Impression formation processes are crucial to the health outcomes of a variety of populations, such as present and former mental patients and other stigmatized groups, as they seek education, housing, employment, clinical diagnosis, and social support. The present research addresses the dynamics of impression formation processes that affect such persons, within a comprehensive theoretical framework rooted in social cognition approaches. In this view, impression formation spans a continuum from fully category-based and stereotypic processes to fully attribute-based and individuating processes. The P.I.,s research program examines the informational and motivational conditions of this continuum. Interdependence between perceiver and target is one motivation that encourages more individuating processes, as shown by previously funded work. Interdependent perceivers are motivated to enhance their perceived prediction and control by trying to be accurate about the person on whom they depend. Hence, they attend to and make dispositional inferences about the most informative attributes of their partners; this process results in more variable impressions across perceivers. The current proposal extends this work in three ways. The primary aim of the proposal is to investigate asymmetrical interdependence, that is, the impact of power on impression formation processes. This is theoretically important because powerful perceivers are less motivated by outcome-dependency's pressure toward accuracy, and they are presumably more motivated by autonomous factors, such as their own dispositional proclivities and external situational pressures. Four experiments examine well-established individual difference (i.e rigid thinking, motivation to think, dysphonic thinking, and stereotyping of traditional outgroups) in combination with power. Seven experiments examine the impact of external situational pressures, such as value salience and group norms, on impression formation processes of powerful perceivers. Conversely, it is also theoretically important to study the impression formation processes of subordinates under asymmetrical interdependence, as they are uniquely sensitive to the structure of reward contingencies, as embodied by the powerful person. Hence, they provide the most sensitive test of the basic interdependence hypothesis. Six experiments examine subordinate attention to reward structures and the powerful decisionmakers who control them. The proposal also has two subsidiary but important aims. The first is to improve prediction of impression formation outcomes under interdependence. Given that final impressions become more variable under interdependence, individual differences are hypothesized to predict which perceivers' final impressions are more category based and which more individuating. Eight experiments combine well-established individual differences with cooperative and competitive interdependence. The other subsidiary aim is to examine the boundary conditions of interdependence, namely situations that promote bias rather than accuracy. Two experiments examine several degrees of romantic and task outcome dependency to gauge the impact of self-relevance.
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