Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

19%, Vol. 71, No. 6, 1279-1295 0022-3514/96/S3.00

The Working Self-Concept in Transference:

Significant-Other Activation and Self Change
Katrina Hinkley and Susan M. Andersen
New \ork University

This research tested the hypothesis that changes in the working self-concept emerge in transference,
denned as the activation and application of a significant-other representation to a new person and
indexed by relevant inferences and memory (e.g., S. M. Andersen & A. Baum, 1994;S. M.Andersen,
N. S. Glassman, S. Chen, & S. Cole, 1995). In an idiographic-nomothetic design, participants
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learned of a target person who resembled their own or a yoked participant's positively or negatively
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toned significant other. Results replicated the basic memory effect verifying transference. As pre-
dicted, the working self-concept changed in the transference condition. After learning about the new
person, participants' freely listed self features shifted; the working self-concept became more infused
with aspects of the self reflecting the self when with this significant other. Relevant changes in self
evaluation were observed. Hence, changes in the working self-concept occurred in transference.

At the heart of the clinical concept of transference is the no-
tion that experiences with individuals who are personally im-
portant to the self might be retained in memory in some form
and then reexperienced with a new person. Numerous theoreti-
cal perspectives exist on this process and on the nature of trans-
ference (e.g., Ehrenreich, 1989;Greenson, 1965; Homey, 1939;
Sullivan, 1953), aconcept proposed by Freud (1912/1958). In
more contemporary terms, transference has been characterized
in terms of interpersonal processes and interpersonal learning
(Homey, 1939; Sullivan, 1953; see J. R. Greenberg & Mitchell,
1983), as well as in terms of information processing (Andersen
&Cole, 1990; Singer, 1988; Wachtel, 1981; Westen, 1988).
In our information-processing model of transference, knowl-
edge about a significant other is represented in memory—both
in abstract and in experiential forms—and is then used to pre-
dict, interpret, and respond to new interpersonal situations
(Andersen & Chen, in press; Andersen & Glassman, 1996).
Hence, mental representations of significant others are crucial
in transference. Moreover, it is the activation and use of signifi-
cant-other representations in relation to new persons that con-
stitute the basic processes by which transference occurs (e.g.,
Katrina Hinkley and Susan M. Andersen, Department of Psychology,
New \brk University.
This article is based on a dissertation submitted by Katrina Hinkley
to the Department of Psychology at New \brk University and was
funded in part by Grant R01-MH48789 from the National Institute of
Mental Health. Special thanks are due to Delia Marshall, Deborah De
Santis, Martin Wendel, and Lily Bhattacharya for their assistance in the
research. We thank Serena Chen, Inga Reznik, Noah Glassman, Tracey
Strasser, Michelle Berk, Kathy Balto, Janet Kennedy, Warner Dick, and
Julia Barickman for their comments on a draft of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susan
M. Andersen, Department of Psychology, New York University, 6
Washington Place, 4th Floor, New York, New York 10003 or to Katrina
Hinkley, who is now at 16 Uplands Road, Saltford, Bristol BS18
3JJ, England. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet to
andersen@psych.nyu.edu.
1279
Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole,
1995). Specifically, recent experimental work in the domain of
social cognition has clearly shown that the activation and appli-
cation of a significant-other representation to a new person
occurs on the basis of the new person's resemblance to the sig-
nificant other. This is indexed by representation-consistent
memory about the new person. That is, people make inferences
about the new person that are consistent with their significant
other and then are more likely to remember him or her relatively
more in these terms. People "go beyond the information given"
(Bruner, 1957) about the new person on the basis of their sig-
nificant-other representation and remember this new person
accordingly.
In everyday life, a new person one meets may somehow re-
semble, for example, a parent, sibling, close friend, or prior
lover, and one may thus begin to assume that the new person is
like this significant other and may come to think about and to
remember him or her in terms relevant to the significant other.
Indeed, one may even begin to feel differently toward this per-
son, feeling drawn to or repelled by him or her on the basis of the
significant-other representation. This is what the experimental
literature on transference has demonstrated (Andersen &
Baum, 1994; Andersen, Reznik, & Manzella, 1996). That is, in
addition to showing higher recognition-memory confidence
that features derived from a participant's significant-other de-
scriptions and yet not learned about the new person were
learned about him or her, participants came to like or dislike the
new person depending on their feelings toward the significant
other.
Hence, when a new person resembles a participant's posi-
tively toned significant other, the participant comes to like this
person far more than when he or she resembles the participant's
negatively toned significant other (Andersen & Baum, 1994).
Because this pattern does not hold when the new person resem-
bles someone else's (a yoked participant's) positively or nega-
tively toned significant other, these data demonstrated a
schema-triggered evaluation of the new person (see Fiske, 1982;
 1280 HINKLEY AND ANDERSEN
Fiske & Pavelchak, 1986; Pavelchak, 1989) in transference—
that is, as a function of significant-other resemblance and acti-
vation. People come to like new persons who remind them of an
adored significant other more than the persons who remind
them of a detested significant other. Moreover, this effect has
been extended into the realm of schema-triggered motivation
toward a new person, such that when this new person somehow
resembles the significant other, one experiences the motivation
to be close to the person or to be relatively distant from him or
her on the basis of the significant-other representation
(Andersen et al., 1996). Similarly, the effect has been extended
into the arena of schema-triggered expectancies about the new
person, specifically, the expectancy to be accepted or rejected
by him or her, and even into the domain of schema-triggered
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emotion as coded from participants' facial expression. Thus, in
the context of transference, individuals come not only to re-
member the new person in representation-consistent ways, but
also to have various affectively relevant experiences in relation
to the new person. Transference therefore occurs in a manner
that is not uniquely clinical or specific to psychotherapeutic set-
tings, but rather is a basic phenomenon of everyday social per-
ception and social relations (as suggested by both Freud, 1912/
1958, and Sullivan, 1953).
Our aim in this study was to examine the notion that linkages
between significant-other representations and the self not only
exist in memory but are activated in transference. In this re-
search, we therefore emphasized how the self is experienced in
transference. Like other theorists and researchers, we assumed
that knowledge concerning the self is stored in memory in rela-
tion to (and literally linked to) various significant others, per-
haps in part in terms of relational patterns or scripts (e.g., Bal-
dwin, 1992; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991;Berscheid, 1994;
Bowlby, 1969; Bugental, 1992; Carlson, 1981; Horowitz, 1989;
Stern, 1985;Tomkins, 1979;Westen, 1992). Hence, significant-
other resemblance should produce significant-other activation,
which should spread from the significant-other representation
along stored linkages to the self, activating those aspects of the
self most linked to the significant other. That is, the correspond-
ing self-when-with-the-significant-other is activated (Ogilvie &
Ashmore, 1991). In this way, predictable changes in the "work-
ing" self-concept (Markus & Wurf, 1987) should occur in trans-
ference, such that the particular aspects of the self that are on
one's mind shift.
In everyday life, people may become more the kind of person
they are around their significant other when experiencing a
transference response in relation to a new person because of the
activation and use of this particular significant-other represen-
tation. For example, one may feel and act as one did around a
former lover when in a new love relationship and may feel sim-
ilarly about the self in the process. Moreover, with a significant
other around whom one has felt incompetent, for example, a
transference response involving the significant-other represen-
tation should include feelings of incompetence. Self-signifi-
cant-other linkages should be activated indirectly in the trans-
ference process on the basis of significant-other activation
spreading to the self and resulting in a shift in the way the self is
experienced, leading to an emphasis on those self aspects expe-
rienced when with the significant other (Ogilvie & Ashmore,
1991). We regard this work as important both because the
working self-concept is considered crucial in the study of the
self (i.e., Linville & Carlston, 1994), and yet has been subjected
to little empirical scrutiny, and because the working self-con-
cept in transference is theoretically provocative in terms of the
extent to which the experience of self is bound up with signifi-
cant others.
Studying Transference in Everyday Social Perception
Theoretical and empirical work in the area of social construct
theory has laid out the conditions under which mental repre-
sentations are most likely to be used (e.g., Higgins, 1989b; Hig-
gins & King, 1981). In this framework, a social construct is a
knowledge structure, typically one that designates a class of
people and is reflected in a stereotype label or trait term. Such
a construct may or may not be chronically accessible and at
any given moment may or may not receive contextually based
activation by a new person or situation (Andersen et al, 1995).
That is, both long-term and transient sources of activation are
relevant to whether a construct is likely to be used in social per-
ception. It is important to note that "proper" constructs also
exist in this conceptualization, as in a proper name, and desig-
nate a particular person such as a significant other or even the
self. Such proper constructs are stored in memory like other
constructs, but each is defined in terms of an example of a per-
son—an individual-person exemplar (Smith & Zarate, 1992;
see also Sedikides & Ostrom, 1988)—rather than a generic so-
cial category. Such constructs can be used in social perception
and interpersonal relations by means of the same basic princi-
ples that guide the activation and use of other social constructs.
This is the framework within which experimental research
on transference has been conducted (see Andersen & Glassman,
1996), that is, in combination with interpersonal theory (e.g.,
Sullivan, 1953) and personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955).
Hence, the significant-other representation is a kind of social
construct or exemplar stored in memory. Methodologically, the
approach requires a mixture of idiographic research methods
(Allport, 1937; Kelly, 1955) and an entirely nomothetic exper-
imental procedure. Adopting an experimental approach en-
ables causal inference as well as the assessment of processes
generalizable across participants (Andersen & Baum, 1994).
Idiographic methods tap the idiosyncratic concepts held by in-
dividuals in a way that cannot be captured by experimenter-
provided checklists, rating scales, and trait sorts (e.g., Deaux,
1991; Moretti, 1992), and their use in personality and social
psychology research is thus increasing (e.g., Andersen & Cole,
1990; Ethier & Deaux, 1994; Higgins, 1987, 1989a; McGuire,
1983; McGuire & McGuire, 1988; Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991;
Pelham, 1993; Pervin, 1976, 1985; Prentice, 1990; Rosenberg,
1988).
In experimental research on transference, the content of peo-
ple's significant-other representations has been allowed to vary
freely, in idiosyncratic terms, in that researchers have collected
open-ended descriptions of participant's significant others in
the form of descriptive sentences. This content was then used
in constructing the stimulus materials that have been shown to
participants as descriptions of a new person in the context of an
experiment. In the present research, participants learned about
a new person who does or does not resemble a significant other
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE
