Eliciting facial affect, motivation, and expectancies in transference: significant-other representations in social relations.
Recent research has demonstrated transference in social perception, defined in terms of memory and schema-triggered evaluation in relation to a new person (S. M. Andersen & A. B. Baum, 1994; S. M. Andersen & S. W. Cole, 1990; S. M. Andersen, N. S. Glassman, S. Chen, & S. W. Cole, 1995). The authors examined schema-triggered facial affect in transference, along with motivations and expectancies. In a nomothetic experimental design, participants encountered stimulus descriptors of a new target person that were derived either from their own idiographic descriptions of a positively toned or a negatively toned significant other or from a yoked control participant's descriptors. Equal numbers of positive and negative target descriptors were presented, regardless of the overall tone of the representation. The results verified the memory effect and schema-triggered evaluation in transference, on the basis of significant-other resemblance in the target person. Of importance, participants' nonverbal expression of facial affect when learning about the target person (i.e., at encoding) reflected the overall tone of their significant-other representation under the condition of significant-other resemblance, providing strong support for schema-triggered affect in transference, through the use of this unobtrusive, nonverbal measure. Parallel effects on interpersonal closeness motivation and expectancies for acceptance/rejection in transference also emerged.
Andersen
S M
SM
Department of Psychology, New York University 10003, USA. andersen@psych.nyu.edu
Reznik
I
I
Manzella
L M
LM
D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D019336:Cognitive Science; D005149:Facial Expression; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008568:Memory; D009042:Motivation; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012938:Social Perception; D014167:Transference, Psychology