Anticipated cooperation vs. competition moderates interpersonal projection

Toma, Claudia [UCL] Yzerbyt, Vincent [UCL] Corneille, Olivier [UCL]

Two experiments investigated the impact of anticipated interdependence oil people's projection of then characteiistics Onto all unknown tar.-er After participants had rated themselves oil a list of personality traits. they were led to expect a situation of cooperation or competition with another participant and rated this participant oil 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 (Experiment 1) or as all idiosyncratic Measure (Experiment 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 (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.