Following in the vein of Ruscher & Fiske (1990), this two experiment paper distinguished
interpersonal competition from intergroup competition, proposing individuating impression
formation for the former and category-based impression formaiton for the latter.
Experiment 1 confirmed these predictions by demonstrating increased attention to and
dispositional inferences about expectancy-incongruent information under interpersonal
competition but increased attention to and dispositional inferences about expectancy-
congruent information for intergroup competition. Experiment 2 demonstrated that
intergroup competitors primarily focus their attentions on teammates rather than opponents.
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