responsiveness to the actors' plight. Moreover, independent, empathic observers reported reactions that appear to be empathic embarrassment, embarrassment felt with another even though one's own social identity is not threatened. The second study showed that empathic embarrassment is strongest in subjects of high embarrassability who are chronically susceptible to embarrassment. The results portray social embarrassment as a robust, pervasive phenomenon that nevertheless affects some people more than others. The possible origins of empathic embarrassment and the joint influences of perception, interaction, and personality on the experience of empathic embarrassment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps.

When people suffer an embarrassing blunder, social mishap, or public failure, they often feel that their image has been severely tarnished in the eyes of others. Four studies demonstrate that these fears are commonly exaggerated. Actors who imagined committing one of several social blunders (Study 1), who experienced a public intellectual failure (Studies 2 and 3), or who were described in an embarrassing way (Study 4) anticipated being judged more harshly by others than they actually were. These exaggerated fears were produced, in part, by the actors' tendency to be inordinately focused on their misfortunes and their resulting failure to consider the wider range of situational factors that tend to moderate onlookers' impressions. Discussion focuses on additional mechanisms that may contribute to overly pessimistic expectations as well as the role of such expectations in producing unnecessary social anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perceiver as perceived: Everyday intuitions about the correspondence bias.

This research examined people's intuitions about the correspondence bias, or the tendency to favor dispositional rather than situational explanations of behavior. In 3 studies, constrained actors overestimated the magnitude of observers' correspondent inferences. Additional studies indicated that this overestimation is due to people's oversimplified theories about the attributional processes of others. In one, Japanese participants, whose culture places greater emphasis on situational explanations of behavior, did not overestimate the correspondent inferences of observers. In other studies, participants indicated that they thought others' attributions are more influenced by an actor's behavior than by the factors constraining the behavior. Discussion focuses on whether people believe others are more prone to the correspondence bias than they are themselves and on the consequences of overestimating the correspondence bias in everyday interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How Surveillance Begets Perceptions of Dishonesty: The Case of the Counterfactual Sinner.

Three studies support the hypothesis that observers' impressions of actors reflect not only what actors do but also what they can easily be imagined doing. Participants in Studies 1 and 2 observed a 10-year-old boy take a math test in a context in which the incentive to cheat and the constraints against cheating varied. When the incentive to cheat was high but the likelihood of getting caught was also high, observers perceived a target who resisted the temptation to cheat as less honest than the average boy. This effect was not found when the incentive to cheat was low, which suggests that its occurrence under high temptation resulted from observers in that condition generating the counterfactual thought that the target would have cheated had the likelihood of detection been low. Study 3 further supported the link between spontaneous counterfactual thought and inferences of dishonesty. The implications of the counterfactual correspondence bias are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You don't know me, but I know you: The illusion of asymmetric insight.

People, it is hypothesized, show an asymmetry in assessing their own interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge relative to that of their peers. Six studies suggested that people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them. Several of the studies explored sources of this perceived asymmetry, especially the conviction that while observable behaviors (e.g., interpersonal revelations or idiosyncratic word completions) are more revealing of others than self, private thoughts and feelings are more revealing of self than others. Study 2 also found that college roommates believe they know themselves better than their peers know themselves. Study 6 showed that group members display a similar bias—they believe their groups know and understand relevant out-groups better than vice versa. The relevance of such illusions of asymmetric insight for interpersonal interaction and our understanding of "naive realism" is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-awareness, psychological perspective, and self-reinforcement in relation to personal and social standards.

Assessed whether Ss would be more likely to judge their own behavior from a social perspective when they were self-aware than when they were not self-aware. 48 undergraduates reinforced themselves after receiving feedback about a performance task that indicated they had surpassed their own standard, a social standard, both standards, or neither standard. Ss did not alter their reinforcement as a function of the self-awareness manipulation when they surpassed both standards or neither standard. However, when Ss learned that they had surpassed their own standard but not the social standard, they rewarded themselves significantly more (p?p?p?p?p?     

The “me” I claim to be: Cultural self-construal elicits self-presentational goal pursuit.

In 12 studies, respondents with an independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal showed an increased tendency and readiness to present themselves as skillful and capable and a decreased tendency and readiness to present themselves as socially sensitive and appropriate. This emerged in the form of differential scores on direct measures of self-presentation—self-deceptive enhancement and impression management (Study 1), differential social sensitivity in a gift-giving scenario (Study 2), differential performance on questions assessing general knowledge (Studies 5–6) and etiquette (Studies 7–8), and different choices between tests purportedly measuring one’s self-reliance versus social-appropriateness (Studies 9A and 9D). These relationships were observed when participants focused on their own self-presentational concerns but disappeared when participants focused on others’ outcomes (Study 3) or when they had a prior opportunity to satisfy their goals via self-affirmation (Studies 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9B, 9D). Finally, self-construal effects were eliminated or reversed when participants were led to doubt their ability to achieve their self-presentational goals (Study 9C). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling "holier than thou": Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction?

People typically believe they are more likely to engage in selfless, kind, and generous behaviors than their peers, a result that is both logically and statistically suspect. However, this oft-documented tendency presents an important ambiguity. Do people feel "holier than thou" because they harbor overly cynical views of their peers (but accurate impressions of themselves) or overly charitable views of themselves (and accurate impressions of their peers)? Four studies suggested it was the latter. Participants consistently overestimated the likelihood that they would act in generous or selfless ways, whereas their predictions of others were considerably more accurate. Two final studies suggest this divergence in accuracy arises, in part, because people are unwilling to consult population base rates when predicting their own behavior but use this diagnostic information more readily when predicting others'. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components and recognition of facial expression in the communication of emotion by actors.

Addresses the issue of the communication of emotion by actors. In Study 1, the facial behavior of 6 actors portraying emotions as felt or unfelt were analyzed with the Facial Action Coding System. Results indicated that the portrayals of felt emotions were closer to the expression of genuine emotion than the portrayals of unfelt emotions for 3 of the 6 emotions under investigation. Study 2 examined the decoding of actors' portrayals from facial behavior. Decoders were found to be very accurate in recognizing the emotional category but not in judging the encoding condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of actual deception and suspiciousness of deception on interpersonal perceptions.

36 undergraduate "interviewers" each interviewed an introverted and an extraverted "applicant," as assessed by the Eysenck Personality Inventory. One of the applicants acted honestly, the other dishonestly (i.e., extraverts presented themselves as introverts and introverts presented themselves as extraverts). Interviewers were either naive or primed to expect the possibility that deception might be occurring. Primed interviewers were not more accurate than naive interviewers in detecting deception or in discerning applicants' true dispositions. However, the primed interviewers were less confident about their judgments, and they tended to perceive all applicants as more deceptive than did the naive interviewers. Applicants who were interviewed by primed interviewers felt somewhat less successful in their attempts to portray their intended impressions (even though they really were not less successful), and they perceived their interviewers as more manipulative. In the dishonest interviews, the correspondence between the applicants' and the interviewers' perceptions of the interview, and of each other, was significantly lower than in the honest interviews. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)