from their own lives. That is, in one condition, the description
of the new person was derived from the participant's own sig-
nificant-other descriptors, and in the control condition, it was
derived from a yoked participant's significant-other descriptors
(Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen et al., 1996). Participants
in the own-significant-other-condition and the yoked-control
condition were yoked together on a one-to-one basis and ex-
posed to the same experimental stimuli. Hence, conclusions
about the effects of significant-other resemblance were not con-
founded by content and are generalizable across participants,
reflecting general processes.
The Working Self-Concept and
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Significant-Other Activation
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The notion that not everything known about the self is in
awareness or is in use at any given time gives rise to the idea that
numerous possible working self-concepts exist and are likely to
be brought into play as a function of specific transient cues in
the environment, as combined with one's own personal agendas
and needs (Harter, 1988,1990;Linville&Carlston, 1994; Mar-
kus&Kunda, 1986;Markus& Wurf, 1987;Rhodewalt, 1986).
The working self-concept, in this sense, is part of the broader
notion of working memory (e.g., N. Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987;
see also to J. Cantor & Engle, 1993; Just & Carpenter, 1992;
McGuire, 1983), which designates those aspects of long-term
memory that are in use at any given time. Working memory
thus characterizes the elements of stored knowledge that are
accessible and ready for use in subsequent processing (see also
Higgins, 1989b, in press; Higgins & King, 1981). Because re-
search has shown that numerous representations of self coexist
in memory and that considerable complexity exists in the net-
works of self information held by each person (e.g., Deaux,
1991; Higgins, 1987; Prentice, 1990; Rosenberg & Gara, 1985;
Showers, 1992; see also Mischel & Shoda, 1995), the self is per-
haps best understood as a "family of selves" with various over-
lapping resemblances and with some selves more prominent,
elaborated, and accessible than others (N. Cantor & Kihlstrom,
1987; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; Linville, 1985; Markus &
Wurf, 1987; Niedenthal, Setterlund, & Wherry, 1992; Ogilvie,
1987).
In this sense, the notion of the working self-concept reflects
one's present, relatively momentary self and hence encompases
variability in the self in addition to whatever chronic continuity
exists. Indeed, research has shown that one's entire (or a
monolithic) self representation does not appear to be activated
all at once for most people (see Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Higgins,
Van Hook & Dorfman, 1988). Only particular subsets of the
entire pool of self information may be activated at any particu-
lar time. This is consistent with the notion that the working self-
concept changes as a function of social context (Banaji & Pren-
tice, 1994; Ethier & Deaux, 1994; Hormuth, 1990; Linville &
Carlston, 1994; McGuire & McGuire, 1988; Mischel & Shoda,
1995).
Moreover, because self-definition is likely to be in part inter-
personal (e.g., Andersen, Reznik, & Chen, in press; Brewer
1991; Deaux, 1991; Markus & Cross, 1990; Markus & Kita-
yama, 1991; Higgins, 1989a, Triandis, 1989), the way one sees
oneself and one's self-evaluation should be especially wrapped
1281
up with significant others. In fact, research has demonstrated
that significant-other activation—outside the transference
context in which no new person is the target of the activation—
does lead to self-relevant consequences in terms of changes in
self evaluation (Baldwin, Carrell, & Lopez, 1990; Baldwin &
Holmes, 1987). This work is important, and yet there remains
no empirical work that has examined changes in self evaluation
in the context of transference, that is, changes that are based on
significant-other activation in relation to a new person, or the
working self-concept in transference.
In the present work, we argue that stored linkages between
self and significant-other representations exist (Baldwin, 1992;
Bugental, 1992; Horowitz, 1989; Planalp, 1987; see also Carl-
son, 1981; Tomkins, 1979) and define the self-when-with-the-
particular-significant-other. This self-with-other representation
should thus be activated indirectly when the significant-other
representation is activated and applied to a new person because
of the spread of activation from the significant other to the self.
Such activation should be especially likely to spread to the par-
ticular aspects of the self that are linked with the significant
other. As a result, the working self-concept in transference
should come to be more infused with that subset of self infor-
mation that reflects the self as experienced when with the rele-
vant significant other (Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991).
The Present Study
The present study examined the notion that when a new per-
son resembles a significant other and thus activates the signifi-
cant-other representation and the transference response, the
perceiver comes to experience the self more as he or she typically
does when with the significant other. The subset of self informa-
tion linked to this significant other should thus be activated in-
directly and entered into working memory when the new person
resembles the significant other and hence activates the signifi-
cant-other representation. To test this hypothesis, we measured
not only the memory effect typically used to index transference,
but also the degree of shift in the working self-concept toward
the self-when-with-the-significant-other. This self-concept shift
was assessed in terms of the overlap between the participant's
freely listed working self-concept features after learning about
the new target person and the features he or she freely listed
describing the self-when-with-the-significant-other (collected at
pretest). This measure of overlap, adapted from Prentice
(1990), enabled us to assess change in the working self-concept
in the direction of the self-when-with-the-significant-other.
In terms of predictions, when the new person resembles the
participant's own significant other, rather than a yoked partici-
pant's significant other, participants should show more repre-
sentation-consistent memory about the target, demonstrating
the basic transference effect. More important, changes in the
working self-concept should also occur during transference.
That is, the working self-concept should become more infused
with the subset of aspects of the self representing the self-when-
with-the-significant-other. Changes in the valence of the work-
ing self-concept in transference should also occur. That is, when
the target resembles the participant's own significant other, the
evaluative tone of those aspects of the working self-concept
shifting toward the self-with-significant-other representation
 1282 HINKLEY AND ANDERSEN
should reflect the overall tone of the significant-other
representation.
Both the content of and the self evaluation reflected in the
working self-concept change we assessed were measured idio-
graphically, reflecting our expectation that any induced changes
in the self-concept and in self evaluation would be subtle and
idiographic rather than global. To check on this, we also admin-
istered nomothetic measures of global self-esteem.
Method
Overview
In a pretest session held at least 2 weeks before the experiment, par-
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ticipants completed measures of global self-esteem as a baseline for as-
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sessing transient change in global self-esteem in the experiment. They
then provided a free-form description of the self by completing numer-
ous sentences to serve as a pretest measure of the general self-concept.
Participants then classified each descriptor in their general self-descrip-
tion as either positive or negative. Overall, this pretest description of self
was used as a basis for assessing idiographic self-concept change in the
experiment. Following this, participants named two significant others
from their lives (one toward whom they felt positively and one toward
whom they felt negatively) and completed 14 sentences to describe
each, using equal numbers of positive and negative features, and de-
scribed themselves again, but this time when with each significant other,
respectively. We used significant-other descriptors to construct the
target descriptors in the experiment.
Two weeks later, participants arrived for an allegedly unrelated exper-
iment in which they were told they would meet a new person, the
"target" person, allegedly seated next door. Participants were then given
a set of descriptors about the target, ostensibly so that they could get
to know something about the target before meeting him or her, as our
experimental manipulation. These descriptors were based on the par-
ticipant's own positively or negatively toned significant other as de-
scribed in the pretest session, or on a yoked participant's significant
other. In both the positively and negatively toned conditions, the target
was characterized by an equal number of positive and negative descrip-
tors. After learning about the target, participants again described them-
selves by completing various descriptive sentences. Participants then
classified each of these self-descriptors as positive or negative. Overall,
this measure of the working self-concept was compared to the self-con-
cept indexes collected in Session 1, across experimental conditions.
That is, change in the working self-concept in the direction of the self-
when-with-the-significant-other was assessed by calculating the overlap
between the participant's working self-concept descriptors after learn-
ing about the target and the self-with-significant-other description pro-
vided at pretest. We examined this measure of overlap, controlling for
this same overlap calculated at pretest. Participants' positive or negative
classification of each self-concept feature listed in the experimental ses-
sion was compared with their classifications at pretest, enabling us to
estimate self-evaluative change and to do so by focusing on those
descriptors that changed in the direction of the-self-when-with-the-sig-
nificant-other. Global self-esteem change was also assessed. After com-
pleting the working self-concept measure, participants were given a
recognition-memory test about the target, as in prior research (e.g., An-
dersen & Baum, 1994), to assess the activation and application of a
significant-other representation to a new person, that is, transference as
reflected in representation-consistent memory.
Participants
Eighty participants (29 men and 51 women) took part in a two-ses-
sion study, allegedly as two independent studies, as part of a require-
ment in an introductory psychology course at New \fork University.
Design
In the experiment participants learned about a target person who re-
sembled either their own or a yoked participant's positively or negatively
toned significant other in a 2 (someone else's significant other) X 2
(positive-negative) factorial design. Aflowchart portraying each of the
two sessions across all conditions is shown in the Appendix.
Session 1: Materials and Procedure
Participants arrived for thefirstsession of the study in groups of 2 to
5 people. The study was described as involving how people think about
others. Participants began by completing two global measures of self-
esteem, which served as a baseline for any global self-esteem change
that might occur in the experiment. Global self-esteem was measured
nomothetically with two measures that tap self-esteem in different ways.
The Janis and Field (1959) Feelings of Social Inadequacy Scale, which
includes 23 items, is a frequently used measured of transient self-esteem
change. A revised version of the Coopersmith (1967) Self-Esteem In-
ventory Short Form, which includes 25 items, has been used to index
stable self-esteem, as well as transient self-esteem change. To assess par-
ticipants' working self-concept at pretest, we asked participants to de-
scribe themselves by completing 14 sentences, beginning with the
prompt, "Generally, I . . . " After this feature-listing task, participants
classified each sentence as either positive or negative. This pretest mea-
sure of the general working self-concept was administered before any of
the other free-retrieval tasks (see below), so that its contents would not
be influenced by them.
Next, we asked participants to name a significant other from their
own lives—someone whom participants had known for a long time, who
was extremely important to them, and who had a significant impact on
them. In particular, participants were asked to name a positively toned
significant other, that is, one whom they like very much and around
