Person X situation interactionism in self-encoding (I am...when...): implications for affect regulation and social information processing.
Although Person X Situation (P X S) interactionism is central in current social-cognitive conceptions of personality organization, its implications for the encoding of the self remain unexplored. Two studies examined the causal role of P X S interactionism in self-encoding on affect regulation and discriminative social perception. Following failure (Studies 1 and 2) and success (Study 2) ideation, participants were prompted to encode the self either in P X S interactionist terms (I am...when...) or in traitlike unconditional terms (I am...). Interactionist (compared with unconditional) self-encoding led to less affective extremity, suggesting that such encoding may prevent individuals from generalizing specific success and failure experiences to the self as a whole. Study 2 also found that interactionist self-encoding attenuated the endorsement of global stereotypes, suggesting that such encoding may enhance fine-grained social perception as well.
Mendoza-Denton
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R
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
Ayduk
O
O
Mischel
W
W
Shoda
Y
Y
Testa
A
A
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires