Claudia Toma

I finished my PhD in 2007 at Grenoble University, France. I am currently research fellow at FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique) and the Program Coordinator of ESCON (European Social Cognition Network www.socialcognition.eu)

Group decision making: My research interest is concerned with how group members strategically share and use their information in group decision making. I examine the role of cooperation and competition in information withholding and preference confirmation, especially in hidden profiles. The results of our studies support a motivated information processing approach to group decision making.
 

Interpersonal projection in cooperation: Recently, I have been interested in why people project their own characteristics onto their partners in cooperative contexts. We have shown that people project mainly on those traits that ensure positive outcomes thus supporting the hypothesis that projection in cooperation in driven by people motivation to succeed in this situation.

We also tested whether the power roles influence projection in cooperation. We found that generally low-power people project onto high-power people. However, high-power people can also project onto low-power people on those characteristics that characterize them less (e.g., sociability).

The next scheduled researches will investigate the negative effects of similarity in cooperation at the level of task outcomes and interpersonal relations. Because similarity is associated with higher expectations to see things in the same way, we expect people in cooperation to fail in task that requires complementarity. Analogous, similarity in cooperation will lead to illusion of transparency and interpersonal conflicts.
 

Other egocentric biases: I also investigated the effects of categorisation on empathy gaps. Using natural and minimal groups, preliminary results showed a stronger empathy gap when the other was presented as an outgroup rather than an ingroup member, but only when the intergroup context was salient.

I am currently working on a collaborative project testing the impact of effort on affective forecasting (the forecasting of one's affect). The preliminary results are showing a positive relation between the effort invested in one activity and the predicted positive affect resulting from the triumph of this activity. 

Toma, C., Yzerbyt, V., & Corneille, O. (in press). Nice or Smart? Task Relevance of Self-Characteristics Moderates Interpersonal Projection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Toma, C., Gilles, I., & Butera, F. (in press). Strategic Use of Preference Confirmation in Group Decision Making: The Role of Competition and Dissent. British Journal of Social Psychology.
 

Bry, C., Gabarrot, F., & Toma, C. (2011).The blond, The dumb and the ugly: Does self-Stereotyping mediate prime-to-behavior effects? Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, 8, 9-19.

 

Gilles, I., Scheidegger, R. & Toma., C. (2011). Who likes the allegiants and who likes the rebels? The roles of membership and status in the judgement of allegiant attributions. International Review of Social Psychology, 24, 83-106 .

 

Toma, C., Yzerbyt, V., & Corneille, O. (2010).Anticipated Cooperation vs. Competition Moderates Interpersonal Projection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 375-381.

 

Toma, C., & Butera, F. (2009).Hidden profiles and concealed Information: Strategic information sharing in group decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 793-806.

 

Toma, C., Corneille, O., &. Yzerbyt, V. (under review). Holding a mirror up to the self: People want others to be like them for successful Cooperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schreiber, C. & Toma. , (2006). Identité, genre et représentations. Apport de la psychologie sociale à la compréhension des phénomènes liés à la mixité. Dans Genre en Education I. L'éducation des filles et des garçons à l'école. Quelles limites? Quels Défis? Editions Eaux Claires, IUFM Grenoble.