whom they feel particularly good about themselves. In addition, we in-
dicated that this significant other should be someone with whom partic-
ipants behave differently than they behave with other people, as part
of their particular role with this significant other. After identifying this
significant other byfirstname only, participants completed 14 sentences
to describe him or her, beginning with the prompt, "Generally,
'NAME'. . .". In completing significant-other descriptive sentences,
participants were told that because even people whom we like have both
positive and negative attributes, we wanted them to list equal numbers
of positive and negative descriptors for this significant other. Hence, par-
ticipants completed 7 positive and 7 negative sentences about this sig-
nificant other. We required a balance of attributes so that the affective
tone of the target descriptors shown in the experiment could be evenly
balanced despite the overall positive tone of the significant-other repre-
sentation. As in prior work (e.g., Andersen & Baum, 1994), partici-
pants were asked to rank their positive sentences and negative sentences,
respectively, in terms of their descriptiveness. The rankings were used
to select moderately descriptive sentences to characterize the target per-
son in the later experiment, as well as to select recognition-memory test
items in the experiment (see below).
After describing a positively toned significant other, participants were
asked to describe themselves as they are when they are with this signifi-
cant other. That is, they were asked to visualize themselves in the pres-
ence of the person and then to describe what they are like when with
the significant other. Participants did this by completing 20 sentences
beginning with "When I am with 'NAME', I. . .".
We then asked participants to name another significant other, using
the same basic definition and instructions, but this time a negatively
toned significant other, that is, someone whom they dislike very much
and around whom they feel particularly badly about themselves. Partic-
ipants then described this significant other by completing 14 sentences,
7 positive and 7 negative, and then rank ordering each set of sentences.
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE
Next, participants were asked, once again, to provide their self-with-
significant-other description pertaining to this significant other by com-
pleting 20 sentences to describe themselves when around this person.
At this point, participants were asked to think once more about each
significant other and to classify each of 30 moderately positive adjectives
in terms of whether or not they described the significant other (as in,
e.g., Andersen & Cole, 1990). That is, in a forced-choice format, par-
ticipants selected 10 adjectives as descriptive, 10 as counterdescriptive
or opposite, and 10 as neutral or irrelevant. The adjectives classified as
irrelevant were used asfillertarget descriptors in the later experiment.
Because a significant other must be identified before the self-with-
significant-other description can be solicited, the ordering of description
tasks with the significant other preceding the self-with-significant-other
made sense. Moreover, given that participants were undergraduates and
not preselected for low self-esteem or depression, asking about the pos-
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itively toned significant other before the negatively toned significant
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other also seemed appropriate. Of all of the significant others described,
40% were family members (14% mothers; 8% fathers; 18% other, i.e.,
sister, brother, cousin, aunt, uncle, or grandparent), and 60% were non-
family (44% close friends; 11% romantic partners; and 5% other, e.g.,
teacher or room mate).
Finally, participants were told that the experiment was over, were par-
tially debriefed, and were thanked for their participation. The experi-
menter then attempted to recruit participants, allegedly for another psy-
chology experimenter who was having trouble enlisting participants.
This extra study was described as entirely voluntary, and participants
who did not participate in it were debriefed (about the connection be-
tween the two studies) by telephone.
Session 2: Materials and Procedure
The second session of the study was held in a different laboratory
room and with a different experimenter. Participants were met individ-
ually and escorted past a door with a sign on it, which read "Study in
Progress," and were led to believe that another participant had already
arrived. Participants were told that the study was about how people in-
teract in a "getting acquainted situation" and thus that they would meet
another participant already seated in the room "next door." Although
there was no "other participant," this pretext was reinforced
throughout.
Learning about the target person. In order "to get to know some-
thing about the other person before meeting him or her," participants
were told that they would be asked to read a set of features, describing
the other participant that were allegedly produced by a trained in-
terviewer who had previously met with the person. Half of the partici-
pants encountered features of the target derived from their own posi-
tively or negatively toned significant other description, whereas the
other half encountered features derived from a yoked participant's pos-
itively or negatively toned significant other. All participants were pre-
sented with 10 target descriptors, each on an index card (allegedly in the
interviewer's handwriting), and were told to remember each descriptor
while reading it. As in prior research (Andersen &Baum, 1994),the 10
targets included 6 that had been previously generated by the participant
or yoked participant (Ranks 4-6 from the positive and negative lists of
descriptors, respectively), whereas the remaining 4 descriptors con-
sisted of those adjectives classified as irrelevant to the significant-other
representation (each preceded by the verb is). In the yoked-participant
control condition, each participant was systematically paired with an-
other participant and randomly selected without replacement. No 2
participants in the control condition were yoked with the same
participant.
As noted, in addition to the target's resemblance or nonresemblance
to the participant's own significant other, the target's features were also
derived from either a positively or negatively toned significant other.
1283
Hence, the overall tone of the representation was manipulated in the
experiment, along with resemblance to the participant's own significant
other. It is important to note that we had asked participants to produce
both positive and negative descriptors of their significant other, indepen-
dently of the overall tone of the representation, so that an equal number
of positive and negative target descriptors could be presented in the
learning task, regardless of the overall tone of the significant-other rep-
resentation. Although we did not expect to be fully able to disguise the
overall tone of the representation, we did expect to diminish its obvious-
ness (see Andersen & Baum, 1994). Finally, the experimenter in this
second session was unaware of the participant's experimental condition.
After learning about the target, participants were asked to envision
what an interaction with this new person would be like. That is, they
were asked to visualize, in as much detail as possible, being with the
person next door and interacting with him or her.
Describing the working self-concept. To assess the working self-con-
cept, we asked participants simply to describe themselves using what we
referred to as a "standard self-description form used across many stud-
ies in psychology." Because this was the same task done at pretest, we
used a very different typeface to help maintain the appearance of a sep-
arate study. In this task, participants again completed 14 sentences to
describe themselves as they "are now," using the prompt "Generally,
I . . .". Again, participants were asked to classify each sentence as pos-
itive or negative.
Completing global self-esteem scales. After finishing the working
self-concept task, participants completed the same self-esteem mea-
sures that they used in the pretest to describe their feelings about them-
selves at that moment. We included this measure of global, nomothetic
self-esteem to assess any global self-esteem change, although the nomo-
thetic and trait-like nature of these measures made such change
unlikely.
Completing the recognition-memory test. Finally, participants com-
pleted the recognition-memory task, which consisted of 15 randomly
ordered sentences, rated on a 4-point scale that ranges from 1 (confident
that this was not presented) to 4 (confident that this was presented) to
indicate confidence that the descriptor had been about the target earlier
in the learning task. As in prior research (Andersen & Baum, 1994), 4
of the test sentences had actually been presented about the target, 2
significant-other descriptors (rank 4 from the positive and negative lists,
respectively) and 2filleritems. Of the remaining 11 statements about
the target not presented earlier 8 were representation consistent, that
is, derived from the pool of significant-other descriptors that the target
resembled. These were our crucial memory items. That is, the critical
recognition-memory test items concerned the participant's own sig-
nificant other (when the target resembled their own significant other)
or a yoked participant's significant other (when the target descriptors
were derived from this yoked participant's significant other) and were
not initially presented about the target. Of these 8 test items, 3 had been
ranked as highly descriptive (Ranks 1-3 from the positive and negative
lists, respectively), and 1 ranked as low in descriptiveness (Rank 7 from
the positive and negative lists, respectively). A total of 3 nonpresented
items were irrelevant adjectives. The representation-consistent memory
items were our crucial test items in that they allowed us to assess a
participant's tendency to "go beyond the information given" (Bruner,
1957) about the new person.
Completing the manipulation check. Finally, participants indicated
on a 7-point scale that ranges from 1 (Not at all) to 7 (Extremely) the
degree to which the target person seemed similar to each of the two
significant others (each noted by name) they described in Session 1.
Posing these questions required us to disclose in advance the link be-
tween the two sessions, which we did by indicating that this experiment
was in fact related to the prior session in which participants had de-
scribed their significant others. We then indicated that we therefore
wished to ask them a few questions about their significant others. This
 1284 HINKLEY AND ANDERSEN
disclosure meant that this manipulation check was not a pure index of
significant-other activation or of awareness of such activation. However,
given that participants provided these data before being fully debriefed,
the data do provide at least a rough estimate of perceived significant-
other similarity across resemblance conditions. At this point,' partici-
pants were informed that they would not actually meet any other person
and were fully debriefed and thanked.
Results
Manipulation Check
To determine whether we successfully manipulated resem-
blance to the participant's own significant other in the own-sig-
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nificant-other condition, we examined participants' ratings of
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how similar the target seemed to their own significant other in a
2 (own-someone else's significant other) X 2 (positive-
negative) analysis of variance (ANOVA). As expected, only a
main effect for own-someone else's significant other emerged,
indicating that participants properly perceived the target as sig-
nificantly more similar to their own significant other when the
target actually resembled this significant other (M = 4.79)
rather than a yoked participant's significant other (M = 3.55),
F{ 1,76) = 9.91, p < .003. This difference was reliable when the
target resembled a positively toned significant other, <(39) =
2.06, p < .025, and when the target resembled a negatively toned
significant other, /(39) = 2.39,/? < .025.'
To test whether this perceived resemblance was specific to the
manipulated significant-other representation, rather than to
just any significant other from the participant's life, we com-
pared each participants' rating of the target's similarity to the
manipulated, or relevant, significant other with his or her rating
of the target's similarity to the other, irrelevant significant other
from their lives (the oppositely valenced significant other they
named at pretest) in a 2 (own-someone else's) X 2 (positive-
negative) X 2 (relevant-irrelevant significant other) ANOVA.
