Overview

In order to prepare for the funire, at least some people might spend time imagining how a target person's future behavior could impede the achievement of their goals. These imaginings represent no truly new information about the target person, as they are self-generated. However, if people misattribute the increased cognitive accessibility of the target's negative behavior to a meaningful source of information, the imaginings could still have the power to impact impressions of the target. Across 3 studies. I tested the hypothesis that imagining a future scenario in which a target had the potential to behave badly would negatively impact participants' impressions of the target, an effect that would be moderated by the imaginer's locus of control orientation and that might grow stronger after enough time elapsed for source confusion to take place Specifically, I tested the prediction that externally-oriented people would increase the negativity of their target judgments after such imaginings, but internally- oriented people would experience either no change or a positive change in their target judgments. In Study 1, as predicted, imagining a hypothetical future scenario had a negative impact on target judgments that was moderated by locus of control. In Study 2. as predicted, anticipating a real future interaction with a disagreeable confederate had a negative impact on confederate judgments that was moderated by locus of control, even after the real situation was resolved favorably. In both studies, effects persisted one week later in a small follow-up sample but did grow stronger. Study 3 included an additional control condition to test the hypothesis that future imaginings would produce an impact above and beyond merely recruiting memories of somebody's real past bad behaviors. However. Study 3 failed to replicate the findings from Studies 1 and 2. Implications of these mixed results are discussed.

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