The willingness of perceivers to generalize about self and others from observed performance was investigated. In the first experiment, subjects judged the specific memory ability and the global intelligence of self or another after performance on a short-term memory task. Subjects drew strong inferences about the specific memory abilities of both self and others from performance. Global inferences about intelligence, however, were drawn about others but not self The second experiment examined the effects of chronic self-esteem on willingness to generalize about self: High- and low-self-esteem subjects judged their specific and global qualities after performing an anagram task. High-self-esteem subjects drew global inferences about self after good performance but not poor performance, whereas low-self-esteem subjects drew global inferences about self after poor performance but not good performance. The study provides evidence of an important mechanism that may contribute to the maintenance of global self-appraisals and chronic self-esteem.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abramson, L. Y. , Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74.
2.
Bargh, J. A. , Bond, R. N., Lombardi, W. L., & Tota, M. E. (1986). The additive nature of chronic and temporary sources of construct accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 869-879.
3.
Baumeister, R. F. (1982). Self-esteem, self-presentation, and future interaction: A dilemma of reputation. Journal of Personality, 50, 29-45.
4.
Baumeister, R. F. , Tice, D. M., & Hutton, D. G. (1989). Self-presentational motivations and personality differences in self-esteem. Journal of Personality, 57, 547-579.
5.
Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York: Academic Press.
6.
Bradley, G. B. (1978). Self-serving biases in the attribution process: A reexamination of the fact or fiction question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 56-71.
7.
Brown, J. (1986). Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition, 4, 353-376.
8.
Brown, J. D. , Collins, R. L., & Schmidt, G. W. (1988). Self-esteem and direct versus indirect forms of self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 445-453.
9.
Chaiken, S. , & Baldwin, M. W. (1981). Affective-cognitive consistency and the effect of salient behavioral information on the self-perception of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 1-12.
10.
Darley, J. M. , & Fazio, R. H. (1980). Expectancy confirmation processes arising in the social interaction sequence. American Psychologist; 35, 867-881.
11.
Duncan, S. L. (1976). Differential social perception and attribution of intergroup violence: Testing the lower limits of stereotyping of Blacks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 590-598.
12.
Fazio, R. H. (1981). On the self-perception explanation of the over justification effect: The role of salience of initial attitude. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 417-426.
13.
Fazio, R. H. , Lenn, T. M., & Effrein, E. A. (1984). Spontaneous attitude formation. Social Cognition, 2, 217-234.
14.
Fiske, S. T. , & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
15.
Fitch, G. (1970). Effects of self-esteem, perceived performance, and choice on causal attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 311-315.
16.
Gilbert, D. T. (1989). Thinking lightly about others: Automatic components of the social inference process. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 189-211). New York: Guilford.
17.
Gilbert, D. T. , Pelham, B. W., & Krull, D. S. (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 733-740.
18.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
19.
Higgins, E. T. , Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141-154.
20.
Hirt, E. R. (1990). Do I see only what I expect? Evidence for an expectancy-guided retrieval model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 937-951.
21.
Ickes, W. , & Layden, M. A. (1978). Attributional styles. In J. H. Harvey (Ed.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 2, pp. 119-152). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
22.
Janis, I. L. , & Gilmore, J. B. (1965). The influence of incentive conditions on the success of role playing in modifying attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 17-27.
23.
Jones, E. E. , & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 219-266). New York: Academic Press.
24.
Jones, E. E. , & McGillis, D. (1976). Correspondent inferences and the attribution cube: A comparative reappraisal. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. R. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 1, pp. 389-420). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
25.
Jones, S. C. (1973). Self- and interpersonal evaluations: Esteem theories versus consistency theories. Psychological Bulletin, 79, 185-199.
26.
Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
27.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motivational bases. New York: Plenum.
28.
Kruglanski, A. W. , & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: Effects of impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 448-468.
29.
Lord, C. G. , Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098-2109.
30.
