Two studies explored the application of feature-matching and cancellation models to self-other comparisons. College participants completed a questionnaire about their religious behaviors and saw another questionnaire supposedly completed by another student. Participants in Study 1 (N = 114) who were explicitly provided direction of comparison instructions showed a direction of comparison effect, rating the person whose questionnaire they saw last as more religious. Participants in Study 2 (N = 103), who were not given explicit direction of comparison instructions, did not. Most important, in both studies, the extent to which self and other overlapped on shared features affected self- and other judgments asymmetrically. Participants appeared to cancel out behaviors shared by the self and other when rating the other person (i.e., they gave lower ratings when there was more overlap) but not when rating themselves.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.