Self-image bias in person perception.

Conducted 3 experiments using a total of 283 male and female high school students. Exp I demonstrated that the more desirable the self-rating on a personality characteristic, the more central that characteristic is in perceiving others. This self-image bias in person perception was hypothesized to reflect the defense mechanism protecting high self-evaluation. In Exp II it appeared that, consistent with this defense interpretation, there was lower self-image bias among Ss in a condition that reduced defensiveness by using objective self-awareness techniques. Exp II also suggested an alternative to this defense explanation: a purely cognitive process whereby self-image mediates external evaluative stimuli and centrality of characteristics. Exp III attempted to test this alternative explanation; results support a cognitive interpretation of self-image bias in person perception. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Traits and social stereotypes: Levels of categorization in person perception.

A theoretical distinction is made between trait categorization in person perception and categorization by means of well-articulated, concrete social stereotypes. Three studies test the prediction that social stereotypes are both more associatively rich and more distinctive than are trait-defined categories. In Study 1, subjects sorted adjectives related to extraversion and introversion. A cluster analysis using similarity measures derived from the sorting indicated that distinct social stereotypes were associated with each trait. This supports and extends earlier findings (Cantor & Mischel, 1979). In Study 2, subjects generated attributes of the trait categories and stereotypes that emerged in Study 1. More nonredundant attributes, especially visible features, were listed for the stereotypes than for the trait categories. Study 3 elicited the explicit associative structure of traits and related stereotypes by having subjects rate the association between a series of attributes (derived from the responses in Study 2) and each category label. Results showed that social stereotypes have distinctive features that are not shared with the related trait category, whereas trait categories share virtually all of their features with related stereotypes. The implications of the trait/stereotype distinction for social information processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects.

Examined the process leading to the confirmation of a perceiver's expectancies about another when the social label that created the expectancy provides poor or tentative evidence about another's true dispositions or capabilities. Ss were 67 undergraduates. One group was led to believe that a child came from a high SES background; the other group, that the child came from a low SES background. Nothing in the SES data conveyed information directly relevant to the child's ability level, and when asked, both groups reluctantly rated the child's ability level to be approximately at grade level. Two other groups received the SES information and then witnessed a videotape of the child taking an academic test. Although the videotaped series was identical for all Ss, those who had information that the child came from a high SES rated her abilities well above grade level, whereas those for whom the child was identified as coming from a lower-class background rated her abilities as below grade level. Both groups cited evidence from the ability test to support their conclusions. Findings are interpreted as suggesting that some "stereotype" information creates not certainties but hypotheses about the stereotyped individual. However, these hypotheses are often tested in a biased fashion that leads to their false confirmation. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of person and job stereotypes on two personnel decisions.

Two studies investigated whether the effects of incumbent age on personnel decisions are different in a stereotypically older job than in a stereotypically younger job. In Exp I, 19 26–52 yr old managers were asked to make awards recommendations and overall evaluations for 18 hypothetical employees in 3 jobs that varied in age stereotype. Hypothetical employees varied in age and exhibited either a stereotypically older performance pattern or a stereotypically younger pattern of performance. Significant Job?×?Performance Pattern and Target Age?×?Pattern interactions were found in the awards exercises. In Exp II, 19 26–62 yr old managers were asked to make promotion decisions for 18 hypothetical employees in 3 jobs. Again, the Job?×?Pattern interaction was significant. Overall results suggest that when the pattern of performance is inconsistent with the age stereotype of the job, employees receive lower ratings than when behavior is consistent with the job stereotype. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnic stereotypes: Their effects on the perception of communicators of varying credibility.

A French-Canadian speaker tape-recorded 2 messages, 1 confirming, the other disconfirming, the appropriateness of the French-Canadian stereotype to himself. 1 message was heard by 96 undergraduates under different conditions of credibility produced by varying message intent and setting, and political belief. Ss rated the speaker on semantic differential scales assessing stereotypical and evaluative attributes. Ratings on the stereotypical dimension were influenced by message content and setting, whereas ratings on the evaluative dimension were primarily influenced by message content and political belief. Results suggest that a member of an ethnic group can, under some situations, modify stereotyped reactions to him, but that this tends to engender an unfavorable reaction in the listener. (French summary) (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive interaction in person perception.

