Complementary projection is really misattribution of arousal, not self-threat projection.

Evidence

Allport’s discussion of another form of projection, “complementary projection,” also muddied the waters. He defined complementary projection as incorrectly attributing the cause of one’s internal state to another person’s behavior. Allport illustrated this idea with a study in which children described their impressions of photographs of unfamiliar men. They did so both before and after they played a scary game in a darkened house. When the photos were rated after the activity, the men were seen as being more sinister. But as Allport himself pointed out (1954/1979, p. 350), complementary projection differs in an important way from what he called direct projection. Only the latter process is directly fueled by self-concept threats. In the case of direct or “classical” projection, one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors suggest that one might have certain undesirable characteristics (lustfulness, cruelty, stupidity, etc.), and one seeks to avoid awareness of that possibility. Complementary projection, on the other hand, emerges from the desire to understand the cause of an internal state, a state that has typically been activated by some external stressor. It seems more similar to what social psychologists later came to refer to as misattribution of arousal (Dutton & Aron, 1974). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2348

Categorization

• XREF: Connects Allport’s complementary projection to Dutton & Aron’s famous 1974 suspension-bridge misattribution-of-arousal study.
• DEFINE: Clarifies how complementary projection differs mechanistically from classical projection.