Target entitativity: Implications for information processing about individual and group targets.

It is hypothesized that perceptions of entitativity (i.e., seeing social targets as possessing unity and coherence) have important implications for how one organizes information about, and forms impressions of, individual and group targets. When perceivers expect entitativity, they should form an integrated impression of the target, resulting in on-line judgments. However, when perceivers expect little entitativity, they should not process target-relevant information in an integrative fashion, resulting in memory-based judgments. Although many factors affect perceptions of entitativity, the current study focused on expectations of similarity and behavioral consistency. It was predicted that in general, perceivers expect greater entitativity for individual than group targets. However, when explicitly provided with similar expectancies of entitativity, information processing would be similar for both individual and group targets. Two experiments supported these predictions, using recall, memory-judgment correlation, and illusory correlation measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On-line and memory-based aspects of individual and group target judgments.

Ss were given instruction sets to induce either on-line or memory-based processing while reading behavioral statements about individual and group targets. Impression-set instructions induced on-line judgments, and comprehensibility-set (comp) instructions induced memory-based judgments regardless of target type. More important, with nondirective instructions (memory set), natural differences in processing information about individuals and groups were observed, with more on-line judgments for individuals. As expected, illusory correlations between minority targets and infrequent behaviors (a memory-based product) emerged with comp instructions (which induced memory-based judgments for both target types) and in the memory-set condition for group targets only. These data provide insights into the differences in impression formation for groups and individuals and furnish direct evidence of the processes responsible for illusory correlations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The actor as context for social judgments: effects of prior impressions and stereotypes

Three experiments identified conditions under which trait judgments made about a behavior were more likely to influence later judgments of the behavior. In Experiment 1, participants made trait judgments about numerous behaviors presented with photos of actors. Some behaviors were repeated, paired with the same or a different actor. All repeated behaviors were judged faster than new behaviors. Facilitation was greatest when repeated behaviors were paired with the same actor, suggesting greater influence of prior judgments in this condition. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect, and the pattern of response times (RTs) suggested a stronger association between the actor and behavior when a prior impression of the actor had been formed (Experiment 2) and when the behavior was stereotypic of the actor's group (Experiment 3). Level of prejudice moderated RT patterns in Experiment 3. Implications for context effects, the nature of trait inferences, and stereotype change are discussed.     

Judgments of frequency of social stimuli: How schematic is person memory?

Three experiments explore the hypothesis that people encode information about the surface features of social stimuli in addition to schematic information. Undergraduate women were given an impression formation set and then viewed masculine and feminine adjectives said to describe a female student. Experiment 1 demonstrated that judgments of the total number of masculine adjectives were greater when the student was described as having liberated sex-role attitudes than when she had conventional attitudes. Experiment 2 demonstrated that subjects' judgments of the frequency of specific, individual adjectives were quite accurate, and that their specific judgments of the frequency were unaffected by the liberated and conventional schemata. Experiment 3 showed that priming of specific frequency information failed to reduce the effect of schemata on global judgments of frequency. Implications of the dissociation between specific and global judgments of frequency are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fencing off the deviant: The role of cognitive resources in the maintenance of stereotypes.

The role of cognitive resources in stereotype maintenance was examined. It was hypothesized that people's cognitive resources would condition the maintenance of stereotypes by affecting the ability to dismiss inconsistent target information. In Experiment 1, distracted and nondistracted participants formed an impression of a deviant target. As predicted, distraction was associated with less stereotypical views about the group. Experiment 2 replicated this finding using 3 deviant targets and 4 levels of distraction. Results also revealed that the perceived atypicality of the deviants mediated stereotype maintenance. Experiment 3 further showed that stereotypes remained intact only when participants were not distracted and when they had also received neutral information about the target. The discussion focuses on the role of cognitive resources in stereotyping and the effectiveness of exposure to disconfirmation in achieving stereotype change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Within-target illusory correlations and the formation of context-dependent attitudes.