A review of the evidence concerning Osgood's congruity principle (CP) and a test of this principle with 78 Greek and 91 Illinois Ss suggest that the principle does not predict the perception of complex stimulus persons as well as a derivation from Fishbein's theory. Semantic differential (SD) judgments using concepts such as, Portuguese, Negro, Coal Miner, Same Religion As You, as well as SD judgments of the components entering these concepts, constituted the basic data. CP predictions and the obtained SD judgments of the complex stimuli correlated highly and significantly, but the judgments of the occupation of the complex stimuli correlated even more highly with the obtained SD judgments of the complex stimuli. A measure derived from Fishbein's theory correlated more highly with the judgments of the complex stimuli than the occupation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing target variance in personality impressions: Highlighting the person in person perception.

D. A. Kenny (1994) estimated the components of personality rating variance to be 15, 20, and 20% for target, rater, and relationship, respectively. To enhance trait variance and minimize rater variance, we designed a series of studies of personality perception in discussion groups (N?=?79, 58, and 59). After completing a Big Five questionnaire, participants met 7 times in small groups. After Meetings 1 and 7, group members rated each other. By applying the Social Relations Model (D. A. Kenny and L. La Voie, 1984) to each Big Five dimension at each point in time, we were able to evaluate 6 rating effects as well as rating validity. Among the findings were that (a) target variance was the largest component (almost 30%), whereas rater variance was small (less than 11%); (b) rating validity improved significantly with acquaintance, although target variance did not; and (c) no reciprocity was found, but projection was significant for Agreeableness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group and individual accuracy in person perception.

48 male undergraduates employed as judges (Js) participated in an individual and a group session to assess their accuracy in person perception. Using 2 programed cases, J selected from a multiple choice format what he believed to be true about a real person. Results indicated individual sessions to be more efficient and accurate than group sessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgeability in person perception: The confidence of leaders.

Leaders are often expected to evaluate their team workers. In the present study, the authors investigated the hypothesis that leaders express social judgments with more confidence than subordinates. Leadership is assumed to play the role of a metainformational cue leading people to feel entitled to judge. In Study 1, supervisors in a Portuguese firm expressed their evaluations of colleagues and superiors. In Study 2, leadership was attributed on the basis of alleged competence. In Study 3, leadership was explicitly attributed on a random basis. The results of the 3 studies support the hypothesis and are discussed within the framework of social judgeability theory (J. P. Leyens, V. Y. Yzerbyt, & G. Schadron, 1992, 1994). The confidence of leaders may become a norm that is constructed by others. Practical implications are discussed. To the same extent that leadership often resides in the eyes of followers, confidence may originate in the mind of leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual level and accuracy of person perception.

Conceptual systems theory asserts that abstract conceptual functioning must include a well-developed capacity to "act as if" and ability to assume the role of the other. This proposition was tested in two samples of adolescents with a person perception task that required subjects to give a target person's actual responses to Cattell's 16PF Test immediately after exposure to the target. Two videotaped targets were used. Conceptual level was found to influence accuracy as predicted in three of four analyses, and sex of subject as predicted in two of four, with the effects of intelligence controlled. Accuracy in the postdiction task, and four components of accuracy, were relatively stable across targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective and semantic components in political person perception.

In 2 national surveys, one with 280 and the other with 1,008 respondents, Ss ascribed personality traits to prominent national politicians and reported the feelings that the politicians elicited. It was found that summary scores of good feelings and bad feelings were nearly independent of each other, much more so than were good and bad trait judgments. Affective registrations, in short, were less semantically filtered and less subject to consistency pressures. Summary scores of affect strongly predicted political preference. This effect was independent of and more powerful than that for personality judgments. Thus, affective registrations were not at all redundant with semantic judgments. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tales of the unexpected: Executive function and person perception.

The present research investigated the role of executive functioning in person perception. Given the assumption that perceivers' recollective preference for unexpected material relies on the operation of an executive cognitive process (i.e., inconsistency resolution), it was anticipated that only under dual-task conditions in which executive functioning is impaired would one expect inconsistency resolution to be impaired and perceivers' memory bias for unexpected material to be eliminated. When concurrent mental activity impairs the operation of nonexecutive cognitive operations, inconsistency resolution and the related process of individuation were not expected to be impaired. The results of 2 experiments using different memory measures (e.g., free recall and source identification) supported these predictions. The findings are considered in the context of contemporary issues in person perception and executive functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automaticity of chronically accessible constructs in person?×?situation effects on person perception: It's just a matter of time.

