Anticipated Cooperation vs. Competition Moderates Interpersonal Projection

Claudia Toma , Vincent Yzerbyt , Olivier Corneille

Two experiments investigated the impact of anticipated interdependence on people's projection of their characteristics onto an unknown target. After participants had rated themselves on a list of personality traits, they were led to expect a situation of cooperation or competition with another participant and rated this participant on the same list of traits. In both experiments, projection of self-attributed traits was stronger under cooperation than competition. This effect was independent of trait valence, whether defined a priori (Expt 1) or as an idiosyncratic measure (Expt 2). Experiment 2 also revealed that the moderation of interpersonal projection by interdependence was not driven by changes in participants' self-representation. These findings suggest that the anticipated interdependence context influences the way we perceive similarity with unknown others. We discuss possible cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying this effect.

Mots clés: interpersonal projection

Domaines: Psychologie et comportements

Claudia Toma, Vincent Yzerbyt, Olivier Corneille. Anticipated Cooperation vs. Competition Moderates Interpersonal Projection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2009, 46 (2), pp.375. ⟨10.1016/j.jesp.2009.11.005⟩. ⟨hal-00750470⟩