Convergent Evidence for the Self as a Prototype

Abstract

The present research investigated how the self when viewed as a cognitive prototype, is implicated in the processing of personal information about oneself and others. Fourteen subjects made dichotomous (Yes/No) self-referent (Describes You?) and unknown other-referent (Describes Experimenter?) ratings of personal adjectives (e.g., energetic, prudent) in a situation permitting collection of rating times. For the self-referent task, adjectives which were independently assessed on a 9-point self-rating scale as being extremely like or unlike the self had significantly faster rating times than adjectives which were only moderately prototypical or self-descriptive. This prototypical "inverted-U R T effect" emerged when rating times for judgments about an unknown other were idiographically sorted according to their degree of self-reference for each subject. These findings provided convergent evidence for the self as prototype model. In addition, they also suggest that the self-prototype may serve an embellishing function when the amount of information known about another is minimal.