McFarlin, D. B. , & Blascovich, J. (1981). Effects of self-esteem and performance feedback on future affective preferences and cognitive expectations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 521-531.
31.
Mikulincer, M. (1986). Attributional processes in the learned helplessness paradigm: Behavioral effects of global attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1248-1256.
32.
Miller, D. T. , & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-225.
33.
Newman, L. S. , & Uleman, J. S. (1989). Spontaneous trait inference. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 155-188). New York: Guilford.
34.
Pasahow, RJ. (1980). The relation between an attributional dimension and learnedhelplessness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 89, 358-367.
35.
Peterson, C. , & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence. Psychological Review, 91, 347-374.
36.
Peterson, C. , Semmel, A., von Baeyer, C., Abramson, L. Y., Metalsky, G. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1982). The Attributional Style Questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6, 287-300.
37.
Rhodewalt, F. (1986). Self-presentation and the phenomenal self: On the stability and malleability of self-conceptions. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Private and public selves. New York: Springer-Verlag.
38.
Robinson, J. P. , & Shaver, P. R. (1973). Measures of psychological attitudes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.
39.
Ross, L. D. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173-220). New York: Academic Press.
40.
Sackheim, H. A. (1983). Self-deception, self-esteem, and depression: The adaptive value of lying to oneself. In J. Masling (Ed.), Empirical studies of psychoanalytical theories (Vol. 1, pp. 101-157). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
41.
Sanbonmatsu, D. M. , Harpster, L. L., & Akimoto, S. A. (1990). A self-serving bias in generalizations about persons from performance. Unpublished manuscript, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
42.
Schlenker, B. R. , Weigold, M. F., & Hallam, J. R.(1990). Self-serving attributions in social context: Effects of self-esteem and social pressure. PersonalityJournal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 855-863.
43.
Seligman, M. E. P. , Abramson, L. Y., Semmel, A., & von Baeyer, C. (1979). Depressive attributional style. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, 242-247.
44.
Shrauger, J. S. (1975). Responses to evaluation as a function of initial self-perceptions. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 581-596.
45.
Shrauger, J. S. , & Lund, A. (1975). Self-evaluation and reactions to evaluations from others. Journal of Personality, 43, 94-108.
46.
Smith, E. R. , & Miller, F. D. (1983). Mediation among attributional inferences and comprehension processes: Initial findings and a general method. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 492-505.
47.
Snyder, M. , & Uranowitz, S. W. (1978). Reconstructing the past: Some cognitive consequences of person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 941-950.
48.
Snyder, M. L. , Stephan, W. G., & Rosenfield, D. (1976). Egotism and attribution. Journalof Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 435-441.
49.
Srull, T. K. , & Wyer, R. S., Jr. (1979). The role of category accessibility in the interpretation of information about persons: Some determinants and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1660-1672.
50.
Swann, W. B., Jr. (1990). To be known or to be adored? The interplay of self-enhancement and self-verification. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 408-448). New York: Guilford.
51.
Swann, W. B., Jr. , & Read, S. J. (1981). Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 1119-1129.
52.
Taylor, S. E. (1975). On inferring one's own attitudes from one's behavior: Some delimiting conditions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 126-131.
53.
Taylor, S. E. , & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
54.
Taylor, S. E. , & Crocker, J. (1981). Schematic bases of social information processing. In E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Social cognition: The Ontario Symposium (Vol. 1, pp.89-134). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
55.
Tennen, H. , & Herzberger, S. (1987). Depression, self-esteem, and the absence of self-protective attributional biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 72-80.
56.
Tennen, H. , Herzberger, S., & Nelson, H. F. (1987). Depressive attributional style: The role of self-esteem. Journal of Personality, 55, 631-660.
57.
Trope, Y. (1986). Identification and inferential processes in dispositional attribution. Psychological Review, 93, 239-257.
58.
Wood, W. (1982). Retrieval of attitude-relevant information from memory: Effects on susceptibility of persuasion and on intrinsic motivation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 798-810.
59.
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47, 245-287.
