The Effect of Self-Presentation on Social Value Orientation

Abstract Social-value orientations in interdependence situations are expected to be influenced by self-presentational concerns because in contrast to proself orientations (individualism and competition), prosocial orientations (cooperation, altruism, equality, and maximin) tend to make a more positive impression on others. In the present study, the influence of self-presentation on social orientation was inhibited by means of a bogus pipeline procedure. Dutch University students in a bogus pipeline condition displayed less prosocial and more proself orientations than students in a condition in which no bogus pipeline was used.