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Are we known by the company we keep? Effects of name-droping on first impressions
Abstract
Prior research on impression management has focused more on the kinds of tactics that people use to be perceived by others as likeable and competent than on the effects. Do these tactics actually affect the way others see us? Name‐dropping is an indirect self‐presentational tactic that asserts social closeness between a person who employs the tactic and the individual who is mentioned. In our study an individual mentioned his or her association with tennis champion Roger Federer during a get‐acquainted conversation. The individual was liked less and perceived as less competent when s/he associated her/himself closely with Roger Federer, and was not perceived as more sporty. Perceived manipulativeness mediated the negative effects of name‐dropping on first impressions.
... In either case, it is important to note that the ideas presented in this article, built upon the name-dropping technique, can be used by formal representatives of nations in tech diplomacy activities (Mashiah 2023). In fact, the idea of taking one strong well-known concept or idea and promoting it is part of persuasive communication efforts (Lebherz et al. 2009). But we need to keep in mind that name-dropping is only the final stage; before diplomatic representatives can talk about "the tech place," there are different steps to accomplish. ...
Does every country need its own “Silicon Valley”? This article delves into this question by examining the importance of place and image management. Globally, countries, cities, and regions strive to establish technology hubs, motivated by economic, marketing, and diplomatic factors. This current paper suggests that creating a new localized version of “Silicon Valley” within a country can serve as a powerful marketing tool, both on a domestic and international level. Nations can develop a technological identity and brand by adopting the Silicon Valley (SV) model and strategically projecting tech symbols to maintain this image for stakeholders. Such strategic branding of a tech hub can strengthen a nation’s reputation as a leader in innovation and technology, driving economic growth, fostering global partnerships, attracting investors, and promoting tourism.
... To name-drop can back-fire and damage a person's self-presentation, i.e. have disruptive effects on the evaluation of others when one uses it clumsily to produce a favorable first impression. Precisely this happened in a Swiss study from Lebherz et al. (2009). They made a student introduce himself by mail. ...
The present essay discusses a notorious rhetoric means familiar to (probably) all scholars in the social sciences and humanities including philosophy: name-dropping. Defined as the excessive over-use of authoritative names, I argue that it is a pernicious practice leading to collective disorientation in spoken dis- course. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad vere- cundiam-type fallacy. Insofar this perspective proves to lack contextual sensitivity, name-dropping is portrayed in Goffman’s terms as a more general social practice. By narrowing down the focus to social science and the humanities, the essay emphasizes its function of discursive legitimation. This view, I argue, is incomplete because it overlooks the basic mechanism beneath. Names not only provide legit- imation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points— detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problem- atic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for future inquiries.
... We propose that some consumers can repair their dissatisfaction following overpayment, without intervention from the retailer or otherwise materially Bundoing^the overpayment, by engaging in a conspicuous consumption behavior designed to signal status (Dubois et al. 2012). Specifically, consumers may repair satisfaction with the product by ensuring they mention the price paid to others-a strategy we refer to as Bprice-dropping^(in a similar fashion to Bname-dropping^; Lebherz et al. 2009). Pricedropping is a self-presentation strategy that can be applied to re-appropriate the overpayment 1 into a status signal, with implications for satisfaction. ...
We investigate how mentioning the price paid to others (which we refer to as price-dropping) can be used to assuage the negative experience that occurs when consumers realize they unintentionally overpaid for a product. Specifically, we show that by engaging in price-dropping, consumers re-appropriate the overpayment into a conspicuous consumption signal that improves their satisfaction. Two studies demonstrate that the effect of price-dropping is mitigated when consumers who overpaid have low sensitivity to status cues, and also when the audience of the price-drop is unreceptive to status cues. We discuss how price-dropping has implications for retailer pricing policies and customer experience, along with avenues for future research.
... Carter and Sanna's research was supplemented by two more recent studies that examined the perception formed of indirect impression managers who initiate the delivery of the information regarding their connection to successful others. Both of these studies show that in that case the impression managers are perceived as relatively manipulative (Lebherz, Jonas, & Tomljenovic, 2009;Tal-Or, 2008a). In Lebherz et al.'s (2009) research, people who connected themselves closely to a famous tennis player by using a name-dropping tactic were perceived as less likable, less competent, and not more athletic compared with those who merely claimed to be a fan of his or did not claim any association at all. ...
