Journal of personality and social psychology
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Ss who differed in the extremity of self-definition ("own position") with respect to a given trait (sociability, independence, or patience) made trait and evaluative judgments of behavioral stimuli that varied in their descriptive implications for that trait. Across 4 experiments, individual differences in trait ratings of unambiguous information were mediated largely by differences in Ss' affective reactions to these stimuli rather than by direct use of own position as a judgmental anchor. ⋯ These latter effects were moderated by either encoding or informational mechanisms. A theoretical framework is presented that accounts for these results and predicts how effects of self-knowledge on judgments of others should vary across different trait dimensions.