The Effects of a Joint Setting on Self-Prioritization Effect

Abstract

This paper looks at the Self-Prioritization Effect(SPE) in a joint setting. The SPE is the circumstance in which an individual's attention is biased towards objects or items associated with their concept of “self”(Sui et al., 2012). General findings suggest that performing tasks in the presence of another individual may affect performance(Sebanz et al., 2006). The following 3 experiments investigate the relationship between these two findings. Testing a total of 83, the experiments provide us with a baseline experiment(Experiment 1) and joint studies(Experiments 2 and 3) that explore the underlying modulation of the SPE in a joint setting. Results suggest that there is a SPE present in all three experiments and a tendency for individuals to have poorer performance when performing a perceptual matching task in a joint experiment. These findings suggest that SPE may be hindered by a joint setting.