Two studies compared the perceptions formed about impression managers who enhance themselves indirectly by boasting about their associates’ success to those who directly self-promote by boasting about their own past or present success. Using different populations and contexts, both of these studies predicted and found that indirect self-promotion does not provide the benefits of direct self-promotion, such as being perceived as competent, but does entail the disadvantages of direct self-promotion, such as being perceived as manipulative and unsociable. The discussion centers on the possible reasons for the inadequacy of indirect self-promotion as an impression management tactic.
Purpose
Consumers are increasingly choosing social media over other channels and mechanisms for grievance redressal. However, not all social media grievances elicit a response from businesses. Hence, in this research the authors aim to explore the effect of the complainant's social characteristics and the complaint's social and content characteristics on the likelihood of receiving a response to a grievance from the business on social media.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors build a conceptual model and then empirically test it to explore the effect of the complainant's characteristics and the complaint's characteristics on the likelihood of response from a business on social media. The authors use data of consumer grievances received by an Indian airline operator on Twitter during two time periods – the first corresponding to lockdown during Covid-19 pandemic, and the second corresponding to the resumption of business as usual following these lockdowns. The authors use logistic regression and the hazard rate model to model the likelihood of response and the response delay, respectively, for social media customer grievances.
Findings
Complainants with high social influence are not more likely to get a response for their grievances on social media. While tagging other individuals and business accounts in a social media complaint has negative effect on the likelihood of business response in both the time periods, the effect of tagging regulatory bodies on the likelihood of response was negative only in the Covid-19 lockdown period. The readability and valence of a complaint were found to positively affect the likelihood of response to a social media grievance. However, the effect of valence was significant only in lockdown period.
Originality/value
This research offers insights on what elicits responses from a service provider to consumers' grievances on social media platforms. The extant literature is a plenty on how firms should be engaging consumers on online media and how online communities should be built, but scanty on grievance redressal on social media. This research is, therefore, likely to be useful to service providers who are inclined to improve their grievance handling mechanisms, as well as, to regulatory authorities and ombudsmen.
Existing research on tourism social media users rarely extends beyond their role as appraisers of tourism and hospitality products. Such research fails to identify the different modes of experience and behavior that these users assume in their cyberspace interactions. This article demonstrates that user interactions entail much more than evaluating products. Using data from TripAdvisor, it identifies five additional user roles that define their experience and comportment online: troll, activist, social critic, information seeker, and socialite. Adopting a netnographic approach, these categories are interrogated to provide a more nuanced understanding of the online user experience in tourism social media space. Further, for each role, we glean the implicit uses and gratifications users seek from using the media. It is argued that the combined enactment of these roles creates a rich repository of experiential narratives that tourism businesses and destination managers can tap into for insights into the modern tourism consumer.
Cosmopolitanism has been argued to be a crucial component of peacebuilding, both with regard to its aims as well as its staff. In a universalist-liberal understanding of the concept, cosmopolitanism is the optimal mind frame for peacebuilders to rebuild post-war societies, due to the tolerance, justice-orientation, and neutrality regarding local cleavages that the concept entails in theory. This article argues, however, that cosmopolitanism cannot be understood outside of its social context, therefore requiring sociological empirical analyses. Drawing on three such sociological concepts, namely elite, glocal, and localisable cosmopolitanism, the article analyses empirically through interviews with peacebuilders in Kosovo whether and in which form these international civil servants display cosmopolitan worldviews. The study concludes that while in theory the localisable variant would be best suited to contribute to locally sensitive, emancipatory peacebuilding, this form of cosmopolitanism is absent in practice. Given the novel, exploratory character of this analysis of hitherto uncharted terrain, the article also discusses in detail how the findings were obtained and in how far they are generalisable.
Most of the literature on impression management considers direct tactics such as self-promoting bymentioning personal achievements and ingratiating by complimenting others. These direct tactics can backfire if the target recognizes the hidden motive behind them. Therefore, people often use indirect impression management tactics. Previous research has shown that people promote themselves indirectly by associating themselves with successful others or by magnifying the characteristics of others to whom they are connected. The current research suggests that when the motive is ingratiation, the impression manager highlights the success of a person who is close to the target of ingratiation. The four experiments of the current research documented this tactic and examined its consequences for the impression manager and for the target.
