Evidence for the Self as a Cognitive Prototype: The "False Alarms Effect"
- 1 January 1979
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 5 (1) , 53-56
- https://doi.org/10.1177/014616727900500111
Abstract
In a recognition memory study involving personal adjectives, the number of false alarms was found to increase with degree of self-reference of the adjectives. This was interpreted as: (1) evidence that the self is an important aspect of processing personal information, and (2) that the self functions as a cognitive prototype. The self can be seen to be a large and complex prototype that imparts a bias in processing personal information. This bias to perceive new, self-descriptive adjectives as being previously seen, has import for a theory of self and other-referent information processing.Keywords
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