As predicted, the interaction between the own-else's and the
relevant-irrelevant significant other variables was highly reli-
able, F( 1, 76) = 15.87, p = .0002, showing that participants
perceived the target resembling their own significant other as
more similar to this particular significant other (M = 4.79) than
to the oppositely valenced significant other from their own lives
(M - 2.40), a pattern not observed in the yoked-participant
control condition (Ms = 3.54 and 3.38).
Representation-Consistent Biased Memory
Representation-consistent memory, our index of the transfer-
ence phenomenon, was expected to be more pronounced when
the target resembled a participant's own significant other rather
than a yoked participant's. Recognition-confidence ratings for
the eight representation-consistent descriptors not presented
about the target were averaged and examined in a 2 (own-some-
one else's) X 2 (positive-negative) ANOVA. The results indi-
cated somewhat more such memory when the target resembled
participants' own (M = 1.65) rather than a yoked participant's
(M = 1.56) significant other, but the difference was unreliable
F(\, 75) < 1. Examination of the distribution of confidence
ratings across all items on the memory measure indicated that
a number of participants tended to give very high or very low
ratings to all items, rather than especially to representation-con-
sistent, unpresented items. This unexpected response bias may
have emerged as a result of interweaving the working self-con-
cept feature-listing task between the initial learning task and
the memory test, although we cannot rule out other possible
explanations.
In any event, to control for this noise variance, which is es-
sentially a response bias, in assessing memory confidence for
representation-consistent, unpresented items, we conducted an
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with each participant's aver-
age recognition-confidence rating across all recognition-mem-
ory items as the covariate.2 The adjusted means from this anal-
ysis appear in Figure 1. This analysis yielded the predicted main
effect for resemblance, indicating that participants did indeed
show more representation-consistent memory when the target
resembled their own significant other (M = 1.70) rather than a
yoked participant's significant other (M = 1.50), although only
marginally, F(\, 74) = 3.41,/? = .07. Our planned contrast ver-
ified the reliability of the effect, t (74) = 1.86, p < .05 (with a
small to medium effect size, d = .42). Although the effect was
weak compared with that obtained in comparable studies (e.g.,
Andersen & Baum, 1994), the effect did emerge when individ-
ual differences in response bias were statistically controlled. The
fact that our resemblance factor did not interact with the eval-
uative tone of the representation in this analysis (F < 1) verifies
the occurrence of transference both in the positive and negative
conditions, as shown in Andersen and Baum (1994).
To assess the potential role of the positivity or negativity of
the items in the recognition-memory test as a function of overall
tone and significant-other resemblance, we conducted a similar
analysis examining representation-consistent memory with the
valence of the memory items as a repeated measure. This 2
(own-someone else's) X 2 (positive-negative) X 2 (positive-
negative test items) ANCOVA, again with each participant's av-
erage recognition-memory confidence across all items as the co-
variate, yielded no interactions with featural valence (all Fs <
1), indicating that the biased memory effect occurred indepen-
dently of the positivity or negativity of the test items. These data
again demonstrate the basic transference effect, that is, the acti-
vation of the significant-other representation and its application
to the target person in the resemblance condition regardless of
overall tone and feature valence.
Overlap Between the Working Self-Concept and the Self-
With-the-Significant-Other
To assess change in the working self-concept in transference,
we examined the number of working self-concept features, as
described in the experiment, that overlapped with the self-
1
All planned contrasts used the mean square error from the omnibus
ANOVA and were based on explicit directional predictions and were
thus one-tailed.
2
Examination of the average recognition memory ratings across all
test items yielded no interaction in the 2 (participant's own-someone
else's) X 2 (positive-negative) ANOVA, F( 1, 75) = 1.70, ns, suggesting
that this measure can meaningfully be used as a covariate. That is, the
assumption that the covariate adjusts scores equally across cells is
satisfied.
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE
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0)
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Particip;
Figure 1. Average recognition-memory confidence ratings across the nonpresented representation-consis-
tent descriptors, corrected for average confidence rating across all memory-test items.
when-with-the-relevant-significant-other (described in the first
session) with pretest overlap (i.e., the overlap with the general,
working self-concept in the first session) as the covariate. As
indicated, we predicted that when the target person resembled
the participant's own significant other rather than a yoked par-
ticipant's significant other, the working self-concept would
come to overlap more with the self-with-significant-other de-
scription, an effect expected to hold regardless of the overall
tone of the significant-other representation. Two independent
judges compared participants' working self-concept descriptors
from the experiment with their self-with-significant-other de-
scriptors from the pretest. Judges made the same comparisons
for the working self-concept features listed at pretest. Hence,
judges classified each of the 14 features of the working self-con-
cept provided by each participant in each session as the same or
different from each of the 14 features of his or her self-with-
significant-other description (provided at pretest) for each of
the 2 self-with-significant-other descriptions. Judges thus classi-
fied 784 pairs of descriptors and did so with 99% agreement.
(Disagreements were resolved by a third rater.)
The number of overlapping descriptors in the working self-
concept and the self-with-significant-other was analyzed in a 2
(own-someone else's) X 2 (positive-negative) X 2 (relevant-
irrelevant) ANCOVA with the relevance-irrelevance of the self-
with-significant-other representation as a repeated measure and
with pretest overlap as a covariate. As predicted, this analysis
yielded a reliable interaction between the significant-other re-
semblance variable and the relevance of the self-with-signifi-
cant-other, F( 1, 75) = 4.30, p = .04. As shown in Figure 2, the
predicted shift in the working self-concept clearly occurred in
the context of significant other activation, only for the relevant
self-with-significant-other descriptors.
1285
A Yoked Participant's
D Positively Toned
• Negatively Toned
To examine the effect further, we conducted a separate analy-
sis for the relevant self-with-significant-other representations.
These descriptors were examined in a 2 (own-someone else's)
X 2 (positive-negative) ANCO\A that yielded, as predicted, a
main effect for significant-other resemblance. That is, self-con-
cept overlap with the relevant self-with-significant-other in-
creased more relative to pretest when the target resembled the
participant's own significant other (M = 0.57) than it did when
the target resembled a yoked participant's significant other (M
= 0.21), F( 1, 75) = 6.44, p = .01. This is exactly the shift in
the working self-concept toward the self-with-significant-other
representation that we predicted. Hence, these data clearly
demonstrate change in the working self-concept that is based
on significant-other resemblance in the target. No such effect
emerged from the analysis of irrelevant self-with-significant-
other representations.
Beyond this, the ANCOVA concerning the relevant self-with-
significant-other also yielded a main effect for the overall tone
of the original representation, F( 1,75) = 11.91, p < .001. This
effect indicated that participants' working self-concept came to
overlap more with the positive self-with-significant-other repre-
sentation when the target was positively toned (M = 0.63) than
it did with the negative self-with-significant-other representa-
tion when negatively toned (M = 0.16), independently of
whether the target resembled the participant's own significant
other, as can be seen in Figure 2. This effect suggests that
changes in the working self-concept toward the self-with-the
(positively toned) significant-other were evoked on the basis of
positively versus negatively toned target features. Hence, new
others who are positively toned provoke working self concept
changes in the direction of the self-with-a (positively toned) sig-
nificant-other, independently of significant-other resemblance,
 1286 HINKLEY AND ANDERSEN
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Participant's Own
Figure 2. Overlap between participants' working self-concept and the relevant self-with-significant-other
representation, corrected for pretest overlap.
perhaps because positive tonality is more familiar and common
among significant-other representations. Although this effect is
provocative, it is qualified by our predicted interaction that
showed the hypothesized working self-concept changes oc-
curred specifically in the context of significant-other resem-
blance and did so both for positively and negatively toned sig-
nificant-other representations.3
It is worth noting that although overall overlap was signifi-
cantly different from zero, it was also quite low (as in previous
research, Prentice, 1990), indicating that participants charac-
terized the working self-concept both at pretest and in the ex-
periment very differently, overall, from their self-with-signifi-
cant-other representation. This was, in fact, consistent with our
instructions to participants at pretest to name significant others
with whom they behave differently and experience the self
differently than they otherwise do.
Change in the Evaluative Tone of the Working
Self-Concept
To examine the evaluative tone of the observed change in the
working self-concept in transference, we examined partici-
pants' classifications (as positive or negative) of each of the self
descriptors they provided in the experimental session and at
pretest. When the target resembled the participant's own sig-
nificant other, we expected that the change in participants'
working self-concept in the direction of their self-with-signifi-
cant-other descriptions would reflect the evaluative tone of their
significant-other representation and of their relationship with
this significant other. To test this hypothesis, we assessed change
in the self evaluation reflected in those self aspects that shifted
toward the self-with-significant-other representation—that is,
A Yoked Participant's
LJ Positively Toned
B Negatively Toned
the overlapping working self-concept items. We also assessed
change in the self evaluation reflected in the nonoverlapping
working self-concept items, which were the majority of the
working self-concept items.
The sum of the positive and negative classifications of the
overlapping versus nonoverlapping working self-concept de-
scriptors was examined in a 2 (own-someone else's) X 2
(positive-negative) X 2 (overlap-nonoverlap) ANCOV\ with
overlap-nonoverlap as a repeated measure and with the same
sum calculated at pretest as the covariate. This analysis yielded
the predicted three-way interaction, F( 1, 74) = 3.89, p = .05,
indicating that our manipulations differentially influenced the
perceived valence of overlapping versus nonoverlapping work-
ing self-concept items. Hence, these overlapping and nonover-
lapping items were analyzed separately.
Valence ofthefeatures ofthe overlapping working self-concept
items. The perceived change in valence of the overlapping
working self-concept items was examined in a 2 (own-someone
else's) X 2 (positive-negative) ANCOV\ with pretest valence as
the covariate. Although the predicted interaction was not reli-
able (F < 1) our a priori planned contrasts showed that the
perceived valence of the overlapping items did indeed become
more positive when the target resembled the participant's own
3
This 2 X 2 X 2 ANCOVA also yielded a significant 2-way interaction
between the positive-negative variable and relevance, F( 1, 75) = 6.45,
p = .01, reflecting the fact that overlap was significantly greater when
the target resembled a positively toned and relevant other, regardless of
transference condition. This shows that more evaluatively similar
changes in the working self-concept happen in relation to a same-tone-
self-with-significant-other (relevance) when the target was positively
rather than negatively toned.
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE 1287