This field study tested whether the basking-in-reflected-glory phenomenon would emerge in a political context. Two days before the general elections in Flanders (Belgium), 3 urban regions were systematically surveyed by 10 observers. These observers unobtrusively registered the addresses of private houses that displayed at least 1 poster (N=482) or 1 removable lawn sign (N= 180) supporting a political party. The day after the elections, the observers checked whether the registered houses still displayed their poster(s) or lawn sign(s). A strongly positive linear relation was found between the proportional win - loss of the various political parties (compared with the previous elections) and the percentage of houses that continued to exhibit the poster(s) or lawn sign(s)in favor of that party: The better the election result, the more houses that still displayed their poster(s) or lawn sign(s). Two complementary processes seem to account for the observations: a tendency to flaunt one's association with a triumphant party (i.e., basking-in-reflected-glory) and a tendency to conceal one's association with a defeated party (i.e., cutting-off-reflected-failure). A follow-up indicated that basking-in-reflected-glory lasted for at least 1 week after the elections.
Stereotype research emphasizes systematic processes over seemingly arbitrary contents, but content also may prove systematic. On the basis of stereotypes' intergroup functions, the stereotype content model hypothesizes that (a) 2 primary dimensions are competence and warmth, (b) frequent mixed clusters combine high warmth with low competence (paternalistic) or high competence with low warmth (envious), and (c) distinct emotions (pity, envy, admiration, contempt) differentiate the 4 competence-warmth combinations. Stereotypically, (d) status predicts high competence, and competition predicts low warmth. Nine varied samples rated gender, ethnicity, race, class, age, and disability out-groups. Contrary to antipathy models, 2 dimensions mattered, and many stereotypes were mixed, either pitying (low competence, high warmth subordinates) or envying (high competence, low warmth competitors). Stereotypically, status predicted competence, and competition predicted low warmth.
In a recent review, Ferris and Judge (1991) indicated that no studies had investigated the relationship between influence behavior and overall career success. In the present study, the effect of influence behavior on career success was hypothesized to depend on the type of tactic employed. Results indicated support for hypotheses
Presents an integrative model of the emergence, direction (assimilation vs. contrast), and size of context effects in social judgment.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
This research examined behavioral styles used by interviewers to confirm their first impressions of job applicants. Three interviewers in a corporate setting formed first impressions based on application blank and test score information. They then conducted autiotaped interviews. Coders independently coded 79 interviews and found that first impressions were related to confirmatory behavior. Interviews followed up positive first impressions, for example, by showing positive regard toward applicants, ''selling'' the company and giving job information, and gathering less information. Applicants' communication style and rapport with interviewers also differed. Significant differences in confirmatory behaviors also occurred among the three interviewers. A number of interviewer behaviors, especially positive regard, were related to applicant behavior in interviews. Although previous studies of expectancy confirmation have produced mixed results, our results suggest that interviewers in natural settings do use confirmatory strategies, underscoring the importance of additional research on ''self-fulfilling prophecies.''
Three studies explored the relationship between participants using different styles of upward influence in formal organizations and their performance evaluations, salaries, and reported stress. In studies of workers, supervisors, and chief executive officers, the following four upward-influence styles were identified through cluster analysis: Shotgun, Tactician, Ingratiator, and Bystander. Male subordinates using a Shotgun style of upward influence were evaluated less favorably by their superiors, earned less, and reported more job tension and personal stress than Tactician subordinates. There was evidence that gender moderated the relation between subordinates' upward-influence styles and superiors' evaluation of their performances.
This chapter outlines the two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on the affective associations or simple inferences tied to peripheral cues in the persuasion context. This chapter discusses a wide variety of variables that proved instrumental in affecting the elaboration likelihood, and thus the route to persuasion. One of the basic postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model—that variables may affect persuasion by increasing or decreasing scrutiny of message arguments—has been highly useful in accounting for the effects of a seemingly diverse list of variables. The reviewers of the attitude change literature have been disappointed with the many conflicting effects observed, even for ostensibly simple variables. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) attempts to place these many conflicting results and theories under one conceptual umbrella by specifying the major processes underlying persuasion and indicating the way many of the traditionally studied variables and theories relate to these basic processes. The ELM may prove useful in providing a guiding set of postulates from which to interpret previous work and in suggesting new hypotheses to be explored in future research.
