Abraham Tesser
Biographic Data
| ID | 175283 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abraham Tesser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abraham |
| FAMILY NAME | Tesser |
| SIGNATURE | TESSER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 67 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 650 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
The Construction of Social Judgments
Researchers have been addressing social judgment from a cognitive perspective for more than 15 years. Within recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that many of the models and assumptions initially adopted are in need of revision. The chapters in this volume point out where the original models and assumptions have fallen short, and suggest directions for future research and theorizing. The contributors address issues related to j…
Constructing a Niche for the Self: A Bio-Social, PDPApproach to Understanding Lives
Viewing selves as negotiating idiosyncratic life niches may be useful in understanding life change. When less resistant self attributes and environmental presses conflict, the self tends to reflect the environment; when more resistant self attributes (e.g., those high in heritability) and environmental presses conflict, the individual will tend to change his or her personal environment in ways that better afford the expression of those self-attri…
Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intraindividual Processes
When does performance feedback prompt complementarity in romantic relationships
Two studies addressed five issues concerning complementarity in romantic relationships and suggest that complementarity deserves a new look. Dating couples ( N = 28 couples) and married couples ( N = 43). were given performance feedback to assess effects on self and perceived partner relevance. We found that comparison with a partner but not comparison with a stranger prompted complementarity (Study 1). Comparison resulted in complementarity and …
Self-activation increases social comparison
In a series of studies it was demonstrated that activating the self is sufficient to increase social comparison tendencies. Treating the relevant constructs as individual differences that can be measured as well as contextual variables that can be manipulated, the authors show that individual differences in self-activation are correlated with interest in social comparison information and that manipulations of self-activation cause changes in inte…
On the Confluence of Self-Esteem Maintenance Mechanisms
A case is made for the substitutability of self-esteem regulation mechanisms such as cognitive dissonance reduction, self-affirmation, and social comparison. For example, a threat to self via cognitive dissonance might be reduced by a favorable social comparison outcome. To explain substitution, it is suggested that self-esteem regulation mechanisms inevitably produce affect and that affect mediates the completion of various self-esteem regulatio…
Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity
"This book offers a rendering of developments in a growing area of social psychology - the scientific study of self and identity. In each chapter, leading scholars describe their cutting-edge work on such topics as self-dynamics, self-structure, impression management, intimate relationships, and the interplay between self-motives and consistency motives. Do individuals with low self-esteem benefit from intimate relationships? What is the relation…
Life events, relationship quality, and depression: An investigation of judgment discontinuity in vivo
Relationships among stressful life events, negative affect, and judged quality of intimate relationships were explored. Three studies and a mini-meta-analysis revealed that as negative life events increased, judgments of close relationships gradually became less favorable, jumped back toward positivity, and then, again, gradually became less favorable. The same methods of analysis revealed a relationship between negative life events and negative …
Pleasure and pain in doing well, together: An investigation of performance-related affect in close relationships
In a series of four studies, the self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model is used to predict peoples' self-reported affective responses to doing better or worse than their partners. Both self-protective reactions to comparison (i.e., those predicted by the original SEM model) and empathic reactions to the partner's response (i.e., those predicted by the extended SEM model) were obtained. In addition, as predicted on the basis of both models, compa…
The relationship between marital interaction behaviors and affective reactions to one's own and one's spouse's self‐evaluation needs
A recent extension (Beach, & Tesser, 1993) of Tesser's self‐evaluation maintenance model (SEM: Tesser, 1988) proposed that a person's motivation to feel good about the self, and his or her concern for the partner's need to feel good about the self, can affect the couple's interaction behavior. In the present study, individual differences in the motivation to maintain one's own and one's partner's SEM needs are used to predict the couple's problem…
Dispositional and situational determinants of repression
This research project posits a model of repression that incorporates both repressive personality and repressive social behavior. The 1st parameter of the model specifies the motivation for repressors' distancing of themselves from emotional events. Experiment 1 demonstrates that repressors are hypersensitive--in their cognitive attention--to both negative and positive emotional events. The 2nd parameter of the model specifies the conditions under…
Social perception: A test of the role of arousal in self‐evaluation maintenance processes
Social prediction was used to examine the causal role of physiological arousal in self‐ evaluation maintenance (SEM) processes. Subjects' level of arousal was manipulated by having half of the subjects engage in physical exercise and half of the subjects relax prior to receiving performance feedback on high and low relevance tasks. On each task, subjects were given an opportunity to predict the performance of a friend or a stranger. The SEM model…
Task effort and the regulation of mood: The absorption hypothesis
Effects of time-management practices on college grades.
