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Getting Acquainted

The Role of the Self-Concept and Preconceptions

Gettysburg College

Nancy Cantor

University of Michigan

An experiment was conducted to investigate the role of perceivers' self-concepts and preconceptions about one another on the formation of interpersonal impressions. Pairs of female undergraduates expected to interact in a game-playing situation that demanded coolheadedness and cooperation between partners. One subject (the perceiver) was given bogus information about the other subject (the target), and was then asked to select questions to ask the target in order to facilitate the getting-acquainted process. After the target provided answers to these questions, perceivers' evaluations of targets' anxiety and targets' self-evaluations of anxiety were obtained. In addition, naive judges were asked to evaluate targets, based on the targets' answers to the perceivers' questions. Perceivers' self-concepts in the anxiety domain) predicted the kind of information sought about targets which, in turn, predicted the way in which judges rated targets. Judges' and perceivers' ratings of targets were also influenced by perceivers' false preconceptions about targets. In addition, perceivers' self-concepts seemed to be indirectly related to targets' final self-evaluations.

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