Different selves have different effects: Self-activation and defensive social comparison

Schwinghammer, Saskia; Stapel, Diederik A.; Blanton, Hart

doi:10.1037/e633942013-632

Cited by 27 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Individuals can have a number of motivations for seeking and processing self-relevant information (Sedikides & Strube, 1995;Taylor, Neter, & Wayment, 1995) and both the information-processing motive and the type of self-conception that is active in a particular situation will influence how social comparison information is processed (Schwinghammer, Stapel, & Blanton, 2006;Stapel & Schwinghammer, 2004). Our results strongly suggest that self-enhancement concerns are associated with stretching and shrinking.…”

Section: Implications Of the Dimension Manipulation Effectsupporting

confidence: 50%

Motivated dimension manipulation in the processing of social comparison information

Kiviniemi

Snyder²,

Johnson

2008

Self and Identity

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Social comparisons allow individuals to gain knowledge of their traits and abilities. Individuals frequently have self-enhancement goals when processing self-relevant information. This study provided an initial test of the hypothesis that individuals engaging in social comparisons would manipulate cognitive representations of themselves and comparison targets in ways that allowed them to self-enhance. Participants were presented with upward, downward, or no social comparison information about their intelligence. They then completed a task, designed for this program of research, which assessed how participants altered cognitive representations of social comparison information. Results showed that participants altered cognitive representations in ways associated with greater perceived similarity to upward comparison targets and less similarity to downward comparison targets. This effect was moderated by self-esteem, suggesting that the process of manipulating cognitive representations of self-relevant information may serve selfenhancement motives. Understanding the cognitive processes involved in social comparisons is an important step towards accounting for the interplay of motivation and cognition in determining the outcomes individuals experience from social comparisons.

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Section: Implications Of the Dimension Manipulation Effectsupporting

confidence: 50%

Motivated dimension manipulation in the processing of social comparison information

Kiviniemi

Snyder²,

Johnson

2008

Self and Identity

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“…We expect this to be the case based on an analogous set of research that aims to answer the question whether the valence of stereotypes change when people stereotype to satisfy different goals (Van den Bos & Stapel, 2008). This research departs from the observation that stereotypes can serve multiple goals, most notably self-enhancement (Fein & Spencer, 1997;Schwinghammer, Stapel, & Blanton, 2006;Tesser, 1988) and comprehension goals (Fiske & Taylor, 1991;Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000;Strack, 2004 …”

Section: Accepted Manuscript Power and Metastereotypimentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking through the eyes of the powerful

Lammers

Gordijn

Otten

2008

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

115

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Across four experiments, we test the idea that power decreases metastereotyping, and that this effect is mediated by reduced perspective taking. Metastereotypes refer to the beliefs that members of group A share about the stereotypes that members of specific outgroup B typically have about ingroup A. We propose that the dominant psychological orientation of the powerless is aimed at seeing how others see them. In an intergroup situation they are therefore inclined to activate and apply metastereotypes. In the first three experiments we consistently find that low power leads to more metastereotyping than high power and control (in Experiment 3). Specifically, we show this effect with three different manipulations of power, namely a role manipulation (Experiment 1), experiential priming (Experiment 2), and parafoveal priming (Experiment 3). In the fourth experiment we uncover the mediating role of perspective taking. Together these findings provide strong evidence that powerlessness leads to metastereotyping

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“…In the neutral condition, we also asked participants to actively describe a neutral concept, as we wanted to avoid the case that the difference between the social responsibility condition and the neutral condition could also be explained by having asked participants to do something in the former condition and to do nothing in the latter condition. Therefore, we used a task that has been shown to elicit neutral thoughts and affect; that is, we asked participants to describe the qualities of a chair (taken from Schwinghammer, Stapel, & Blanton, 2006). In this condition, the difference in allocations between elected and appointed leaders (as demonstrated in Experiment 2) is expected to emerge.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This fi ller task constituted the priming procedure aimed at making accessible the concept of social responsibility or the concept of a chair (= neutral condition; cf. Schwinghammer et al, 2006). More precisely, participants wrote down either a description of the concept social responsibility or a description of a chair.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leader—Follower Effects in Resource Dilemmas: The Roles of Leadership Selection and Social Responsibility

Cremer

Dijk

2008

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

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Previous research on the allocation of scarce resources shows that when people are assigned labels of leader or follower in their group, leaders allocate more of the scarce resources to themselves than followers do. In three laboratory studies, we examine the idea that how people are selected for the leader role (i.e. election or appointment) determines whether leaders take more or equal shares (relative to followers) from a common resource. In a first experiment, we show that participants were more accepting of norm violating behavior by an appointed versus elected leader. In a second experiment, we show that when participants were assigned to a leader or follower role, allocations of appointed leaders differed significantly from those of elected leaders and followers, whereas there was no difference between the two latter conditions. Moreover, elected leaders were shown to feel more social responsibility than both appointed leaders and followers. In a final experiment, we show that when participants were primed with the concept of social responsibility (relative to a neutral condition) no difference in allocations between appointed and elected leaders emerged.

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Different selves have different effects: Self-activation and defensive social comparison

Cited by 27 publications

References 14 publications

Motivated dimension manipulation in the processing of social comparison information

Motivated dimension manipulation in the processing of social comparison information

Looking through the eyes of the powerful

Leader—Follower Effects in Resource Dilemmas: The Roles of Leadership Selection and Social Responsibility

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