A prospective study tested the hypothesis that college grade point average would be predicted by time-management practices. Ninety college students completed a time-management questionnaire in 1983; their high school Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores were obtained from college records. Principal-components analysis of the 35-item time-management instrument revealed 3 components. In 1987, 4 years later, each student's cumulative grade point av…
On the confluence of self processes
Complementarity in Romantic Relationships: A Self-Evaluation Maintenance Perspective
Three studies were conducted to extend the Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) model to romantic relationships. Subjects in all three studies indicated the importance of sixty-eight activities to themselves and, in Studies 2 and 3, to their partners. For activities that were relevant to subjects' self-definitions, a comparison effect emerged; subjects reported outperforming their partners. When self-relevance was low, a reflection effect emerged; s…
Self-evaluation maintenance and the mediational role of emotion: The perception of friends and strangers
Two studies examined the causal role of emotional arousal in self-evaluation maintenance processes. In previous work, Tesser and Campbell (1982) found that Ss were most charitable in their perception of another's performance when self-relevance was low and the other was close. If emotional arousal mediated this pattern of behavior, then the pattern of behavior should be replicated when arousal is present but attenuated when arousal is misattribut…
The effects of affective-cognitive consistency and thought on the attitude-behavior relation
Toward a Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model of Social Behavior
Emotion in social reflection and comparison situations: Intuitive, systematic, and exploratory approaches
We asked 26 subjects to recall and describe social situations in which either a close or a distant other performed better or worse than the self at an activity that was either high or low in relevance to the self. Subjects then rated the extent to which they experienced each of 18 different emotions in each situation. They also rated each situation on a series of dimensions that Smith and Ellsworth (1985) found to be consequential for differentia…
Some affective consequences of social comparison and reflection processes: The pain and pleasure of being close
Antecedents and Responses Associated with Loneliness
Although researchers have isolated various aspects of the loneliness experience, they have failed to comprehend the processes that occur along with, and as a result of, feeling lonely. This study addressed this issue by examining the relations between two sets of predictors (personal characteristics; situational and attributional variables), a `length of time lonely' variable and three responses associated with loneliness (affect, behaviour and p…
On the Convergence of Public and Private Aspects of Self
Effects of affective and cognitive focus on the attitude–behavior relation
Conformity and attention to the stimulus: Some temporal and contextual dynamics
Some affective consequences of social comparison and reflection processes: The pain and pleasure of being close
Cognitive schemas and thought as determinants of attitude change
Effects of affective and cognitive focus on the attitude–behavior relation
On the confluence of self processes
The effects of affective-cognitive consistency and thought on the attitude-behavior relation
Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like
Some determinants of gratitude
Some effects of time and thought on attitude polarization
Three experiments were performed to examine the effects of thought on attitude change. It was predicted that (a) thought produces a change in attitude so as to make it more extreme in the initial direction (i.e., polarization) and (b) the longer one thinks about the attitude object, the greater the tendency toward polarization. In Experiments 1 and 2, the attitude objects were drawn from a heterogeneous attitude questionnaire; in Experiment 3, th…
The definition of self: Private and public self-evaluation management strategies
Evaluation of subjects' own performances and beliefs about an audience's evaluation of subjects' own performances were manipulated to examine their effects on self-definition. Pairs of subjects worked independently on tasks said to be valid indicators of a fictitious trait called cognitive perceptual integration (CPI). Relevance of CPI to a subject's self-definition was indexed by (a) an oral measure taken by an interviewer, (b) a self-descripti …
Self-Definition: The Impact of the Relative Performance and Similarity of Others
One's self-definition is hypothesized to change, in the service of self-esteem maintenance, as a function of the relative performance and the psychological similarity (closeness) and dissimilarity (distance) of others. Specifically, a dimension should become less self-definitional if another performs better on that dimension, particularly if that other is psychologically similar. Fifty-two subjects were given an opportunity to perform on a social…
Self-esteem maintenance in family dynamics
Thought-induced attitude change: The effects of schema structure and commitment
The Effects of Relevance and Quality of Another's Performance on Interpersonal Closeness
On Reluctance to Communicate Undesirable Information: The MUM Effect
Pleasure and pain in doing well, together: An investigation of performance-related affect in close relationships