Models of Person?×?Situation influences on social behavior and judgment have invoked 2 distinct mechanisms: a personality disposition and a situational press. In this study we conceptualized both influences in terms of a single underlying mechanism, construct accessibility. We pitted the characteristic ways that individuals perceive others against situational influences on accessibility (i.e., contextual priming) and tracked over time the relative power of these competing influences on the outcome of an impression-formation task. Ss possessed either a chronically accessible (chronics) or an inaccessible (nonchronics) construct for either outgoing or inconsiderate behavior. As the delay since the priming event lengthened (from 15 to 180 s), chronics were progressively more likely to use the chronically accessible construct instead of the primed alternative construct to categorize an ambiguous target behavior, whereas nonchronics' relative use of the primed and alternative constructs did not change as a function of postpriming delay. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of information in word perception.

Disyllabic words were presented tachistoscopically to a total of 16 undergraduates in 2 experiments, and report of the words was required. In Exp I, word frequency was varied but the frequencies of the constituent syllables were held constant. In Exp II, syllable frequency varied while word frequency remained constant. The prime determinant of perceptual accuracy was word frequency, but an analysis of partial errors showed that some discriminability effects at both the word and the syllable level were present. There was a slight advantage for the 1st syllable over the 2nd within a word. There was no overall improvement with practice, but errors on high frequency words became fewer and on low frequency words correspondingly more frequent. Results suggest that word perception involves extraction and resynthesis of information about components of several different sizes within a word. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neurocognitive underpinnings of face perception: Further evidence of distinct person and group perception processes.

A model of social perception is presented and tested. The model is based on cognitive neuroscience models and proposes that the right cerebral hemisphere is more efficient at processing combinations of features whereas the left hemisphere is superior at identifying single features. These processes are hypothesized to produce person and group-based representations, respectively. Individuating or personalizing experience with an outgroup member was expected to facilitate the perception of the individuating features and inhibit the perception of the group features. In the presented study, participants were asked to learn about various ingroup and outgroup targets. Later, participants demonstrated that categorization response speeds to old targets were slower in the left hemisphere than in the right, particularly for outgroup members, as predicted. These findings are discussed for their relevance to models of social perception and stereotyping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive bias in the perception of covariation.

Perception of covariation often differs from statistically normative values: People find order in random series and relationships between uncorrelated values. Theoretical analysis, allowing for working-memory limitations, shows that the degree of covariation in the typical, locally representative series is more negative, whereas that of the atypical series is more positive, than the covariation in the complete set. I assumed that typical series serve as a norm to which other series are compared, and predicted a positive bias in the perception of covariation. This prediction was tested and found to hold across a wide range of actual relationships in 2 experiments involving sequential dependencies and events with co-occurring values. Another analysis revealed positive correlations to be more informative than negative ones when events are not equiprobable. Positive bias may thus be a rational predisposition for early detection of a potentially more informative relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Quest for accuracy in person perception: A matter of pragmatics.

Proposes that an adequate conceptualization of the person perception process must consider the interpersonal context in which that process occurs as well as the purpose for which it is intended. In line with this proposal, a pragmatic approach to person perception is presented that emphasizes the interpersonal aspects of person perception, particularly those whereby perceivers and targets negotiate the identities that targets are to assume during their interactions. A major implication of this formulation is that contemporary accounts underestimate the accuracy of the person perception process. It is concluded that past treatments of the person perception process are limited and misleading because theorists and researchers have refrained from considering the uniquely social aspects of that process. Research may wish to devote more attention to the manner in which this process is woven into the fabric of people's ongoing social relationships. (4? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expected base rates and trait covariations in person perception.

This paper is primarily concerned with judgments about the characteristics of the general other and the incorporation of these expectancies in the judgment of specific others. Expectancies are defined in terms of (1) the perceived probability of occurrence of attributes in the general other, and (2) the perceived probability of joint occurrence of attributes in the general other. Along with other related variables, the veridicality of these expectancies are discussed. In addition, the idea of the greater informational value of atypical known behaviour about a specific other (behaviour which occurs infrequently in the general other) is considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)