The Influence Of Perspective On Self - Reference Effect

Since the self-reference effect(SRE) was widely studied, other individual-(who has close relationship with ourselves)reference effects were also found, such as close friend-reference effect and mother-reference effect. Some studies have pointed out that intimacy may be an important influence factor of other peson-reference effect.Besides, several studies found that when participants were asked to use the third-person perspective to complete the tasks, the self-reference effect would reduce or even disappear. So they suggested that the self-reference effect only appeared in the first-person perspective. So the purpose of this paper is to add one variable(that is intimacy) to examine how this view performants. In the experiment 1, the intimacy refers to the relationship between the participants and their friends, in the experiment2 the intimacy is the relationship of the subjects and their mothers. This study also uses the self-reference processing paradigm- R/K paradigm(that is commonly used presently) to provide some evidence for this view that has not yet been settled.Experiment l showed that the trait words presented with the self and close friends were better remembered compared to the trait words presented with famous in the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective when these friends were participants’ close friends, that is to say in the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective the self-reference effect and the close-friend-reference effect both appeared. Interestingly, the close friend-reference effect were improved in the third-person perspective. On the contrary, when the participants didn’t have very close friendship with their friends, there was only the self-reference effect in the first-person perspective, but in the third-person perspective(their not very close friends’ perspective), there were both the self-reference effect and the friend-reference effect.Moreover, the self-reference effect were decreased in this third-person perspective.Experiment 2 was similar with experiment 1, except the relationship was changed to the participants and their mothers. It found that the intimacy between participants and their mothers did not play a big role in this experiment. No matter how the participants with their mothers, it showed self-reference effect and mother-reference effect in the first-person perspective and in the third-person perspective. Interestingly, the self-reference effect declined in the third-person perspective on the ACC index when paiticipants have close friendship with their mothers.On the R index, No matter how the participants with their mothers,the twogroups both performance the self-reference effect and mother-reference effect in the first-person perspective and the first-person perspective. Similiarly, the self-reference effect decreased in the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective.That is to say, the third-person perspective reduced the self-reference effect for two groups.To sum up, the results of these two experiments verified the self-expansion model of the self and the view of Chinese people’s self concept, that is a kind of "relationship between self and others", which means Chinese people’s self concept contains some other important persons in it, such as their mothers and their close friends. So the self-reference effect, the close friend-reference effect and the mother-reference effect could all appear. These results basically showed that the first-person perspective is the premise of the self-reference effect, and when the third-person perspective is a close friend’s perspective, it may improve the friend-reference effect or could reduce the self-reference effect. When it is a mother’s perspective, it may decline the self-reference effect. Besides, the results also suggested that it can be completely achieved to stand in the perspective of others, this is also a very important social intercourse ability for human beings.