Copyright © 1986 Academic Press Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Despite the widespread use of exploratory factor analysis in psychological research, researchers often make questionable decisions when conducting these analyses. This article reviews the major design and analytical decisions that must be made when conducting a factor analysis and notes that each of these decisions has important consequences for the obtained results. Recommendations that have been made in the methodological literature are discussed. Analyses of 3 existing empirical data sets are used to illustrate how questionable decisions in conducting factor analyses can yield problematic results. The article presents a survey of 2 prominent journals that suggests that researchers routinely conduct analyses using such questionable methods. The implications of these practices for psychological research are discussed, and the reasons for current practices are reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article reviews the research relevant to negativity and extremity biases in impression formation and discusses that research as it relates to the major theories that explain these biases. We also describe a model for these biases that draws on principles of natural object categorization. This model explains negativity and extremity biases in terms of the perceived diagnosticity of different kinds of cues for alternative categorizations of the stimulus. The model not only accounts for existing evidence regarding negativity and extremity biases but also suggests circumstances (a) in which positivity biases should occur and (b) in which single cues might be sufficient to prompt categorizations resistant to counterevidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
There is a growing body of evidence indicating that people spontaneously make trait inferences while observing the behavior of others. The present article reports a series of 5 experiments that examined the influence of stereotypes on the spontaneous inference of traits. Results consistently showed weaker spontaneous trait inferences for stereotype-inconsistent behavioral information than for stereotype-consistent and stereotype-neutral information. Taken together, the current results suggest that specific spontaneous trait inferences become obstructed by inhibitory processes when behavior is inconsistent with an already activated stereotype. These findings are discussed in relation to stereotype maintenance processes and recent models of attribution in social judgment.
Making a favourable impression on others is an important social task. Indeed since the impact of such impressions is both far-reaching and long-lasting in duration (Baron and Byrne, 1984), accomplishing this task in an effective manner can have important implications for an individual’s career, social relations and personal adjustment. Not surprisingly, most persons are well aware of these ‘high stakes’. Thus they devote considerable attention to mastering the art of successful impression management. In short, they attempt to develop specific skills that assist them in inducing positive reactions among others. Systematic research concerned with impression management suggests that a wide range of tactics can be used for this purpose (cf. Cialdini, 1985; Jones, 1964).
This study investigated impression management tactic use during structured interviews containing both experience-based and situational questions. Specifically, the authors examined whether applicants' use of impression management tactics depended on question type. Results from 119 structured interviews indicated that almost all of the applicants used some form of impression management. Significantly more assertive than defensive impression management tactics were used, and among assertive tactics, applicants tended to use self-promotion rather than ingratiation. However, different question types prompted the use of different impression management tactics. Ingratiation tactics were used significantly more when applicants answered situational questions, whereas self-promotion tactics were used significantly more when applicants answered experience-based questions. Furthermore, the use of self-promotion and ingratiation tactics was positively related to interviewer evaluations.
Making a favourable impression on others is an important social task. Indeed since the impact of such impressions is both far-reaching and long-lasting in duration (Baron and Byrne, 1984), accomplishing this task in an effective manner can have important implications for an individual’s career, social relations and personal adjustment. Not surprisingly, most persons are well aware of these ‘high stakes’. Thus they devote considerable attention to mastering the art of successful impression management. In short, they attempt to develop specific skills that assist them in inducing positive reactions among others. Systematic research concerned with impression management suggests that a wide range of tactics can be used for this purpose (cf. Cialdini, 1985; Jones, 1964).
This review demonstrates that the physical attractiveness stereotype established by studies of person perception is not as strong or general as suggested by the often-used summary phrase what is beautiful is good. Although subjects in these studies ascribed more favorable personality traits and more successful life outcomes to attractive than unattractive targets, the average magnitude of this beauty-is-good effect was moderate, and the strength of the effect varied considerably from study to study. Consistent with our implicit personality theory framework, a substantial portion of this variation was explained by the specific content of the inferences that subjects were asked to make: The differences in subjects' perception of attractive and unattractive targets were largest for indexes of social competence; intermediate for potency, adjustment, and intellectual competence; and near zero for integrity and concern for others. The strength of the physical attractiveness stereotype also varied as a function of other attributes of the studies, including the presence of individuating information.
