The "plus polar self": A reinterpretation of the self-prioritization effect as a polarity correspondence effect.

Abstract

We suggest that the polarity correspondence principle (PCP; Proctor & Cho, 2006) can explain the self-prioritization effect (SPE), that is, that matching responses for self-labels and self-assigned shapes are faster than matching responses for other labels and other-assigned shapes. According to PCP, one can argue that self-label, self-shape, and the "yes, match" responses are all + polar (hence full correspondence is given), whereas other label and other shape are both-polar, which does not correspond to the + polarity of the "yes" response. Our argument is based on a structural analogy of the self-matching task with an experiment by Seymour (1969)-a pillar of the PCP-who conducted an experiment where participants determined if the location of a dot (above or below a rectangle) matched the word ("above" or "below") presented within the rectangle. Faster reactions occurred in above-above matching trials than in below-below or nonmatching trials. We replicated this finding (Experiment 1A) and showed the close analogy to the self-matching task by replicating the SPE with a single "other" category. In Experiment 2, we showed that the SPE disappears if participants are instructed to respond with "no" to matches. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 with two instead of one "other" category (which is more common in SPE research). Again, the SPE in the "yes" condition significantly exceeded the one in the "no" condition. However, the latter SPE was still significant, suggesting that part of the SPE might be due to the PCP, but a small self-related effect remains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).