Motivational and judgmental determinants of social perception.

This experiment was designed to demonstrate that motivationally neutral judgmental processes operate in social perception to affect the characteristics attributed to a particular stimulus person. 72 female college students were induced to have either high or low liking for the other girl assembled with them. The S then exchanged 2 messages with her partner on the issue of college fraternities. Previously constructed notes were substituted so that each S received 2 messages that were approximately either 1, 2, or 4 scale units from her initial position (on an 11-point scale) on this issue. 2 major findings were obtained when Ss were asked to estimate the partner's attitude position: (a) Regardless of the objective discrepancy between their own and their partner's views, most of the Ss in the high-liking condition minimized the difference between themselves and the attractive other person. (b) As expected, a judgmental contrast effect occurred in the low-liking condition when the objective discrepancy between S's and the partner's beliefs was relatively great. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)