“Me” means more than “good”: stimuli’s self-relevance matters more than valence in shaping evaluative learning via the self

ABSTRACT

Stimuli that relate to the self tend to be better liked. The Self-Referencing (SR) task is a paradigm whereby one target categorised through the same action as self-stimuli (i.e. possessive pronouns) is preferred over an alternative target categorised through the same action as other-stimuli. Past studies on the SR showed that valence could not fully account for the observed effect. Here we explored self-relevance as a possible explanation. Across four studies (N = 567), participants selected self-relevant and self-irrelevant adjectives to be used as source stimuli in a Personal-SR task. In that task, the two classes of stimuli were paired with two fictitious brands. We measured automatic (IAT) and self-reported preferences, and identification with the brands. Experiment 1 showed that the brand paired with positive self-relevant adjectives became more positive than the one paired with positive self-irrelevant adjectives. Experiment 2 confirmed this pattern with negative adjectives, and Experiment 3 ruled out the effect of a self-serving bias in the adjectives selection. Experiment 4 showed that the brand related to negative self-relevant adjectives was preferred over the brand related to positive self-irrelevant adjectives. We discussed the implications of our results and the potential mechanisms that might explain self-driven preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Self
• evaluative learning
• self-Referencing
• self-relevance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All the anonymized data and materials of the studies reported in the manuscript are available. In the manuscript, we provide the link to the project on Open Science Framework. The data have not been used in prior published or in press manuscripts.

Notes

1 While on average the set was moderately positive and all adjectives were moderately positive, the degree of their positivity varied around the average (SD = 0.83).

2 Because the proportion of participants with incorrect intersecting regularities memory was low across the four studies, we did not report the analyses for those participants in the Supplementary Materials. Note that the evaluative effects observed among incorrect memory participants was weaker than those observed among participants with correct memory, although the means suggested that the effects were in the same direction.

3 Due to a programming error, the evaluation of the adjectives selected by individuals as not representative of themselves was not assessed.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.