AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTIONS IN SOCIAL INTERACTION (1): THE COOPERATOR AND THE NONCOOPERATOR : DIVERGENT VS. CONVERGENT PERCEPTIONS

The present paper attempted to investigate the relationship between social roles and interpersonal perceptions in terms of social interaction processes. 32 female students served as Ss ; half were assigned to the cooperative orientation group and half to the noncooperative orientation group. The experimental design was formed by placing together the pairs of subjects having different orientations and by having them to play the 15 trials of PD game. Af ter completion of the trials, Ss were asked to evaluate their own and the other's intentions in playing the games on 9 adjective scales, and to evaluate how successful they were in the games. The main results and discussion were as follows : When cooperative oriented and noncooperative oriented subjects interacted in the PD game, (1) the noncooperater had a low rate of cooperative choices, and her rate is comparatively uniform throughout the trials. In contrast, the cooperator's rate of cooperative choices was higher, but it decreased markedly as the game went on. Therefore, it can be said that the cooperator was behaviorally assimilated to the noncooperator. (2) Because of this assimilation, the noncooperator perceived himself and the other as similar to each other on 9 adjective scales (convergent perception). (3) The cooperator, however, having to give up his cooperative goal orientation, had strong feelings of failure. And he perceived himself and the other as dissimilar to each other on 9 adjective scales (divergent perception).