positively toned (M = 0.36) versus negatively toned (M =
-0.01) significant other, f(38) = 1.68, p < .05, whereas this
comparison was not reliable when the target resembled a yoked
participant's significant other (Ms = .25 and .05), t(39) <\,ns.
As shown in Figure 3, the predicted change in the evaluative
tone of the aspects of the working self-concept that shifted to-
ward the self-with-significant-other representation did indeed
occur.
Beyond this, a trend toward a main effect also emerged from
this analysis, F( 1,75) = 3.28, p = .07, suggesting that indepen-
dent of the significant-other resemblance factor, the overall tone the participant's positively toned significant other (M = 5.45),
of the target features (whether the participant's own or a yoked
participant's) led to a change in the perceived valence in the
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
cant-other was also examined in a 2 (own-someone else's) X 2
(positive-negative) ANCOVA with pretest valence as the covar-
iate. Although this analysis yielded a significant interaction,
F(l, 74) = 4.51, p = .04, the direction of the means was re-
versed relative to the overlapping items, as shown in Figure 4.
Indeed, our planned contrasts revealed that the perceived va-
lence of the items not involved in the overlap with the self-with-
the-significant-other became reliably more positive when the
target resembled the participant's own negatively toned signifi-
cant other (M = 8.53) than they did when the target resembled
/(38) = 3.06, p < .005, with no such effect emerging when the
target resembled a yoked participant's significant other (Ms =

