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The impact of past relationships on interpersonal behavior: Behavioral confirmation in the social-cognitive process of transference
Abstract and Figures
This study extended research on transference in social perception (e.g., S. M. Andersen, I. Reznik, & L. M. Manzella, 1996) into the realm of social behavior by examining behavioral confirmation (e.g., M. Snyder, 1992) in transference. Each perceiver participated in a brief conversation with a naive target participant, who either did or did not appear to resemble the perceiver's own positively or negatively regarded significant other. Trained judges rated positive affect expressed in targets' behavior. As predicted, targets expressed more positive affect in their behavior when they allegedly resembled the perceiver's own positively versus negatively toned significant other, an effect not found in the control condition. This evidence demonstrates behavioral confirmation in transference, suggesting a means by which present relationships may resemble past ones.
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... In doing so, the recipient's perspective is adopted and new aspects of the gift experience are explored, thus opening a new area of inquiry and contributing to a "relational" view of gift giving, which has traditionally focused on the giver-recipient and, only recently, on giver-brand viewpoints (Eggert et al., 2019). Second, literature on interpersonal relationships has typically investigated the process of transference within interpersonal encounters (e.g., when interacting with a "new" relationship partner; Andersen et al., 1995;Baldwin, 1992;Berk & Andersen, 2000;Horberg & Chen, 2010;Kraus & Chen, 2009, Horberg & Chen, 2010Przybylinski & Andersen, 2015). By identifying a consumer-relevant phenomenon in which the process of transference occurs, we suggest that transference might affect a broader spectrum of aspects within individuals' lives, thus paving new avenues for future research. ...
The present work studies a novel perspective on gift‐giving research by examining the effect of the giver–recipient relationship on the recipient–brand relationship. A study examining gift exchanges in real‐life relationships and two laboratory experiments demonstrate that the effect of the recipient’s relationship satisfaction with the gift giver on self‐brand connections and, consequently, on brand‐related behaviors is conditional on the durability of the gift. The findings are robust to manipulating the durability of the same product category and using durable and nondurable categories of the same (actual or fictitious) brand. This research offers important implications for managers who position their brands as desirable gifts.
... This effect is even found in the type of facial expressions made by participants when reading a description; facial affect is positive when the significant other target is positive, negative when the significant other target is negative, and no effect is found with neutral, control targets (Andersen et al., 1996). When engaged in conversations with a target that resembled a significant other, participants were judged as displaying more positive behavior toward the positively valenced target and more negative behavior toward the negatively valenced target (as assessed via tone of voice and emotional expressions; Berk & Andersen, 2000). ...
Previous research examining transference – which posits people draw on past experiences with close others to inform novel interactions – has found that people attribute qualities to and express preferences for novel targets based on their similarity to significant others. However, classic tasks for testing transference required multiple sessions over many weeks, limiting the test of this process to relatively small, college student samples. The purpose of the current study (N = 532, Mage = 34.81, SD = 9.83, 61.47% Men, 63.35% White) was to create an online version of a transference task administered in one session and replicate the effect of transference with a larger sample of participants across the lifespan, and test whether targets resembling parents and ex-partners were preferable to control targets. The effects of transference and preference were replicated in the online version of the transference task. We also found preliminary evidence that the effects of transference and preference were slightly stronger in older individuals and secure individuals, albeit the effects were small. Results are discussed in the context of how individuals use previous and existing relationships to guide their behavior in new relationships.
... The volume of studies that have focused on ecological systems theory (EST; Davison & Birch, 2001;Holt, Tamminen, Black, Sehn, & Wall, 2008;Limstrand, 2008). The theory holds that children's sports participation is affected by a series of environmental systems around the person, which consist of the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem (Berk & Andersen, 2000). For junior school students, parental socioeconomic status (SES; Ryan Dunn et al., 2016), parental support (Knight & Holt, 2014), peer support (Sanz-Martí, 2020), school sports facilities and rules , community and society (Shen et al., 2018) are all important factors putting an influence on their participation in sports activities. ...