Impression management, the process by which people control the impressions others form of them, plays an important role in interpersonal behavior. This article presents a 2-component model within which the literature regarding impression management is reviewed. This model conceptualizes impression management as being composed of 2 discrete processes. The 1st involves impression motivation-the degree to which people are motivated to control how others see them. Impression motivation is conceptualized as a function of 3 factors: the goal-relevance of the impressions one creates, the value of desired outcomes, and the discrepancy between current and desired images. The 2nd component involves impression construction. Five factors appear to determine the kinds of impressions people try to construct: the self-concept, desired and undesired identity images, role constraints, target's values, and current social image. The 2-component model provides coherence to the literature in the area, addresses controversial issues, and supplies a framework for future research regarding impression management.
Lexical decision and word-naming experiments were conducted to examine influences of emotions in visual word recognition. Emotional states of happiness and sadness were induced with classical music. In the first two experiments, happy and sad participants (and neutral-emotion participants in Experiment 2) made lexical decisions about letter-strings, some of which were words with meanings strongly associated with the emotions happiness, love, sadness, and anger. Emotional state of the perceiver was associated with facilitation of response to words categorically related to that emotion (i.e. happy and sad words). However, such facilitation was not observed for words that were related by valence, but not category, to the induced emotions (i.e. love and anger words). Evidence for categorical influences of emotional state in word recognition was also observed in a third experiment that employed a word-naming task. Together the results support a categorical emotions model of the influences of emotion in information processing (Niedenthal, Setterlund, & Jones, 1994). Moreover, the result of the word-naming experiment suggests that the effects of emotion are evident at very early stages in cognitive processing.
This chapter illustrates an approach for the study of close relationships, an approach grounded in social-cognitive theory and research and focuses specifically on past relationships with significant others and their role in shaping current social relations. The chapter describes the powerful and multifaceted effects that prior experiences with significant others exert on present-day interpersonal life and also precisely articulates the social-cognitive principles that govern the manner in which this influence of the past on the present occurs. Fundamental to the social-cognitive model of transference is the assumption that mental representations of significant others, developed in numerous encounters with these individuals, are stored in memory, are affectively laden, and are connected with the self in memory via significant-other or relational linkage. The model proposes that transference can be understood in terms of the activation and application of these stored representations to new others in social perception. To understand the occurring of transference, it is important to consider different types of social knowledge that are represented in the memory.
This study examined the intervening role that a perceptual variable, supervisor's perceptions of trust in a subordinate, plays in mediating the direct relationship between influence tactics and performance ratings. Employing a sample of 105 supervisors, the data showed that the effect of the cognitive marking from the subordinate's use of influence tactics is direct and significant on performance ratings for two influence tactics, assertiveness and higher authority. For 3 influence tactics, ingratiation, reasoning, and exchange, perceptions of trust mediated that relationship. Also, the direct effect of perceptions of trust on performance ratings was significant regardless of the influence tactic employed by the subordinate.
This chapter presents an integrated understanding of various impression formation processes. The chapter introduces a model of impression formation that integrates social cognition research on stereotyping with traditional research on person perception. According to this model, people form impressions of others through a variety of processes that lie on a continuum reflecting the extent to that the perceiver utilizes a target's particular attributes. The continuum implies that the distinctions among these processes are matters of degree, rather than discrete shifts. The chapter examines the evidence for the five main premises of the model, it is helpful to discuss some related models that raise issues for additional consideration. The chapter discusses the research that supports each of the five basic premises, competing models, and hypotheses for further research. The chapter concludes that one of the model's fundamental purposes is to integrate diverse perspectives on impression formation, as indicated by the opening quotation. It is also designed to generate predictions about basic impression formation processes and to help generate interventions that can reduce the impact of stereotypes on impression formation.