working self-concept items that changed toward the self-with- 6.20 and 6.14, respectively), f(39)< 1. This effect is exactly the
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significant-other. Although this effect does not challenge the opposite of what we found for the overlapping aspects of the
evidence of our predicted evaluative changes in the working self- working self-concept, which shifted toward the self-when-with-
concept, changes which occurred only in the context of signifi- the-significant-other, for which evaluation paralleled the tone of
cant-other resemblance, as hypothesized, it does suggest that the representation. The reversal occurred in most of the work-
the overall evaluative tone of a new person may directly trigger ing self-concept and may thus reflect a self-regulatory, compen-
changes in the perceived valence of working self-concept (e.g., satory response, a notion we take up in the Discussion section.
Niedenthal et al., 1992). When encountering a target resem- Overall valence of working self-concept. The perceived va-
bling someone else's positively toned significant other, partici- lence of all of the features of the participant's working self-con-
pants come to see themselves more as they are when they are cept was examined in the same 2 (own-someone else's) X 2
with their positively toned significant other than when they are (positive-negative) ANCOVA with pretest valence as the covar-
with their negatively toned significant other, meaning that affect iate. The analysis yielded a reliable interaction, F( 1,74) = 4.81,
in the target person plays a role in perceivers' self evaluation in p = .03, reflecting the same reversal found for nonoverlapping
the working self-concept, independent of significant-other re- items. As portrayed in Figure 5, when the target resembled the
semblance and transference. participant's own negatively toned significant other, the per-
Valence ofthefeatures ofthe nonoverlapping working self-con- ceived valence of the working self-concept features—across all
cept features. The perceived valence of those aspects of the features—became significantly more positive (M = 8.68) than
working self-concept not overlapping with the self-with-signifi- it did when the target resembled the participant's own positively

