Movement in social orientations: a commentary on Kelley

After reviewing some classic contributions to the truly social social–psychological literature (Lewin, Horney, Festinger), this commentary outlines how and why Kelley's analysis extends and complements more traditional approaches to interdependence. Three strengths are emphasized, suggesting that Kelley's analysis (a) offers a much-needed situation-based taxonomy for different social orientations and interpersonal phenomena, (b) serves the ecological validity of social orientations, and (c) potentially helps us understand why classical dimensions of person judgment include not only goodness versus badness, but also movement-related orientations such as dominance versus submission, strength versus weakness, or activity versus passivity. Kelley's analysis can be extended by developing further domain-specific theory and methodology for examining the temporal and sequential aspects of social orientations, and by applying a means–end analysis to differing social orientations identified in Kelley's analysis. Finally, following Chuck McClintock (1972), it is argued that the field should reserve the concept of social value orientation to define allocational preferences relevant to valuing outcomes for self and others. This basic orientation should meaningfully ‘drive’ the ways in which we approach interdependent others, solve interdependence problems, and utilize interdependence opportunities. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Balanced Risk–Benefit Information and Initial Attitudes on Post‐Information Attitudes1

In a realistic social context, people are confronted with both positive and negative information, yet research on this topic is relatively scarce. We present 2 studies examining the role of initial attitudes on the impact of one‐sided vs. balanced positive and negative information on attitudes toward food production methods. The first experiment demonstrated that one‐sided information influenced post‐information attitudes congruent to the direction of the message content. The second experiment showed that the effect of balanced information on post‐information attitudes may depend on initial attitudes. These results demonstrate that negativity effects are dominant for people with initial positive attitudes, but change into positivity effects for people with initial negative attitudes. Implications for communicating both positive and negative information are discussed.     

Till death do us part: Terror management and forgiveness in close relationships

Two experiments extended terror management theory to investigate forgiveness in close relationships. We hypothesized that mortality salience would elicit less forgiveness in less committed relationships. In Experiment 1, participants were primed with either mortality salience or a physical pain control condition, recalled a recent hurtful interpersonal offense, and reported their degree of forgiveness. Mortality salience evoked less forgiveness in less committed relationships. In Experiment 2, participants were assigned to recall an offense that occurred in a low‐commitment or high‐commitment relationship. Again, mortality salience elicited less forgiveness in less committed relationships; it elicited more forgiveness in more committed relationships. Moreover, this interaction was mediated by empathy. Existential considerations may play an important role in the functioning of close relationships.