Representations of significant others and the activation of interpersonal scripts

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is a general assumption in psychology that past social relationships and experiences influence presentsocial behaviour. With attachment theory and current social-cognitive theory as conceptual basis, thepresent study focused on the association between past experiences with significant others and the currentprocessing of interpersonal information. By means of a 2x3x4 experimental design the study investigatedthe influence of chronic accessibility and subliminal priming (of significant other representations) on theaccuracy and speed of processing scripted interpersonal information. One hundred and thirty sevenuniversity students took part in two sessions no more than two weeks apart. In session one theycompleted the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Feeny, Noller & Hanrahan, 1994), and provided thenames of positive and negative significant others. According to a median split of the Confidence Scale ofthe ASQ, they were assigned to a chronic positive or a chronic negative group, assuming that theinformation based on predominantly positive or negative experiences with positive or negative significantothers will be chronically more accessible. In session two, in an individual computer task, they weresubliminally primed (33 ms) with a control word or the name of the positive or negative significant other toincrease the accessibility of the appropriate memory structures. They were then asked to read a positive,negative, mixed or ambiguous script of an interpersonal event and complete a memory test of 36interpersonal statements (nine positive, nine negative, nine ambiguous and nine filler statements). Theaccuracy and response time for every statement was recorded, and the response times of accurateresponses for positive and negative scripts were included in the main analysis. Separate univariateanalyses of the differences between positive and negative priming per polarity of chronic group and scriptsupported the priming hypothesis. The average response time of the chronic negative group was fastestwhen they received a negative prime (p = .039), and the positive group was fastest when they received apositive prime (p = .000). The results of a two-way analysis of variance for chronic group and scriptshowed a highly significant interaction effect between chronic group and script (p = .000). When theprimes were congruent to the scripts, the chronic groups were significantly faster in recognisingstatements from a congruent script. The results supported the conjunctive model of priming. Theimplications of these findings for the understanding of the cognitive structures and processes involved inprocessing interpersonal information are discussed, with specific reference to relational schemas andattachment working models. Possible directions for future research as well as the application of the resultsare also described.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University