0.4

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Participant's Own A Yoked Participant's

LJ Positively Toned
B Negatively Toned

Figure 3. Valence of participants' working-self-concept descriptors overlapping with their relevant self-
with-significant-other representation, corrected for pretest valence.
 1288 H1NK.LEY AND ANDERSEN

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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

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Participant's Own A Yoked Participant's

Q Positively Toned
| Negatively Toned

Figure 4. Valence of participants' working-self-concept descriptors not overlapping with their relevant
self-with-significant-other representation, corrected for pretest valence.

toned significant other (M = 5.68), f(38) = 2.93, p < .01, an
effect that did not occur when the target resembled someone
else's significant other, f(39) < 1. The analysis also yielded a
reliable main effect for overall tone, F( 1, 74) = 3.91, p = .05,
but this was qualified by the interaction.
Effects ofSignificant-Other Activation on Global Self-
Esteem (Nomothetically Assessed)
The 2 (own-someone else's significant other) X 2 (positive-
negative) ANCOVAs examining self-esteem, with pretest self-

I
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CT)

I 7-

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Participant's Own A Yoked Participant's

• Positively Toned
| Negatively Toned

Figure 5. Valence of all participants' working-self-concept descriptors, corrected for pretest valence.
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE
esteem as a covariate, yielded no reliable effects (Fs < 1) for
either measure of self-esteem alone or for the two measures
combined (Baldwin & Holmes, 1987). By contrast, the idio-
graphic measures enabled subtle changes in the working self-
concept to be detected along with their evaluative implications,
underscoring the methodological advantages of idiographic over
standard assessment techniques in the present paradigm (see
Deaux, 1991; Higgins, 1990; Pelham, 1993). The idiographic
changes in the working self-concept and their evaluative im-
plications observed in the context of significant-other resem-
blance and transference did not covary with nomothetic self-
esteem change.
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Discussion
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Recent research has demonstrated transference in social per-
ception. In this experimental work, transference is defined in
terms of the activation and application of the significant-other
representation to a new person. It is assessed in terms of repre-
sentation-consistent memory (Andersen et al., 1995; Andersen
& Cole, 1990), and various affectively relevant responses (e.g.,
Andersen et al., 1996; Andersen & Baum, 1994). The present
study extended prior work into the domain of the working self-
concept (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Participants in an experiment
learned about a new person who resembled either their own or
a yoked participant's significant other, and we controlled for the
idiographic content of the descriptive stimuli encountered.
Moreover, the overall tone of the new target person was manip-
ulated as positive or negative, in that the significant-other rep-
resentation from which the target's features were derived was
positively or negatively toned. Hence, in each condition of the
experiment, the new person resembled either a significant other
from the participant's own life or a yoked participant's signifi-
cant other (with control participants yoked on a one-to-one ba-
sis with participants in the own significant-other condition),
with the original tone of the representation being positive or
negative. In spite of these differences in overall tone, moreover,
equal numbers of positive and negative descriptors were pre-
sented about each new person to tone down obviousness in
overall tone.
After learning about the new person, participants completed
a measure of their own working self-concept—what their char-
acteristics are now—and then a recognition memory test about
the target person about whom they had just learned. As pre-
dicted, we found the basic memory effect reflecting transfer-
ence. That is, participants showed more representation-consis-
tent memory when the target resembled their own rather than a
yoked participant's significant other across both positively and
negatively toned significant others. Moreover, the predicted
effect on the working self-concept also occurred. That is, the
working self-concept of participants in the significant other re-
semblance condition came to overlap more with participants'
sense of the self-when-with-this-significant-other than did that
of participants in the yoked-participant control condition. The
working self-concept clearly shifted in the direction of the self-
when-with-the-significant-other when the target person resem-
bled the participant's own significant other.
These two findings constitute evidence that changes in the
working self-concept occurred in transference. These are the
1289
firstfindingswe know of that demonstrate the role of the self in
transference, that is, in the context of significant-other activa-
tion and application to a new person. When the target resem-
bled the participant's own significant other, participants were
led to make inferences about and to remember the new person
in terms of that significant other. In addition, they came to per-
ceive themselves more as they are when they are with the sig-
nificant other. These data thus provide evidence of the linkage
between significant-other representations and the self in mem-
ory, as shown elsewhere (Baldwin et al., 1990; Baldwin &
Holmes, 1987). More specifically, these data confirm the work-
ing self-concept hypothesis in transference by demonstrating
that encountering a person who resembles a significant other
and who thus activates the significant-other representation and
transference indirectly activates the aspects of the self most
linked to the significant other, that is the self-when-with-the-
significant-other.
Beyond change in the degree of overlap between the working
self-concept and the self-with-significant-other, parallel changes
in the evaluative tone of these newly overlapping features also
occurred, suggesting that changes in self-evaluation reflected in
the self-concept occur in the direction of the self-when-with-
the-significant-other. That is, when the target resembled the par-
ticipant's own significant other, rather than a yoked partici-
pant's, the newly overlapping items of the working self-concept
that shifted toward the self-with-the-significant-other became
more evaluatively consistent with the overall tone of the signifi-
cant-other representation. By the participants' own estimates
the self<;oncept change they demonstrated was more positive
when the target resembled a positively toned rather than nega-
tively toned significant other from a participant's life, a pattern
not observed when the target resembled a yoked participant's
significant other. These data confirm the self-evaluation hypoth-
esis in transference, suggesting that aspects of the self that
change in the direction of the self-when-with-the-significant-
other in transference show the same overall tone as does the
significant-other representation. Because no parallel effect oc-
curred for global self-esteem, it is likely that these effects were
very subtle indeed.
When the valence of all of the elements of the working self-
concept were considered, a surprising and unpredicted finding
emerged. Most working self-concept features were not in fact
involved in the shift toward the significant other, and hence were
nonoverlapping, and these features changed in a direction op-
posite to the overall tone of the significant-other representation.
That is, in the transference condition in which the target resem-
bled the participant's own negatively toned significant other,
participants experienced themselves in highly positive terms,
broadly speaking, as reflected in all their working self-concept
features. In contrast to the newly overlapping features of the
working self-concept, which took on a representation-consis-
tent (negative) tone in this condition, the nonoverlapping fea-
tures—the majority of features—took on a particularly positive
tone. Because this reversal was observed only when the target
resembled the participant's own negatively toned representa-
tion and not a yoked participant's, it appears to be specific to
the condition of negatively toned transference. Although unpre-
dicted, this finding suggests what may have been a compensa-
tory response to the relatively negative self-concept change pro-
 1290 HINK.LEY AND ANDERSEN
duced in the negative transference condition, a response to self-
concept threat that is not uncommon (e.g., Banaji & Prentice,
1994;Greenberg&Pyszczynski, 1985;Greenwald, 1980; Paul-
hus & Levitt, 1987; Showers, 1992; Taylor & Brown, 1988).
Representation-Consistent Memory as an Index of
Significant-Other Activation
As in prior research, participants in the present study showed
more representation-consistent memory when the target person
resembled the participant's own significant other, rather than a
yoked participant's significant other (Andersen & Baum, 1994;
Andersen etal., 1995; Andersen etal., 1996). This confirms the
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
occurrence oftransference across both positively and negatively
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
toned significant others in this study. Relative to prior research,
the memory effect in the present study was fairly weak, however,
presumably as a result of response biases such as a tendency to
give either high or low recognition-confidence ratings across all
items. Indeed, when this tendency was controlled, the memory
effect clearly emerged. Even so, the effect was not robust, per-
haps because of the way participants repeatedly described the
self in the study. Participants described the self both before the
significant-other description task in the preliminary session and
before completing the memory test in the experiment after
learning about the new person, which may have led to greater
interference in the nature of the significant-other stimuli that
came to mind than occurred in previous studies. In any event,
the fact that more representation-consistent memory occurred
when the target resembled the participant's own versus a yoked
participant's significant other, despite these complexities in the
study, allows us to infer that transference occurred in the own-
significant-other condition as planned.
Representation-consistent memory could, of course, emerge
as a result of the activation of any well-elaborated representa-
tion in memory (e.g., N. Cantor & Mischel, 1977; Higgins &
King, 1981; Smith &Zarate, 1992).On the basis of priorwork,
however, we argue that the present data cannot be accounted
for by the activation of just any representation. In particular,
previous research has demonstrated that more significant-
other-consistent memory emerges when a target person resem-
bling a significant other triggers the significant-other represen-
tation than when a target not resembling the significant other
is encountered (see Andersen et al., 1995). That is, when the
recognition-memory test items consist of the participant's own
significant-other descriptors, significant-other-consistent mem-
ory is less when there are no relevant stimulus cues in the target
person than when stimulus cues in the target trigger the signifi-
cant-other representation. This evidence suggests that transfer-
ence occurred in this study and that such significant-other
effects are more pronounced than are comparable effects that
are based on other kinds of representations.
On a broader level, it is worth acknowledging that within our
information processing model, which is based on social con-
struct theory and on interpersonal theory (Sullivan, 1953), one
can explain transference in terms of the behavioral mechanism
of stimulus generalization (Dollard & Miller, 1950; see also Ma-
honey & Thoresen, 1974). To the degree that stimulus general-
ization can be conceptualized as mediated by a mental repre-
sentation, that is, by a significant-other representation in par-
ticular, this process may characterize quite nicely how patterns
of responding may be learned and modeled in relation to a sig-
nificant other and then later experienced in relation to a new
person. Any such learning process should be discriminative, in
that learned patterns should not be performed under all circum-
stances, and especially not under some (Mischel, 1968; Mischel
& Shoda, 1995), and in that generalization should occur as well,
limited by discrimination (see also Wachtel, 1973,1977). Dis-
criminative stimuli, in this view, would thus comprise the vari-
ous triggering conditions of transference. When conceptualized
in terms of cognitive-behavioral learning theory (Bandura,
1977, 1986; Mischel, 1973), stimulus generalization can be
used particularly easily to understand transference, and this has
implications for integrative models of personality and behavior
(see Andersen & Berk, 1996). Although this matter reaches well
beyond the scope of the present data, it is of theoretical interest
and warrants attention.
Changes in the Working Self-Concept in Transference
As predicted, when the target resembled the participant's
own rather than a yoked participant's significant other, changes
in the working self-concept occurred in the direction of the self-
when-with-this-significant-other (see Ogilvie & Ashmore,
1991), suggesting that significant-other activation spreads to
the self by means of the links in memory between the significant
other and the self (Andersen & Chen, in press). Hence, when a
particular significant-other representation is activated, related
aspects of the self that reflect the self-when-with-this-signifi-
cant-other are elicited and become part of the working self-con-
cept. This working self-concept effect occurred uniquely in the
direction of the self-when-with-this-particular-significant-other
and not in the direction of a different self-with-significant-other.
Moreover, it occurred only in the transference condition. Be-
cause our design ensured that no systematic content differences
existed between the target stimuli in the own-significant-other
condition versus the yoked-control condition, the elicited
changes in the working self-concept cannot be accounted for by
different target descriptor content.
By linking transference to the self as well as to significant-
other representations, this work extends the existing literature
on the self as linked to others, particularly significant others
(e.g., Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991; Markus & Cross,
1990). A new individual who reminds one—presumably
largely implicitly—of a relevant significant other leads the sig-
nificant-other representation to be activated and applied to this
new person, producing a change in the working self-concept in
the process. Fluctuations in one's momentary self-based-on-sig-
nificant-other representations thus appear to occur in transfer-
ence. In terms of everyday relations, if one sees oneself as
helpful around a particular significant other, one should be par-
ticularly likely to see oneself this way in the relevant transfer-
