Eliciting facial affect, motivation, and expectancies in transference: significant-other representations in social relations

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology Vol. 71; no. 6; p. 1108
• Main Authors: Andersen, S M, Reznik, I, Manzella, L M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.12.1996
• Subjects: Affect; Analysis of Variance; Cognitive Science; Facial Expression; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Female; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Memory; Motivation; Regression Analysis; Social Perception; Transference (Psychology)
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.6.1108

Recent research has demonstrated transference in social perception, defined in terms of memory and schema-triggered evaluation in relation to a new person (S. M. Andersen & A. B. Baum, 1994; S. M. Andersen & S. W. Cole, 1990; S. M. Andersen, N. S. Glassman, S. Chen, & S. W. Cole, 1995). The authors examined schema-triggered facial affect in transference, along with motivations and expectancies. In a nomothetic experimental design, participants encountered stimulus descriptors of a new target person that were derived either from their own idiographic descriptions of a positively toned or a negatively toned significant other or from a yoked control participant's descriptors. Equal numbers of positive and negative target descriptors were presented, regardless of the overall tone of the representation. The results verified the memory effect and schema-triggered evaluation in transference, on the basis of significant-other resemblance in the target person. Of importance, participants' nonverbal expression of facial affect when learning about the target person (i.e., at encoding) reflected the overall tone of their significant-other representation under the condition of significant-other resemblance, providing strong support for schema-triggered affect in transference, through the use of this unobtrusive, nonverbal measure. Parallel effects on interpersonal closeness motivation and expectancies for acceptance/rejection in transference also emerged.