Are Past and Future Selves Perceived Differently from Present Self? Replication and Extension of Pronin and Ross (2006) Temporal Differences in Trait Self-Ascription

Abstract

We attempted a pre-registered replication and extension of Studies 1, 2, and 3 from Pronin and Ross (2006) regarding the effects of social and temporal distance on trait attributions with an online American Amazon MTurk sample (N = 911). We concluded mixed findings. We found support for the original findings: participants attributed more dispositional traits to others compared to themselves, although with weaker effects (original: f = 0.35, 95% CI [0.09, 0.61]; replication: f = 0.10, 95% CI [0.03, 0.16]). Also, similar to the original, we found that participants tended to attribute a favorable ratio of positive traits when making self-assessments (original: f = 0.77, 95% CI [0.29, 1.25]; replication: f = 0.88, 95% CI [0.50, 1.26]). However, unlike the original, we failed to find support for the core hypothesis that participants would ascribe more dispositional traits to their temporally distant self compared to their present self (original: f = 0.54, 95% CI [0.27, 0.77]; replication: f = 0.02, 95% CI [0.00, 0.06]). Furthermore, in contrast to the original, we found that the positive traits ratio increases with temporal distance (original: f = 0.16, 95% CI [0.00, 0.36]; replication: f = 0.33, 95% CI [0.22, 0.42] in the opposite direction). Contrary to our hypothesis, in an extension, we found that people were more likely to ascribe a greater ratio of positive traits to their friends than to themselves (𝜉 = 0.3, 95% CI [0.21, 0.38]). All materials, data, and code are provided here: https://osf.io/gs2rx/.

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