Socioeconomic status (SES) is an important factor contributing to health inequality. This study aimed to investigate factors that predict junior school students' sports participation, identify the mechanisms underlying transmission of social resources and assess the mediating effects of classmate support and parental involvement on the relationship between parental SES and children's sports participation. 4829 males and 4536 females (mean age = 13.56 years, standard deviation = 0.686 years) participated in the study. Multivariate regression was adopted to analyze the determinants of junior school students' sports participation and multiple mediation analyses were used to analyze the hypothesized model. The results indicated that parental SES is significantly and directly correlated with junior school students' sports participation. In addition, parental SES has a significant indirect effect on sports participation through classmate support and parental involvement. Furthermore, the mediation effect of classmate support on the association between parental SES and sports participation is stronger than that of parental involvement. To promote and facilitate the participation of junior school students', strategies should be developed by government and social workers to strengthen classmate support and parental involvement.
... Namely, contextual cues not only work to activate a sense of self, but different cues can affect which version of the self is activated [46,47]. For instance, cues in a family setting can elicit affective, motivational, and behavioral responses associated with one's "family-oriented self," and this activation of the relational self can spill over to a different context [46,[48][49]. Therefore, it is possible that e-pledgers became more committed because it activated the relational self. ...
Prosocial organizations increasingly rely on e-pledges to promote their causes and secure commitment. Yet their effectiveness is controversial. Epitomized by UNICEF’s “Likes Don’t Save Lives” campaign, the threat of slacktivism has led some organizations to forsake social media as a potential platform for garnering commitment. We proposed and investigated a novel e-pledging method that may enable organizations to capitalize on the benefits of e-pledging without compromising on its mass outreach potential. In two pilot studies, we first explored whether and why conventional e-pledges may not be as effective as intended. Building on those insights, we conducted one field and two lab experiments to test our proposed e-pledge intervention. Importantly, the field study demonstrated the effectiveness of the intervention for commitment behavior across a 3-month period. The laboratory experiments provided a deeper and more refined mechanism understanding of the effect and ruled out effort, novelty, and social interaction mindset as alternative explanations for why the intervention may be effective. As technological innovations continue to redefine how people interact with the world, this research sheds light on a promising method for transforming a simple virtual acknowledgment into deeper commitment—and, ideally, to action.
... This resemblance leads to automatic activation of the important-other representation that then influences one's sense of self, emotions, and behavior toward that person. In a seminal program of research, Andersen and Chen (2002) and Andersen and Przybylinski (2012) showed that transference is quite common and has important downstream consequences on interpersonal perception and interactions, in some cases leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which individuals elicit responses consistent with the important-other representation (e.g., Berk & Andersen, 2000). Of particular relevance for this review, it has also been shown that transference can occur for more mixed or ambivalent relationships (Berenson & Andersen, 2006;Berk & Andersen, 2008). ...
The protective influence of social relationships on health is widely documented; however, not all relationships are positive, and negative aspects of relationships may be detrimental. Much less is known about the relationships characterized by both positivity and negativity (i.e., ambivalence). This article provides a theoretical framework for considering the influence of ambivalent relationships on physical health, including reasons why ambivalence should be considered separately from relationships characterized as primarily positive (supportive) or primarily negative (aversive). We introduce the social ambivalence and disease (SAD) model as a guide to understanding the social psychological antecedents, processes, and consequences of ambivalent relationships. We conclude by highlighting gaps in the literature and features of the SAD model that may serve as a guide to future research on potential health-relevant pathways of ambivalent relationships.
... The projection of working models of mother onto new relationships can be explained in terms of a social-cognitive process that Andersen and colleagues, following Freud, called transference (e.g., Andersen & Chen, 2002;Chen & Andersen, 1999). When a representation of a significant other is implicitly primed by incidental cues or activated by resemblance cues in a new relationship partner, this representation will affect the way in which the perceiver responds to the new partner (e.g., Berk & Andersen, 2000). Moreover, since representations of significant others are linked to self-representations within an associative semantic network (e.g., Andersen & Chen, 2002;Bowlby, 1973), priming a significant-other representation is likely to also activate the associated self-representation, which in turn will bias self-appraisals within the new relationship (e.g., Kraus & Chen, 2009). ...
Objectives:
The main goal of these studies is to provide an experimental test of a core hypothesis based on attachment theory: Working models of mother are active in adults' minds and can bias their views of self and romantic partners.
