Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like

Tesser, Abraham; Smith, Jonathan E.

doi:10.1016/0022-1031(80)90060-8

Cited by 168 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Thus, just as the self-relevance of a domain is a key variable that prompts defensive self-esteem repair in the face of threatening social comparisons (Tesser & Smith, 1980), we suggest that the meta-cognitive processes we tested in Study 1 are only likely to be prompted in situations framed as being self-relevant, because this is when people will be motivated to evaluate themselves online during their performance. When a task is irrelevant to one's sense of self-integrity, there should be little motivation to engage in performance monitoring processes to assess how one is doing (Forbes, Schmader, & Allen, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

A Metacognitive Perspective on the Cognitive Deficits Experienced in Intellectually Threatening Environments

Schmader

Forbes

Zhang

et al. 2009

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

107

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Imagine two students taking the Graduate Record Exam with the hopes of getting into graduate school. Given the high stakes, both students experience nervous energy as they begin the test. However, one student feels confident about his performance, allowing him to interpret his arousal as a sign that the test is a challenge. The other student is plagued by self-doubt, leading her to assume that her arousal signals impending failure. Although both might have equivalent ability, the tendency of the latter student to meta-cognitively interpret her nerves in light of self-doubt could interfere with cognitive processing and impair her performance. The present paper reports three studies that test how such meta-cognitive processes function among students likely to experience self-doubt in intellectual testing situations due to their membership in a negatively stereotyped group.A great deal of research has demonstrated that subtle reminders of being negatively stereotyped can impair performance on complex cognitive tasks (Steele & Aronson, 1995;Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002). Although the processes underlying these impairments remained enigmatic for nearly a decade, theory and research has now identified a host of factors that can work individually or in concert to hurt the performance of stereotyped targets. In a recent process model of the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat, Schmader, Johns andForbes (2008) argue that stereotype threat leads individuals to monitor the situation for signs that they might be confirming the stereotype in order to avoid doing so. However, this avoidance motivation biases the stereotyped target toward interpreting ambiguous cues as potential

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

A Metacognitive Perspective on the Cognitive Deficits Experienced in Intellectually Threatening Environments

Schmader

Forbes

Zhang

et al. 2009

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

107

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show abstract

“…One focus of self-esteem maintenance theory (Tesser, 1988) is how people respond to potentially threatening social comparisons. In performance settings, they behave in ways that maintain their self-esteem, for example, by sabotaging the performance of close others (rather than that of strangers) on important intellectual tasks (Tesser & Smith, 1980). Moreover, supporting the idea of interchangeability or fluidity in self-defensive processes, aYrmation of an important value reduces people's tendency to sabotage the performance of friends working on intellectual tasks (Tesser & Cornell, 1991).…”

Section: Self-affirmation Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory

Sherman¹,

Cohen²

2006

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

1,193

1,423

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“…Only when the dimension is relevant to the self will the upward comparison be painful and increase competitive behavior. For example, Tesser and Smith (1980) paired acquainted or unacquainted individuals in an interactive word identification task and told them task performance was either relevant or irrelevant to a valued dimensionverbal skill. Results showed that participants who thought performance was relevant to their own verbal skill gave more difficult clues to their partners than did participants who thought that performance was irrelevant.…”

Section: Social Comparison and Competitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ranks and Rivals: A Theory of Competition

Garcia

Tor

Gonzalez³

2006

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

198

171

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Social comparison theories typically imply a comparable degree of competition between commensurate rivals who are competing on a mutually important dimension. However, the present analysis reveals that the degree of competition between such rivals depends on their proximity to a meaningful standard. Studies 1 to 3 test the prediction that individuals become more competitive and less willing to maximize profitable joint gains when they and their commensurate rivals are highly ranked (e.g., #2 vs. #3) than when they are not (e.g., #202 vs. #203). Studies 4 to 6 then generalize these findings, showing that the degree of competition also increases in the proximity of other meaningful standards, such as the bottom of a ranking scale or a qualitative threshold in the middle of a scale. Studies 7 and 8 further examine the psychological processes underlying this phenomenon and reveal that proximity to a standard exerts a direct impact on the basic unidirectional drive upward, beyond the established effects of commensurability and dimension relevance.

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Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like

Cited by 168 publications

References 6 publications

A Metacognitive Perspective on the Cognitive Deficits Experienced in Intellectually Threatening Environments

A Metacognitive Perspective on the Cognitive Deficits Experienced in Intellectually Threatening Environments

The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory

Ranks and Rivals: A Theory of Competition

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