The Influence of Self vs. Other Feeling upon Impression Formation

The present study investigates the differential effects of chronical feeling toward self or others upon trait accessibility and trait applicability to behavioral events. Self and other feeling scales were constructed and administered to 127 (Study I ) and 112 (Study II) undergraduates, to choose subjects with highly positive (PSF) or highly negative self feeling (NSF), and those with highly positive (POF) or highly negative other feeling (NOF). In order to assess trait accessibility, subjects were given a word completion task where they were asked to fill in the blanks of hostile (Study I) or friendly words(Study II). In order to assess trait applicability, they were administered an impression formation task where they rated a target person on several trait scales based on a paragraph of behavioral descriptions that was ambiguous regarding hostility (Study I) or friendliness (Study II). Study I revealed that negative self feeling did increase not absolute but relative degree of accessibility of hostile concepts. This negativity bias in concept accessibility, however, did not yield negatively biased impressions. Negative other feeling increased absolute accessibility of hostile concepts but discounted negativity of impressions. Study II showed that positive self feeling increased accessibility of friendly concepts and yielded positively biased impressions, whereas positive other feeling did not produce any clear-cut effects. The results suggest that self vs. other feeling might influence cognitive processes in different ways