Self-perception theory posits that people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing their freely chosen actions. We hypothesized that in addition, people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity—almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. Before observing an actor’s behavior, participants were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor through perspective-taking instructions (Study 1) or through feedback indicating that their brainwave patterns overlapped substantially with those of the actor (Studies 2-4). As predicted, observers incorporated attributes relevant to an actor’s behavior into their own self-concepts, but only when they were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor and only when the actor’s behavior seemed freely chosen. These changes in relevant self-perceptions led observers to change their own behaviors accordingly. Implications of these vicarious self-perception processes for conformity, perspective-taking, and the long-term development of the self-concept are discussed.

People routinely draw inferences about others ’ preferences by observing their decisions. We study these inferences by characterizing a space of simple observed decisions. Previous work on attribution theory has identified several factors that predict whether a given decision provides strong evidence for an underlying preference. We identify one additional factor and show that a simple probabilistic model captures all of these factors. The model goes beyond verbal formulations of attribution theory by generating quantitative predictions about the full set of decisions that we consider. We test some of these predictions in two experiments: one with decisions involving positive effects and one with decisions involving negative effects. The second experiment confirms that inferences vary in systematic ways when positive effects are replaced by negative effects.

This paper examines how power influences human behavior. We consider evidence from diverse literatures relating elevated power to approach and reduced power to inhibition. Specifically, power is associated with (a) positive affect, (b) attention to rewards and to features of others that satisfy personal goals, (c) automatic information processing and snap judgments, and (d) disinhibited social behavior. In contrast, reduced power is associated with (a) negative affect, (b) attention to threat and punishment, to others’ interests, and to those features of the self that are relevant to others ’ goals, (c) controlled information processing and deliberative reasoning, and (d) inhibited social behavior. The potential moderators and consequences of these power-related behavioral patterns are discussed. Social Power 3 Power, Approach, and Inhibition The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense that Energy is the fundamental concept in physics... The laws of social dynamics are laws which can only be stated in terms of power (Russell, 1938, p. 10) What do exhilaration, stereotyping, and poor table manners have in common? Or embarrassment, the advantage younger siblings enjoy over older ones in understanding others ’ mental states, and the complexity of Supreme Court justices ’ decisions? Our answer is simple: power. Power is a basic force in social relationships (Fiske, 1993;

People are amateur social psychologists: they explain other people’s behavior, infer what other people are thinking and feeling, and predict how other people will act. I will refer to this sort of psychologizing as social reasoning in order to highlight the fact that it involves reasoning about people. Social reasoning often requires significant leaps of inductive inference: people infer others ’ mental states, such as their preferences, goals, and beliefs, from relatively sparse information, such as others ’ choices and actions. The capacity to reason about mental states and about how mental states relate to behavior is often referred