Method:
In two studies, we conducted clinical interviews to identify positive and negative core traits that participants used to describe their mothers. We then implicitly primed either positive or negative traits extracted from the interviews and compared this priming condition to control conditions in which we primed either positive or negative control traits (traits that described the mother of another study participant). Following this manipulation, we assessed participants' self-appraisals (Study 1) and explanations of their romantic partner's hurtful behaviors (Study 2).
Results:
Priming with one's mother's positive traits led to more positive views of self and romantic partner (compared with the effects of priming with positive control traits). In contrast, as compared to negative control traits, the priming of one's mother's negative traits led to less positive views of self and romantic partner.
Conclusions:
Findings support the hypothesis that working models of mother play a causal role in shaping adults' representations of self and romantic partners.
p>There is an urgent need to understand the factors that can influence health and well-being in later years; one such factor is the level of unfavourability adults associate with their own ageing and future old age. Given the potential for age-associated attitudes to impact adversely on health, particularly when negative, it was surprising that so little research has been carried out in this field. This thesis contributes to current knowledge in three main ways: by exploring, measuring and explaining adults’ attitudes to potentially negative and threatening aspects of their own ageing and future old age. Empirical research is reported from four main studies involving more than 3000 participants, including samples recruited personally from major cities in both the UK and the US. In exploring age-associated attitudes, results suggest: a) that negative attitudes can be understood in relation to the level of threat adults associate with their own future old age, b) that those threats cross physical, social and psychological aspects of later life, and c) that such threats can be further understood in terms of the ability of the individual to minimise losses, manage constraints and create positive gains. Replicated across sample groups, results also indicate that the ten new measures developed through this thesis do make a valuable contribution to the current field because: 1) a number of researchers have noted the paucity and inadequacy of measures in this field (e.g. Wullschleger et al, 1996), 2) the newly developed measures are short, easy to score and simple to interpret, and 3) replicated across sample groups, these measures have good psychometric properties, including good internal reliability and validity. Finally, results indicate that attachment-related variables provided the best explanation for age-associated attitudes; specifically, a model is proposed consistent with the view that experiences in early relationships influence current representations of self and others and current coping strategies, which in turn influence negative age-associated attitudes. Rival variables such as neuroticism and expected financial status did not add to the fit of the model.</p
The author describes the evolution of theory and practice at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. The core concepts at the Institute have included the importance of unconscious fantasy, conflict and compromise theory, transference and countertransference, and defense analysis. In recent years, a variety of contemporary analytic theories have been incorporated into the theory and practice of the Institute. The importance of systematized research to theory development and practice is stressed.
L’intuition originelle de Freud sur le transfert (à savoir que nous répétons dans le présent certains schémas relationnels clés du passé) est désormais confirmée par des découvertes issues de recherches socio-cognitives récentes, qui montrent que le transfert est un processus omniprésent dans la vie quotidienne, et pas seulement dans le cadre thérapeutique ou dans les relations avec les figures parentales primaires. Comprendre ces manifestations du transfert nous aide à donner du sens aux schémas transactionnels de nos clients, mais aussi à travailler sur les représentations self-autre, conscientes ou inconscientes, qui s’immiscent dans notre travail de psychothérapeute. Le modèle des états du moi de Scilligo offre une méthode pour analyser le transfert en tant que processus socio-cognitif à la fois normal et modifiable.
Purpose
While within-firm service failure and recovery have been studied extensively, the context in which a service failure at one firm “spills over” and provides an opportunity for another entity, an external firm, to recover a customer has received limited attention. This study aims to examine how the extent of a service failure plays a role in how external firms should shape their recovery efforts, and how customers’ evaluations of the recovering firm and their feelings of unhappiness are affected.
Design/methodology/approach
A pretest conducted on MTurk gauged participants’ perceptions of equitability of the external firm’s recovery effort. In the main study, a 3 × 3 between-subjects experiment examined the effects of failure extent and external recovery type on evaluations of the recovering firm and reduced feelings of unhappiness.
Findings
It is found that equity judgments remain consistent in the external recovery context; transferred negative affect is able to be mitigate only in low-failure scenarios, and customers’ evaluations of the external firm increase only in high-failure scenarios.
Research limitations/implications
The use of hypothetical scenarios, as opposed to the employment of a field study, is the primary limitation of the study.
Originality/value
This research finds that external firms can reap the benefits of another firm’s service failure by offering no-cost recoveries, rather than ones that carry some form of cost.
