Forming an Attitude to an Ambivalent Other: What Information is Considered Relevant?

The study is devoted to the problem of cognitive patterns appear during perception of the Other when receiving uncertain information about his/her Dark Triad traits. The goal is to determine the characteristics of verbal information that falls into the attentional focus, when assessing his/her ambivalent image, and to trace the dynamics of this information under conditions of pre-stimulus exposure. The hypothesis of a higher subjective significance of negative information about the Other, as well as its subjective weakening in conditions of extremely negative pre-stimulus, is being tested. The study involved 406 students from 17 to 32 years old (M = 20.4, SD = 1.56), 114 male and 292 female. The participants were asked to estimate the ambivalent Other who answered the questions of Dark Triad Short Questionnaire, demonstrating alternately “dark” and “light” features, and also to indicate which responses of the object helped to form a final attitude to him. The participants of the two contrasting groups were asked also to estimate images of an extremely “bad” (“dark”) or “good” person perceiving before the target object, while the participants in the basic group were asked to estimate only the ambivalent Other. It was found that negative (not socially approved) expressions of an ambivalent Other, were the matter of the greatest subjective importance for respondents. Besides, the expressions of narcissism attracted the greatest attention, but were less connected with the attitude components than those of psychopathy. In general, the final attitude towards the ambivalent Other reveals weak connections with subjective ideas about its verbal sources. It was shown that an extremely negative pre-stimulus reduced the subjective significance of negative information (p < 0.05), and an extremely positive one did not have such effects. The results are explained in terms of the cognitive concept of the “salience map”, empirical data on the priming effects and Error Management Theory.

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Publication date

01.03.2022

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26435

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GOST	Baleva M., Kovaleva G. Forming an Attitude to an Ambivalent Other: What Information is Considered Relevant? // Psikhologicheskii zhurnal – 2022. – V. 43. – Issue 1 C. 32-41 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://psy.jes.su/S020595920018767-9-1 (circulation date: 29.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S020595920018767-9
MLA	Baleva, M. V., Kovaleva, G. V. "Forming an Attitude to an Ambivalent Other: What Information is Considered Relevant?." Psikhologicheskii zhurnal 43.1 (2022):32-41. DOI: 10.31857/S020595920018767-9
APA	Baleva M., Kovaleva G. (2022). Forming an Attitude to an Ambivalent Other: What Information is Considered Relevant?. Psikhologicheskii zhurnal 43(1), pp.32-41 DOI: 10.31857/S020595920018767-9

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