Expectations of others' social value orientations in specific and general populations

This research focuses on the relation between participants' social orientat ions and their expectations of others' orientations. Participants were 145 adolescents who were classified according to a prosocial, individualistic, or competitive orientation. Participants were asked for their expectations of the occurrence of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive people in four populations, varying from specific to general (friends, classmates, sc hoolmates, peers, respectively). The triangle hypothesis, the structured as sumed similarity bias, and the selective exposure and availability model co uld only partly explain the results. The decrease in consensus expectations from specific to general populations that was displayed by prosocials and competitors, bat not by individualists, was best explained by the slightly extended uniqueness bias: The tendency to underestimate the proportion of p eople who will perform socially desirable actions is stronger for general t han for specific populations.