Abstract
Recent research has discovered a robust bias towards the processing of self-relevant information in perceptual matching. Self-associated stimuli are processed faster and more accurately than other-associated stimuli. Priming of independent or interdependent self-construal can dynamically modulate self-biases in high-level cognitive tasks. This study explored whether priming of independent/interdependent mindsets can modulate the self-bias effect in perceptual matching. In two experiments, British participants performed a priming task (Experiment 1 using a word-search task—an implicit priming approach, Experiment 2 with a reflective thinking task—an explicit priming method) immediately followed by a perceptual matching task, where they first learned to associate geometric shapes with labels (e.g., circle is you, square is friend, triangle is stranger) and then made judgments on whether shape-label pairs displayed on-screen were the correct associations or not. The analysis in Experiment 1 revealed that priming the interdependent self-construal led to a reduced self-bias effect in perceptual matching in participants who had low bias compared to those with high bias in the neutral/non-priming condition. In contrast, priming the independent self-construal did not modulate the self-bias in perceptual matching. The effects were replicated in Experiment 2. The results indicate that the self is a dynamic concept that can modulate perceptual processing by accessing different cultural contexts.
Highlights
People often prioritize information related to the self [1,2]
Pairwise comparisons showed that reaction times (RTs) for the self-association were significantly faster than both friend (p < 0.001) and stranger associations (p < 0.001), showing the effect of self-bias
The results revealed that incongruent priming—as opposed to congruent priming—successfully reduced self-bias relative to friend in participants with low bias
Summary
People often prioritize information related to the self [1,2] This prioritization of selfrelated information processing (i.e., faster responses and greater accuracy) is known as the self-bias effect and has been observed in many cognitive studies [3,4]. A perceptual matching paradigm developed by Sui and colleagues [10] further confirmed the robustness of self-bias while controlling the effects of stimulus familiarity and complexity. In this task, participants first associated a neutral geometric shape (i.e., triangle, square, or circle) with a label (i.e., self, friend, or stranger), e.g., triangle is you, square is your best friend, and circle is a stranger. The strength of the self-bias may vary across tasks and between individuals [17], it remains unknown if self-bias in perceptual matching can be modulated by independent and interdependent self-construals
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