How Relationship And Status Can Influence Evaluation Of Others In Explicit And Implicit Studies

"Differential Mode of Association" refers to the two dimensions of Chinese people's interpersonal relationship :intimacy and status.Due to self-expansion motivation,individuals tend to include close and high-status others in themselves,and because of their selfenhancement motives,they evaluate close and high-status others more positively.This study explores how intimacy and status effect individual's explicit and implicit evaluation to others.Study 1 used 2 × 4 within-group design to explore how individuals,effected by intimacy,evaluate themselves,close friend A,ordinary friend B and acquaintance C in the social comparison(ability and interpersonal traits).It turns out that individuals tend to have positive evaluation in terms of ability and interpersonal traits as the relationship gets closer.Study 2 used single-factor within-group design to explore how individuals evaluate themselves,A,B and C in the External Affective Simon Task.It was found that the individuals' implicit evaluation toward others was A>C.Study 3 used 2 × 2 × 2 within-group design to explore how intimacy and status effect evaluation of individuals to close teacher A,close classmate B,unfamiliar teacher C and unfamiliar classmate D in the social comparisons.As a result,individuals evaluate the ability and interpersonal traits of closer person and the ability traits of high-status person positively.Study 4 used 2 × 2 within-group design to explore how individuals,influenced by intimacy and status,evaluate A,B,C,and D in the External Affective Simon Task.It suggested that the implicit evaluations are more positive to closer teachers and classmates.The results of this study show that individuals tend to evaluate closer person more positively in explicit and implicit manner,and individuals evaluated the ability traits of highstatus person more positively as well.