Abstract
In social dilemmas, negotiations, and other forms of strategic interaction, mind-reading-intuiting another party's preferences and intentions-has an important impact on an actor's own behavior. In this paper, we present a model of how perceivers shift between social projection (using one's own mental states to intuit a counterpart's mental states) and stereotyping (using general assumptions about a group to intuit a counterpart's mental states). Study 1 extends prior work on perceptual dilemmas in arms races, examining Americans' perceptions of Chinese attitudes toward military escalation. Study 2 adapts a prisoner's dilemma, pairing participants with outgroup targets. Study 3 employs an ultimatum game, asking male and female participants to make judgments about opposite sex partners. Study 4 manipulates perceived similarity as well as counterpart stereotype in a principal-agent context. Across the studies, we find evidence for our central prediction: higher levels of perceived similarity are associated with increased projection and reduced stereotyping.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 96-110 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes |
Volume | 117 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Applied Psychology
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Keywords
- Competition
- Cooperation
- False consensus
- Perceived similarity
- Perceptual dilemma
- Social dilemma
- Social projection
- Stereotyping