Sixty young males enrolled in an introductory course in psychology rated themselves on a series of 7-step, bipolar, adjectival scales. Afterwards they observed a young man perform a simple mechanical task, performed the same task and then rated the young man and themselves again. It was found that when the subjects perceived the young man as personally warm, they projected onto him attributes, which, they believed, characterized them. When the young man was perceived as warm and/or competent in the mechanical task, the subjects viewed themselves as more similar to him than in the absence of these perceptions. The results were interpreted as supporting Kagan's theory of identification. (Author)