Prior research has shown that different sources of knowledge activation may combine to trigger transference, the phenomenon whereby a significant-other representation is activated and used to interpret a new person, as assessed in terms of representation-consistent memory about the person (Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995). The central prediction of the present study was that increasing levels of applicability sources of activation would produce corresponding increases in the extent to which significant-other representations are activated and used in social perception, combining with the previously documented chronic accessibility of these representations (Andersen et al., 1995). Applicability levels were manipulated in terms of the degree of featural overlap between a target person and a perceiver's significant-other representation. Across all six applicability levels examined, greater representation-consistent memory was seen on the basis of a significant-other representation relative to several control representations, including a stereotype representation. This finding converges with prior evidence for the chronic readiness of significant-other representations to be activated and used (Andersen et al., 1995). No reliable effects for increasing levels of applicability were found. Methodological and theoretical accounts for the lack of applicability effects are discussed, raising important issues that we hope shed light, and provoke much needed future research, on the role of applicability in knowledge activation and use.
Professional teachers often make counterdefensive attributions for pupil performance-they tend to assume responsibility for student failure and to give the student credit for success. This study examines the possibility that teachers' counterdefensive attributions are self-presentations designed to establish favorable social identities. The study simulates an experiment by Ross et al. (1974) in which teachers were led to believe that they had been successful or unsuccessful in teaching a lesson to a pupil. Simulation observers were assigned to one of ten conditions in a 2 x 5 experiment. Observers learned that a particular teacher either failed or succeeded and offered either no explanation or one of four explanations that varied from highly or moderately defensive to moderately or highly counterdefensive. The moderately counterdefensive attributions corresponded to the mean attributions given by teachers in the Ross et al. study. Consistent with the prediction of the self-presentation analysis, observers rated the moderately counterdefensive teacher significantly more positively than the moderately or highly defensive teacher on traits relevant to professional competence as well as concern for others and overall likability.
This study examines the impressions formed in response to a person's self-presentation. It is suggested that impressions are affected both by the positivity of the information conveyed and by the receivers' expected relative position. The receivers' relative position was defined as the degree of similarity between them and the impression manager in (a) the domain of ability, and (b) relative status. An experiment was conducted in which the two variables and the positivity of self-presentation were manipulated in a 2 x 3 x 2 design. It was found that: (1) Three dimensions underlie subjects' (receivers') impressions-"manipulativeness," "sociability," and "ability." (2) When presentation was positive, the impression manager was rated as positive in ability, but as negative in manipulativeness. (3) The greater the derogative change from subjects' expected relative position inferred from the presentation, the more manipulative the rating of the impression manager. These findings are discussed in terms of impression formation, attraction and tactical self-presentation.
Reactions to other's claims of resposibility were investigated by assessing group members' evaluations of a fellow group member who took high, moderate, or low personal responsibility for a positive or negative outcome. As predicted, individuals whose attribution were self-serving (blaming others for failure or claiming credit for success) were liked less than (1) group members who allocated responsibility equally, and (2) members whose "other-serving" attributions indicated they took the blame for failure or credited others for success. These results suggest that attributions-when exchanged among group members-significantly influence social perceptions and group relations.
A recently developed self-evaluation maintenance model suggests that relative quality of another's performance and the relevance of the performance dimension to one's self-definition will interact in determining how close one will choose to be to that other. Specifically, the better another's performance on a dimension relevant to an individual's self-definition, the more threatening this would be for the individual. Thus the individual should progressively decrease interpersonal closeness toward that other with the other's improving performance. However, when the dimension in question is not relevant to the individual, as the other's performance increases interpersonal closeness should also increase. Male subjects engaged in a question-answering competition with a confederate. The questions dealt with a topic that was important to the subject (high relevance) or not important (low relevance). All subjects were given feedback that had performed at about the 50th centile. The confederate's performance differed across subjects: 20th, 40th, 60th, or 80th centile. Although an affective measure was not influenced by these manipulations, the predicted interaction between relative performance and relevance held for behavioral, behavioroid, and cognitive measures of closeness, but only when the confederate outperformed the subject.
Reactions to the statements made during an informal conversation are likely to be influenced by perceptions of their pragmatic implications (i.e., why the statements occurred) as well as their literal implications for the persons and objects to which they refer. Recipients' sensitivity to a statement's pragmatic meaning may depend on (a) their information processing objectives at the time they encounter the statement and (b) the extent to which the statement violates normative expectations concerning the content and style of messages that are typically transmitted in the social context in which it occurs. These hypotheses are supported by research in which subjects were asked to form impressions of persons on the basis of information exchanged during conversations in which they both did and did not actively participate. The cognitive mediators of the impressions formed in informal conversations are quite different from those that have usually been investigated in previous research on person memory and jud...