Learning: Choose feedback to flatten others, unless you dislike others

People generally try to make others feel good about themselves, but not when they don’t like it. It is a discovery of a new study by psychologists at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania, examining the extent to which people promote “positive self-views” for strangers.

Previous research has shown that people tend to seek information that will help them enhance their self-view, but they have not shown whether and when to use a similar selection process to improve the way others see themselves or for whom.

In the study “Strengthening Others Through Information Choice: Establishing Phenomena and Its Prerequisites,” researchers at Penns Annenberg School of Communication and Associate Professors of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Allison Earl, Dolores Albaracin and Amy Gutmann Penn are integrated into the science department of the knowledgeable science department. motivation.

This work has been featured in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers conducted a series of experiments where they were asked to inform strangers that a test of personality or intelligence taken by others was valid or invalid. Participants were more likely to inform the test taker that the test was valid when the person worked well, but that it was invalid if the partner was performing poorly. In other words, they chose to share information that reinforces other people’s positive self-views. This occurred not only when the person making the selection doesn’t know if the test is enabled or disabled, but also when they know that the information is false.

Researchers found that this preference had whether the test taker expressed positive or negative views about his personality or intelligence, and whether objective information about the test was available. Researchers also asked participants about why they chose the information they made, and found that their preferences were driven by their desire to please others.

However, this tendency to select information that pleases others was present only when participants believed that their partner had a favorable or neutral personality. It disappeared when he believed that the Test Taker had “denounceable” properties. The pattern also dissipates when participants are explicitly encouraged to provide accurate information.

This means that when the person making the choice has the goal of providing accurate information, they have chosen a similar amount of flattering and despicable information for others. In particular, even if the flattering information was accurate, they never chose to violate flattering over flattering information, and were encouraged to provide truthful feedback.

“Our participants’ choice was driven by social considerations. They wanted to enhance the self-image of others and make their partner feel better. However, this was only true when others were perceived as favorable or neutral,” says Shen, the study’s lead author.

In short, the author prefers that people choose information that pleases others, but prefers to deviate from this pattern when others dislike them or when the goal of providing accurate information becomes pronounced.

The context of this study states that it is an anonymous online environment where people should not know their partner and be relatively indifferent to the outcomes of information sharing for relationships. What people still tried to reinforce the self-view of others is “important insights about humanity.”