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The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Social tuning of the self: consequences for the self-evaluations of stereotype targets
Stacey Sinclair1, Jeffrey Huntsinger, Jeanine Skorinko
1Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. Stacey_Sinclair@virginia.edu
Abstract:
These experiments examined how social interactions with individuals who ostensibly have stereotype-relevant views affect the self-evaluations of stereotype targets. Participants believed they were going to interact, or actually interacted, with a person who ostensibly had stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent views about their social group. Consistent with shared reality theory, participants' self-evaluations (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) and behavior (Experiment 2) corresponded with the ostensible views of the other person when affiliative motivation was high. This occurred even when it was likely to be detrimental to participants' nonaffiliative outcomes (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that self-evaluative shift away from the ostensible views of another person was a function of social distance motives, also consistent with shared reality theory.
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