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Power-primed and neutral perceivers faced the task of forming an impression of a target person who was characterized by substantial evaluative inconsistencies and thwarted easy judgment. It was hypothesized that the loss to prediction and control endangered by such a target should have an especially strong impact on powerful perceivers' desire for additional target information.

How the interaction goals of cooperation and competition affected social information processing is examined with the help of experiments. Three types of studies were undertaken among which the results from study 2 was validated and the findings were discussed in terms of their implications for interpersonal and intergroup perception.

The psychological processes underlying the revision of evaluative person impressions were examined by conducting three experiments. These observations had consequences for the impression change and the degree to which people were able to retrieve the evidential basis of their impressions.