In a series of four studies, the self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model is used to predict peoples' self-reported affective responses to doing better or worse than their partners. Both self-protective reactions to comparison (i.e., those predicted by the original SEM model) and empathic reactions to the partner's response (i.e., those predicted by the extended SEM model) were obtained. In addition, as predicted on the basis of both models, compa…
Some Effects of Salience and Time Upon Interpersonal Hostility and Attraction During Social Isolation
The effects of salience and time upon both positive and negative interpersonal attitudes under conditions of social isolation were investigated. It was predicted that polarization of attitudes would be facilitated by increased salience and time. One hundred twenty Ss interacted with either an insulting or complimenting confederate. Working in isolation, Ss next performed tasks designed to engender high or low salience of the confederate for eithe…
Self-activation increases social comparison
In a series of studies it was demonstrated that activating the self is sufficient to increase social comparison tendencies. Treating the relevant constructs as individual differences that can be measured as well as contextual variables that can be manipulated, the authors show that individual differences in self-activation are correlated with interest in social comparison information and that manipulations of self-activation cause changes in inte…
Emotion in social reflection and comparison situations: Intuitive, systematic, and exploratory approaches
We asked 26 subjects to recall and describe social situations in which either a close or a distant other performed better or worse than the self at an activity that was either high or low in relevance to the self. Subjects then rated the extent to which they experienced each of 18 different emotions in each situation. They also rated each situation on a series of dimensions that Smith and Ellsworth (1985) found to be consequential for differentia…
Friendship choice and performance: Self-evaluation maintenance in children
The present study examined the interrelations among performance in school, friendship choices in the classroom, and the importance of various school-related' activities for a child's self-definition. Children named as friends those classmates whose performance (both actual and distorted) was better than their own on irrelevant activities and somewhat inferior to their own on relevant activities. There was also a striking similarity effect. Friend…
Life events, relationship quality, and depression: An investigation of judgment discontinuity in vivo
Relationships among stressful life events, negative affect, and judged quality of intimate relationships were explored. Three studies and a mini-meta-analysis revealed that as negative life events increased, judgments of close relationships gradually became less favorable, jumped back toward positivity, and then, again, gradually became less favorable. The same methods of analysis revealed a relationship between negative life events and negative …
Task effort and the regulation of mood: The absorption hypothesis
Dominance Cues in Nonverbal Behavior
Buiilding on some concepts and methods recently introduced by Spiegel and Machotka, this investigation deals with four common nonverbal signifiers of social dominance: ltateral opposition, precedence, posture (sitting and standing), and elevation. Our concern is to know how interdependent these signifiers may be and whether they are equally meaningful as indicators of dominaince. An analysis of variance of 64 male andfemale figure drawings shows …
Toward a causal model of love
Attitude polarization as a function of thought and reality constraints
Complementarity in Romantic Relationships: A Self-Evaluation Maintenance Perspective
Three studies were conducted to extend the Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) model to romantic relationships. Subjects in all three studies indicated the importance of sixty-eight activities to themselves and, in Studies 2 and 3, to their partners. For activities that were relevant to subjects' self-definitions, a comparison effect emerged; subjects reported outperforming their partners. When self-relevance was low, a reflection effect emerged; s…
Psychological testing through the looking glass of youth
Some determinants of gratitude
Some Effects of Stimulus Typicality in an Impression Formation Task
It was hypothesized that the greater the number of people who could be described with a particular trait the less “information” in that trait and, hence, the less weight it would be given in an impression formation list. 187 adjectives previously scaled for likeability were scaled for information. Eight impression formation lists were formed by systematically varying 2 blocks of selected adjectives per list with respect to order, likeability, and…
On Reluctance to Communicate Undesirable Information: The MUM Effect
On the Reluctance to Communicate Undesirable Messages (The MUM Effect): A Field Study
The present study generalized a previously observed reluctance to transmit bad news to a field situation in which the conveying of bad news is a natural, recurring phenomenon. In a sample of 27 applicants for aid to the disabled, the time taken to communicate the agency's decision to the client was longer if the decision was to deny aid than if it was to grant aid ( p < .08)
Evaluative and structural similarity of attitudes as determinants of interpersonal attraction
Attitude base as a moderator of the attitude similarity-attraction relationship