ence, that is, when the new person resembles this significant
other. These data also demonstrate, more broadly, that changes
in the self do occur as a function of context (Banaji & Prentice,
1994;Linville&Carlston, 1994).
The aim of this study was to determine whether changes in
the working self-concept occur in the context of transference,
and our data clearly suggest they do. Indeed, to facilitate our
 SPECIAL ISSUE: WORKING SELF-CONCEPT IN TRANSFERENCE
capacity to test this hypothesis, we made learning about the
target person especially meaningful and immediate for partici-
pants by leading them to believe that they would meet this new
person later on in the session (as in prior work, e.g., Andersen
& Baum, 1994; Andersen et al., 1996). Simply reading a de-
scription of a target person with no anticipation of meeting the
person, we reasoned, may not be sufficiently involving to the
participant to permit a full response to the target person's fea-
tures. Hence, we elected to enhance the participant's involve-
ment in the experimental learning task by highlighting the sub-
sequent meeting with the target. This implies that the detected
shift in working self-concept in the direction of the self-when-
with-the-significant-other may not have emerged purely on the
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
basis of a passive spread of activation from the significant-other
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
representation to the self but rather may have capitalized on the
anticipated interaction with the new person.
In another vein, we acknowledge that the design of the pres-
ent study does not make it possible to assess definitively the de-
gree to which the predicted shift in the working self-concept
was, in fact, mediated by significant-other activation and appli-
cation. The fact that representation-consistent memory was
more pronounced when the target resembled the participant's
own rather than a yoked participant's significant other demon-
strates the occurrence of transference in the relevant condition.
However, these data do not permit an examination of how much
the significant-other representation was used across these two
conditions. Such an analysis would have required a memory test
consisting of the participant's own significant-other features in
both conditions (as in Andersen et al., 1995), whereas in the
present study we used the yoked participant's significant-other
features as the memory test in the control condition, as has been
done in prior research (Andersen & Baum, 1994), precluding a
direct mediational test.
On a still broader level, it is important to acknowledge explic-
itly that changes in the nature of the self in transference, as it
occurs in everyday social relations, raise the more general no-
tion of the implications of the process of transference for a per-
son's overall character or personality. Indeed, we argue that in-
terpersonal and self-perception changes, which we have assessed
in idiosyncratic terms, provide a way of defining personality as
it is constituted by the various chronic tendencies to have par-
ticular personal relationships that are linked to various signifi-
cant-other representations in memory. In fact, H. S. Sullivan
(1953) argued, as has been frequently noted, that people may
have as many personalities as they have had significant interper-
sonal relations. In our view, personality may well be the ten-
dency to have particular types of interpersonal relationships,
defined in highly personal terms on the basis of one's own indi-
vidual learning, and each of which is linked to a particular sig-
nificant-other representation in memory. Each pattern can then
be triggered by cues in a newly encountered person and situa-
tion. In this way, differing aspects of one's personality are elic-
ited in different contexts, a notion that is becoming more widely
accepted in personality psychology (e.g., Mischel & Shoda,
1995). Indeed, given the chronic accessibility of significant-
other representations (Andersen et al., 1995), the various inter-
personal and self-perceptions linked to each significant-other
representation are likely to have an inherent readiness to be
used. Moreover, the expanding interface between personality
1291
theory and social cognition in efforts to spell out the processes
that underlie knowledge activation and use has enabled re-
searchers to conduct this work on significant-other representa-
tions and transference, and it thus provides a framework for un-
derstanding not only transference but variability and continuity
in personality more generally (e.g., Higgins, 1989a, 1990).
Finally, it is also worth noting that in terms of the present
data, the increase in overlap between the working self-concept
and the positively toned self-with-significant-other was greater
when the target was positively toned rather than negatively
toned, regardless of resemblance to the participant's own sig-
nificant other. That is, positively toned features of any target
person, even if the new person bore no specific resemblance to
the significant other, led the working self-concept to shift in the
direction of the self-with-a-( positively toned)-significant-other.
A positive overall tone in a new person thus contributes to
changes in the working self-concept in the direction of the sim-
ilarly toned self-with-significant-other (Ogilvie & Ashmore,
1991). Although unpredicted, this supports the notion that
affect may drive categorization at times (Niedenthal, 1990; Nie-
denthal & Setterlund, 1994; Niedenthal, Setterlund, & Jones,
1994), meaning, in this case, that a positive affective tone in a
new person may activate one's positively toned self-with-sig-
nificant-other, as reflected in content changes in the working
self-concept. Indeed, self evaluation in the working self-concept
showed the same effect in this study. That is, the newly overlap-
ping self-concept features were more positively valenced when
the new person was positively toned versus negatively toned,
regardless of significant-other resemblance. Hence, affect
triggered relevant changes in the working self-concept directly,
both in terms of content and self evaluation, even in the ab-
sence of similarity-based triggering of the significant-other
representation.
Overall, however, our basic working self-concept effect clearly
occurred, and occurred independently of the tone of the sig-
nificant-other representation, as a function of significant-other
resemblance in the new person. These data therefore verify our
working self-concept hypothesis in transference.
Changes in the Evaluative Tone of the Working Self-
Concept in Transference
Consistent with our predictions, the valence of the working
self-concept descriptors that shifted toward the self-when-with-
the-significant-other came to reflect the overall tone of the sig-
nificant-other representation in the context of transference.
That is, the newly overlapping descriptors of the working self-
concept became more positive, reflecting a more positive self
evaluation, when the target resembled the participant's own
positively toned versus negatively toned significant other, and
this did not occur in the yoked-participant control condition.
These data extend research on the links between significant-
other representations and self evaluation (Baldwin et al., 1990;
Baldwin & Holmes, 1987) by showing predicted changes in self
evaluation in transference.
On the other hand, the unexpectedfindingthat also emerged
in self evaluation in transference involved all the aspects of the
working self-concept, not just those involved in the shift toward
the self-when-with-this-significant-other. That is, when we con-
 1292 HINKLEY AND ANDERSEN
sidered all working self-concept features, we found that the fol-
lowing reversal occurred: Nonoverlapping self-aspects actually
came to be seen more positively when the target resembled the
participant's own negatively toned significant other than they
did when the target resembled the positively toned significant
other (a pattern that did not hold among participants who
learned about a target resembling a yoked participant's signifi-
cant other). Although unpredicted, this effect appears to reflect
a kind of self bolstering in the face of the relatively negative self-
concept change experienced in the negative transference condi-
tion (see Baumeister, 1982; J. Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1985;
Paulhus & Levitt, 1987; Showers, 1992). An especially positive,
working self-concept emerged precisely when a negatively toned
significant-other representation was activated and hence when
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
the newly overlapping changes in the working self-concept be-
came relatively less positive (or relatively negative). Although
we cannot be sure, of course, that compensation is the best ex-
planation for the effect because it is clearly post hoc, it is a plau-
sible explanation.
Alternatively, based on psychodynamic assumptions, it may
be that a negatively toned transference experience enables the
expression of positive feelings toward the new person because
the new person is not expected to respond in exactly the same
negative way as the significant other, and this may disinhibit an
otherwise suppressed positive self-concept. Such a phenomenon
might even be considered therapeutic under some circum-
stances, and this would not exactly be compensatory. However,
research has shown that the new person in transference is ex-
pected to respond in the same ways as the significant other
(Andersen et al., 1996). Moreover, it has been demonstrated
that people often respond in positive ways to negative or self-
threatening information and show an "illusory glow" of opti-
mism in their interpretations (Alloy & Abramson, 1979; Lew-
insohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Barton, 1980; Taylor & Brown,
1988). People regularly self-enhance (Brown & Gallagher,
1992; Campbell & Fehr, 1990) and often do so as a compensa-
tory, self-regulatory response to challenge or threat (Banaji &
Prentice, 1994; Brown & Gallagher, 1992; Greenberg, Pyszc-
zynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Steele, 1988; Taylor & Lobel,
1989). We therefore regard the compensation explanation as
plausible and relatively economical.
Self in the Social Context of Transference
Overall, the present results verify the linkage in memory be-
tween the self and various significant others (Baldwin, 1992;
Bugental, 1992; Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991) and are suggestive
about the interpersonal nature of the self (e.g., Aron et al., 1991;
Hammen & Goodman-Brown, 1990; Higgins, 1987, 1989a;
Markus & Cross, 1990). They also extend recent work on trans-
ference, which has provided indirect support for the occurrence
of self-relevant processes in transference. That is, prior research
has demonstrated that the sense of acceptance or rejection one
feels from a significant other is experienced with a new person
in transference as an expectancy about the new person's likely
acceptance or rejection (Andersen et al., 1996). One expects to
be evaluated by the new person as one is (or was) evaluated by
the significant other. In addition, one's interpersonal motivation
toward the significant other—to be emotionally close and open
or distant with the other—is also experienced in transference.
Hence, one wishes to emotionally approach the new person or
to distance from him or her just as one does (or did) in relation
to the significant other. These interpersonal motivations and ex-
pectancies, derived from the significant-other relationship, are
stored in memory in the linkages between the self and the sig-
nificant other and are activated and applied in the transference
(Andersen etal., 1996).
As indicated, the process of transference involves the activa-
tion and use of a significant-other representation in interpreting
a new person. A related process, that of projection, involves the
activation and use of a self-representation to interpret a new
other (Catrambone & Markus, 1987); this process has been
widely examined in various experimental literatures (e.g.,
Holmes, 1968; Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985; Ross,
Greene, & House, 1977). As yet, experimental research on
transference has not examined the circumstances under which
projection may occur along with transference in relation to a
new person. Even though this might well occur, given basic prin-
ciples of construct accessibility, the present research shows only
that self activation occurs on the basis of significant-other re-
semblance, that is, on the basis of significant-other activation in
transference. Whether projection of the self onto the new other
could also occur in transference thus remains an open question.
In summary, the present research extends previous work on
the experimental demonstration of transference by document-
ing changes in the working self-concept and relevant changes in
self evaluation. The working self-concept clearly does change in
the context of transference, with multiple implications for self
evaluation. When a new colleague, friend, or lover reminds one,
either implicitly or explicitly, of someone from one's past, some-
one significant with whom one has had an affectively laden re-
lationship, transference occurs. One may then perceive the new
person as one perceives the significant other and may also "be-
come" the self when with the relevant significant other, if only to
some extent. Indeed, if the relevant significant other is positively
toned, this implies a fairly pervasive, positive self-evaluation in
the transference, whereas if the relevant significant other is neg-
ative, this implies that dreaded aspects of the self may color self-
evaluation in subtle ways. On the other hand, a complementary
positive self evaluation tends to sweep the self-evaluation nega-
tivity away,figuratively,working against any simple self-evalua-
tive pattern. One comes to feel poorly about oneself in a nega-
tive transference, but rallies. In a positive transference, there is
no such need. Overall, the data clearly show that changes in the
working self-concept occur in transference through significant-
other activation, and suchfindingsmay have profound implica-
tions for our understanding both of how the past plays a role in
the present and of the interpersonal nature of the self.
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Appendix
Pretest and Experimental Procedures for Each Participant
Session 1
Pretest Assessments
Complete global self-esteem scales
Provide description of working self-concept
Provide description of positively toned significant other (using both
positive and negative descriptors)
Provide description of self-with-the-( positively toned)-significant-
other
Provide description of negatively toned significant other (using both
positive and negative descriptors)
Provide description of self-with-the-( negatively toned)-significant-
other
1295
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Select irrelevant adjectives for each significant other (and descriptive
and counterdescriptive adjectives)
Session 2
Learning About the Target Person
Read target descriptors (the experimental manipulation)
Posttest Assessments
Provide description of working self-concept
Complete global self-esteem scales
Complete recognition-memory test about target person
Complete manipulation check
Received June 22,1995
Revision received August 26, 1996
Accepted August 26,1996