Susan M. Andersen

Do I Know You?: The Role of Significant Others in General Social Perception

This research used an idiographic method to examine the proposition that significant others are mentally represented as well-organized person categories that can influence social perception even more than representations of nonsignificant others, stereotypes, or traits. Together, Studies 1 and 2 showed that significant-other representations are richer, more distinctive, and more cognitively accessible than the other categories. Study 3 replicated the accessibility data and gauged inferential power by indirectly activating each category in a learning trial about a fictional person and then testing recognition memory. The results showed that participants made more category-consistent false-positive errors about targets who activated significant others vs. any other category. This constitutes the first experimental demonstration of transference and has implications both for social categorization and for basic personality processes.

The recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders by primary care physicians

A valid and reliable vignette-based measure of DSM-III psychiatric diagnostic knowledge was administered to practicing primary care physicians (PCPs; generally, internal and family practice medicine) and mental health professionals (MHPs, in psychiatry and psychology). Recognition, diagnosis, and treatment recommendations were measured for 14 different disorders. Contrary to other reports, PCPs consistently recognized the presence of mental disorder and did so virtually as well as MHPs, although both PCPs and MHPs showed more under-recognition than over-recognition. Diagnostic accuracy, however, was substantially lower, with that of MHPs exceeding PCPs for the general classes of affective, anxiety, somatic, and personality disorders, but not for the organic disorders. In making specific diagnoses, significantly fewer PCPs than MHPs gave an accurate diagnosis for eight of the 14 disorders: dysthymic disorder, major depression with psychotic features, agoraphobia with panic attacks (marginally), generalized anxiety disorder, adjustment disorder with anxious mood (marginally), psychologic factors affecting physical condition, and two personality disorders. Overall, PCPs were most accurate in identifying organic disorders (81% correct), least accurate in identifying the personality disorders (14%), and intermediate in identifying the affective (47%), anxiety (49%), and somatic disorders (49%). In most cases, both PCPs and MHPs preferred referral to treatment in primary care, but more PCPs than MHPs recommended treatment in primary care for certain anxiety and somatic disorders. Some differences in the recommended use of antidepressants in primary care were also found. Implications for the provision of mental health care by primary care physicians are discussed.

Relationships from the Past in the Present: Significant-Other Representations and Transference in Interpersonal Life

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates an approach for the study of close relationships, an approach grounded in social-cognitive theory and research and focuses specifically on past relationships with significant others and their role in shaping current social relations. The chapter describes the powerful and multifaceted effects that prior experiences with significant others exert on present-day interpersonal life and also precisely articulates the social-cognitive principles that govern the manner in which this influence of the past on the present occurs. Fundamental to the social-cognitive model of transference is the assumption that mental representations of significant others, developed in numerous encounters with these individuals, are stored in memory, are affectively laden, and are connected with the self in memory via significant-other or relational linkage. The model proposes that transference can be understood in terms of the activation and application of these stored representations to new others in social perception. To understand the occurring of transference, it is important to consider different types of social knowledge that are represented in the memory.

Childhood Physical and Emotional Abuse by a Parent: Transference Effects in Adult Interpersonal Relations:

Extending research on transference and the relational self (Andersen & Chen, 2002), female undergraduates with or without a history of physical and emotional abuse by a loved parent participated in an experiment manipulating parental resemblance and threat-relevant interpersonal context in a new person. Transference elicited differences not evident in the control condition between abused and nonabused participants’ responses, with greater rejection expectancy, mistrust, dislike, and emotional indifference reported by abused participants. Immediate implicit affect was more positive in transference than in the control condition regardless of abuse history. Yet, abused participants in transference also reported increased dysphoria that was markedly attenuated when interpersonal threat was primed, and no such pattern occurred among nonabused participants. Evidence that interpersonally guarded and affectively complex responses are triggered in transference among previously abused individuals suggests that this social-cognitive process may underlie long-term interpersonal difficulties associated with parental abuse.

Fundamental human needs: Making social cognition relevant

Research on intrinsic motivation, much of which has progressed within the framework of Deci and Ryans (this issue) self-determination theory, has profoundly shifted our view of how people respond to rewards and punishments in terms of interest in and enjoyment of what they do and how they live. A key argument of their work is that controlling external influences, emanating from other people or situations, are associated with suboptimal performance and a lack of satisfaction. This contention is based on their assumption that there is a fundamental human need for autonomy, to freely choose and determine ones own actions. Hence, having ones autonomy supported by the environment should be associated with optimal functioning and well-being, and it is. Evidence has accrued across numerous domains and paradigms to substantiate these core claims. Before discussing points of contact between Deci and Ryans theory and our own theorizing on human needs, and on the self, significant-other representations, and transference, we highlight some key contributions of their work.

Significant Others and the Self

We subscribe to the assumption that the self is fundamentally relational—that is, entangled with significant others—such that key elements of the self are experienced in relation to significant others, even when others are not present. In our socialcognitive model of transference, transference occurs when a mental representation of a significant other is activated by cues in a new person that resemble the other. As a result, the self in relation to this significant other is activated, eliciting changes in affect, expectancies, motivations, and behaviors, as well as in the nature of the working self-concept, all reflecting the version of the self one is when with the significant other. Moreover, when people experience a threat to either a significant other relationship or the self in the context of an encounter with a new person who triggers transference, this sets into motion self-regulatory processes, which play out in relations with the new person. Overall, we argue that the evocation of prior experiences with significant others tells us something about the nature of the self, affect, and self-regulation that has implications for both resiliency and vulnerability.

The self in relation to others: cognitive and motivational underpinnings.

Stanford University in 1981 and is presently Professor of Psychology at New York University. She specializes in both social and clinical psychology, and has published extensively on her research in the domain of interpersonal relationshipsspecifically, how people+ representations of their sbnificant others affects their reactions to new others. She has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Cognition, and the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, and as a member of review panels of NIMH.

Future-event schemas : Automaticity and rumination in major depression

We examined the proposition that individuals with major depression make predictions about future events relatively automatically and pessimistically, reflecting use of a future-event schema, while they also ruminate about the future. Depressed participants and nondepressed controls indicated whether or not various positive and negative future events would happen to them or to an average other—either under a concurrent attentional load or no such load—while their response latencies were assessed. As hypothesized, depressives showed relatively greater automaticity in their predictions than did nondepressives, and a lack of optimism as well. More specifically, depressives showed a smaller increase in response latency due to the introduction of the attentional load than did nondepressives, suggesting relatively greater processing efficiency, and they also predicted reliably fewer positive events. Indeed, depressives also reported ruminating more about the future based on a recent distressing life event. Overall, the results extend research on future-event schemas and automaticity (Andersen, Spielman, & Bargh, 1992) from moderate to major depression and establish a link with future-event rumination.

The Social-Cognitive Model of Transference: Experiencing Past Relationships in the Present

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Psychological Maltreatment of Spouses

Abusive behavior in the context of intimate relationships can take many forms, ranging from intense psychological intimidation and threats of violence to life-threatening episodes of physical assault. In virtually all cases of physical violence, however, some form of psychological maltreatment is also present. Psychological maltreatment, in fact, can quite reasonably be considered a common denominator in ongoing interpersonal relationships that are violent.