Some Message Variables and the Mum Effect
A separate group of subjects scaled 55 messages with regard to pleasantness for a potential recipient (N = 53), desire to communicate (N = 55), obligation to communication (N = 57), and the probability with which they would communicate each (N = 56). These ratings were used to test the hypothesis that message transmission is a function of felt obligation and desire to transmit, and that felt desire and obligation to transmit, in turn, are functio…
Fear of Negative Evaluation and the Reluctance to Transmit Bad News
An experiment was conducted to determine whether reluctance to transmit an overheard message intended for a stranger depends on (1) fear of negative evaluation by that stranger and (2) fear of the message's anticipated consequences for him. It was reasoned that a messenger would fear negative evaluation if he were identified by the recipient. The hypothesis that bad news would be transmitted less completely and spontaneously than good news was su…
On the reluctance to communicate bad news (the mum effect): A role play extension
News Valence and Available Recipient as Determinants of News Transmission
Similarity of objective fate as a determinant of the reluctance to transmit unpleasant information: The MUM effect
Communicator Mood and the Reluctance to Transmit Undesirable Messages (The Mum Effect)1
In order to examine the effects of mood on the transmission of good and bad news 48 female Ss, recruited for an “aesthetics experiment,” overheard a message intended for another S containing either good or had news, and were subsequently put into a pleasant or unpleasant mood. The results indicated that when Ss were confronted with the person for whom the message was intended (1) their mood tended to shift in a direction that was consistent with …
The Effects of Recipient Desire to Hear on News Transmission
It was hypothesized that reluctance to communicate bad news (the MUM effect) is partially due to communicators assuming that recipients do not want to be told bad news. In a design in which news (Good versus Bad) and recipient desire to hear the news (Low versus. Not Expressed versus High) were independently manipulated, 60 male Ss were given the choice of transmitting or not transmitting the news (an aptitude score). Greatest news transmission w…
Some Effects of Salience and Time Upon Interpersonal Hostility and Attraction During Social Isolation
The effects of salience and time upon both positive and negative interpersonal attitudes under conditions of social isolation were investigated. It was predicted that polarization of attitudes would be facilitated by increased salience and time. One hundred twenty Ss interacted with either an insulting or complimenting confederate. Working in isolation, Ss next performed tasks designed to engender high or low salience of the confederate for eithe…
Interactive effects of new valence and attraction on communicator behavior
Reinforcement effects of attitude similarity and source evaluation on discrimination learning
Effects of similarity of fate on bad news transmission: A reexamination
Thought and Number of Cognitions as Determinants of Attitude Change
Previous research has shown that thinking about some attitude object results in more polarized attitudes than being distracted from thinking about the object. Perhaps this difference is due to thought producing additional cognitions consistent with the initial attitude direction. To test this hypothesis, 64 subjects indicated their attitudes toward fictitious persons described with either four or eight adjectives. After thinking about the person …
Some effects of time and thought on attitude polarization
Three experiments were performed to examine the effects of thought on attitude change. It was predicted that (a) thought produces a change in attitude so as to make it more extreme in the initial direction (i.e., polarization) and (b) the longer one thinks about the attitude object, the greater the tendency toward polarization. In Experiments 1 and 2, the attitude objects were drawn from a heterogeneous attitude questionnaire; in Experiment 3, th…
On Validating a Relationship Between Constructs
An obtained relationship between two empirical variables may mean that (a) they both reflect the same theoretical construct or that (b) they reflect different constructs which are related. It is suggested that the demonstration of shifting, nonmonotonic, and/or asymmetric relationships provides evidence for rejecting hypothesis (a). Demonstrating that the variables are differentially related to a third variable, factor analysis, corrections for a…
Attitude polarization as a function of thought and reality constraints
Toward a causal model of love
Why Subjects Say They Would or Would Not Communicate Affectively Toned Messages
Each of 98 subjects was presented with 10 of 30 messages varying in the extent to which the message connoted good or bad news for the recipient. Within a standard communication situation, subjects were asked to indicate if they would transmit each message and to list their reasons for the decision to transmit or not transmit. Results of a content analysis of reasons indicated that, with increasing frequency, persons justify their communication de…
Some attitudinal and cognitive consequences of thought
Psychology (65 works) · Social Psychology (57 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Cognitive psychology (26 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (26 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (17 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Cognition (11 works)