Recruitment of Exemplars as Reference Points in Social Judgments

We are, therefore they aren’t: Ingroup construal as a standard of comparison for outgroup judgments

“…SpeciWcally, one could argue that even though the ingroup may habitually be employed as a standard of comparison, judgments about a given outgroup could also be inXuenced by comparisons to other outgroups that are similar to this outgroup. With regard to judgments at the individual level, for example, Karylowski, Konarzewski, and Motes (2000) recently demonstrated that self-referential comparison is only one of several comparison processes involved in judgments about other individuals. Notwithstanding these Wndings, however, it is important to note that ingroup comparisons may still play a pervasive role in outgroup judgments.…”

Self as a default target in thinking about traits

“…However, self is not the only social exemplar implicated as a reference point in making judgments about people. In particular, research shows that individuals spontaneously activate their representations of highly familiar others (e.g., best friends) in making judgments about less familiar targets (Andersen & Baum, 1994;Andersen & Cole, 1990;Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995;Karylowski et al, 2000). Those findings raise a question of whether the postulated privileged status of self as a default social exemplar is, indeed, supported by empirical evidence.…”

“…Several lines of research, including attributive projection (Holmes, 1968), attributive contrast (Dunning & Cohen, 1992), false consensus (Marks & Miller, 1987), and attitudinal assimilation-contrast effects (Hovland & Sherif, 1952) have been interpreted in such terms. In addition, recent studies provide more direct, experimental, evidence that people do, in fact, spontaneously access information about themselves when making judgments about others (Dunning & Beauregard, 2000;Dunning & Hayes, 1996;Karylowski, Konarzewski, & Motes, 2000;Mussweiler & Bodenhausen, 2002). However, self is not the only social exemplar implicated as a reference point in making judgments about people.…”

“…Is the self's position, indeed, privileged compared to other highly developed exemplars, such as close friends and significant others? In addressing this question, Karylowski and his associates (Karylowski, 2005;Karylowski et al, 2000) designed a series of experiments looking at the recruitment and utilization of individual-person exemplars, including self and highly familiar others, in making judgments regarding relatively unfamiliar others. A direct comparison between effects associated with the self and effects associated with familiar others indicate that self does not enjoy a privileged position and, in fact, tends to produce effects that are weaker than effects for the familiar-other exemplars.…”

Egocentrism versus protocentrism: The status of self in social prediction.

“…Evidence for protocentrism can be garnered from a recent series of studies (Karylowski, Konarzewski, & Motes, 2000) in which participants judged preferences for one of two activities. In one of the studies, such preferences were judged for self or same-sex friend prior to those for most people.…”