Transference in social perception: The role of chronic accessibility in significant-other representations.

Abstract

Research has shown that the activation and application of a significant-other representation to a new person, or transference, occurs in everyday social perception (S. M. Andersen & A. Baum, 1994; S. M. Andersen & S. W. Cole, 1990). Using a combined idiographic and nomothetic experimental paradigm, two studies examined the role of chronic accessibility of significant-other representations in transference. After learning about 4 fictional people, 1 of whom resembled a significant other, participants' recognition memory was assessed. Both studies showed greater false-positive memory in the significant-other condition, relative to control, even in the absence of priming. Study 2 showed that although the effect was greater when the significant-other representation was concretely applicable to the target information, it occurred even when no such applicability was present. Results implicate the chronic accessibility of significant-other representations in transference. Mental representations of significant others serve as storehouses of information about important individuals from one's life. Interestingly, these representations can also be triggered by a new person and applied to this person in the context of everyday interpersonal relations (Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen & Cole, 1990). When a new person activates a representation of a significant other, the person may come to be remembered as having qualities that he or she does not possess because these qualities describe the significant other. We propose that transference is best defined in terms of this exact process-in which a perceiver "goes beyond the information given" about a new person by inferentially filling in the blanks about him or her (Bruner, 1957; see also Andersen & Glassman, in press). In the process, the truth of what was learned at encoding becomes confused with what was simply inferred on the basis of the significant-other representation (see also Johnson, Hastroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Johnson & Raye, 1981), such that false-positive memory is more likely to emerge. Moreover, by means of the basic mechanism of schema-triggered affect (Fiske & Pavelchak, 1986), the newly encountered person may also come to be evaluated in a manner consistent with the representation (Andersen & Baum, 1994).

The Relationship between Ideal Couple Standards and Marital Satisfaction

“…Reacţia la trăsăturile observabile evidenţiază atractivitatea fizică (White, 1980), (Regan, 1998) ce angajează raporturi interpersonale (Abel, & Watters, 2005), (Baron & Byrne, 1997), replica simbolică adresată partenerului reflectând transferul identitar simbolic proiectat asupra celui evaluat (Andersen et al, 1995).…”

Passion and Compassion: Psychology of Kin Relations Within and Beyond the Family

“…One study found that people who tend to trust their intuitions tend to make stronger implicit associations between an attitudinally similar stranger and "family" concepts, but not the broader category of "pleasant" concepts (Park & Schaller, 2005). Social psychological studies have shown that people possess rich mental representations of significant individuals (e.g., parent, sibling, spouse), and when presented with a novel target who resembles a significant individual, information processing of the target is influenced by those existing representations (Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995). For example, after meeting a person who reminds me of my brother, I might mistakenly remember that the person likes to watch science fiction films because my brother does.…”

Is Leadership Part of Me? An Identity Approach to Understanding the Motivation to Lead

“…First, because being a leader is socially attractive (Hogg, 2001), leaders are often scrutinized by employees who try to decipher their behavior (Lord, Brown, & Freiberg, 1999). Second, previous studies suggest that aspects of a follower's self-concept can be activated by the leader and that this information strongly guides self-perceptions and reactions (e.g., Andersen et al, 1995;Ritter & Lord, 2007). Importantly, the identity (Harré, 1983) and social comparison (Festinger, 1954) literature also suggests that self-comparisons with successful others trigger motivation to acquire leadership skills, especially if the individual perceives some similarity with the subject of comparison (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007;Greenberg et al, 2007, Kilduff, 1990.…”

“…Therefore, when evaluating their own capacities for leadership positions, people usually use specific individuals who already made it (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007). Research has shown that the alignment of the self with the leadership role in terms of skills, knowledge and behaviors occurs, to a large extent, through these upward comparisons with specific individuals or role models (Gibson, 2003) that are particularly important to identify specific knowledge (Andersen et al, 1995), understand the idiosyncratic behaviors and skills associated with the role (Bandura, 1977), and look for manifest signs of effective performance and calibrate someone's capabilities to succeed (Greenberg, Ashton-James, & Ashkanasy, 2007).…”

“…Research differentiates between self-comparisons with particular individuals occupying leadership roles with whom people interact to a certain extent in their daily life (i.e., a previous supervisor or a senior manager that was influential to the person in the past or still is at present) (i.e., self-exemplar role comparisons) and self-comparisons with more abstract, general representations of the leadership role category (i.e., prototypical role comparisons) (e.g., Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995;Andersen & Chen, 2002;Smith & Zarate, 1990).…”