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' lev el of arousal was manipulated by having half of the subjects engage in physical exercise and half of the subjects relax prior to receiving p erformance feedback on high and low relevance tasks. On each task, sub jects were given an opportunity to predict the performance of a friend or a stranger. The SEM model predicts that the more relevant the task the less charitable one's perception of another's performance, partic ularly a close other. Subjects in the high arousal condition showed a pattern of behaviour which was significantly closer to that predicted by the SEM model than subjects in the low arousal condition. Thus, aro usal appears to play a causal role in the unfolding of SEM behaviours.