Self-Schemas and Judgments about Others

Abstract

Previous research has shown that self-schemas (cognitive generalizations about the self) influence the processing of information about the self. The present study examined the effects of self-schemas on processing information about other people. I n the first portion of the study, extravert schematics (those having self-schemas for extraversion), introvert schematics (those having self-schemas for introversion), and aschematics (those having neither self-schemas for extra-version nor self-schemas for introversion) were asked to find out about another person. To accomplish this, subjects selected questions from a list of questions that were designed to elicit information about extraversion, introversion, or dimensions unrelated to either. Results supported the hypothesis that people tend to seek information about others that is related to their self-schemas: Extravert schematics selected more extravert questions, and introvert schematics selected more introvert questions. In the second portion of the study, subjects listened to two tape-recorded interviews and then rated the interviewed persons on a number of traits, also indicating their confidence in the ratings. Extravert and introvert schematics were significantly more confident than aschematics only when their ratings were on schema-relevant dimensions. Results of the study are interpreted by suggesting that schematics are “experts” in their schematic domains.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 148 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.