Navigating Interdependent Social Situations

Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of social situations. Yet, in everyday life, people rarely have direct knowledge about how their own and others’ decisions influence desired outcomes. The chapter discusses two models of objective differences in interdependent situations and then outlines three theoretical approaches to understanding how people form interdependence perceptions: an experiential learning approach, a mental templates approach, and functional interdependence theory. It then reviews recent innovations in the measurement of interdependence perceptions across situationsIt describes how these theoretical approaches and measures can be used to investigate (a) the cues that people use to infer interdependence, (b) the common forms of interdependence people experience in their daily lives, (c) the importance of future interdependence and biased inferences, and (d) the role of personality in shaping interdependence perceptions. It concludes with discussing how recent research on interdependence perceptions can be integrated with existing empirical findings on taxonomies of psychological situations