Two experiments explored the formation of context-dependent attitudes about a single social target. One such mechanism for the development of differential attitudes toward a target in different contexts is illusory correlation formation. It was proposed that within-target illusory correlations (i.e., perceiving unwarranted associations between salient target behaviors and distinctive domains in which the target is observed) can result in biased evaluations of a social target in different domains (e.g., home vs. work). When memory-based (vs. on-line) judgments were induced, perceivers formed context-dependent attitudes for both group (Experiment I) and individual (Experiment 2) targets. These findings are consistent with theories regarding multiply categorizable attitude objects. Further, they suggest that some apparent discrepancies between attitudes and behavior may reflect holding multiple context-dependent attitudes about social targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiving persons and groups.

This article analyzes the similarities and differences in forming impressions of individuals and in developing conceptions of groups. In both cases, the perceiver develops a mental conception of the target (individual or group) on the basis of available information and uses that information to make judgements about that person or group. However, a review of existing evidence recalls differences in the outcomes of impressions formed of individual and group targets, even when those impressions are based on the very same behavioral information. A model is proposed to account for these differences. The model emphasizes the role of differing expectancies of unity and coherences in individual and group targets, which in turn engage different mechanisms for processing information and making judgments. Implications of the model are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of strategies for reducing interval overconfidence in group judgments.

The present experiments examined several strategies designed to reduce interval overconfidence in group judgments. Results consistently indicated that 3–4 person nominal groups (whose members made independent judgments and later combined the highest and lowest of these estimates into a single confidence interval) were better calibrated than individual judges and interactive groups. This pattern held even when participants were directly instructed to expand their interval estimates, or when interactive groups appointed a devil's advocate or explicitly considered reasons why their interval estimates might be too narrow. Interactive groups did not perform substantially better than individuals, although participants frequently had the impression that group judgments were far superior to individual judgments. This misperception resembles the "illusion of group effectivity" found in brainstorming research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The referents of trait inferences: The impact of trait concepts versus actor–trait links on subsequent judgments.

The authors investigated the hypothesis that when trait inferences refer to abstract behavior labels they act as a general interpretation frame and lead to assimilation in subsequent judgments of an ambiguous target, whereas when they refer to a specific actor–trait link they will be used as a scale anchor and lead to contrast. Similar to G. B. Moskowitz and R. J. Roman's (see record 1992-31124-001) study, participants who were instructed to memorize trait-implying sentences showed assimilation, and participants who were instructed to form an impression of the actors in these sentences showed contrast. However, exposure to trait-implying sentences that described actors with real names and were accompanied with photos of the actors resulted in contrast under both memorization and impression instructions (Experiment 1). Furthermore, contrast ensued when trait-implying sentences were accompanied with information that suggested a person attribution, whereas assimilation ensued when that information suggested a situation attribution, independent of processing goals (Experiment 2). These findings are interpreted as support for referent-based explanations of the consequences of trait inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and impression formation: the impact of processing skills and goals

Two studies assessed age differences in representations and judgments about people. Our specific interest was in examining how presumed age-related changes in processing efficiency and motivation affected performance in an impression formation task. Consistent with age-related declines in processing efficiency, we found that increasing age was associated with: (a) no change in the processing of evaluative information; (b) less use of specific traits to organize impressions; (c) poorer memory for behavioral information, especially when it contradicted expectations; and (d) less systematic relationships between memory and judgments. We also found, however, that more meaningful task goals and a focus on individual behaviors resulted in reduced age differences in the nature of representations about the target person.     

Aging, source, and decision criteria: When false fame errors do and do not occur.

Two experiments investigated the influence of decision criteria on source memory performance of older adults and younger adults. Experiment 1 used the false fame paradigm, which encourages people to use relatively loose decision criteria when making what are, in essence, source judgments. Consistent with previous research, older adults made more false fame errors than younger adults. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that the fame judgments were made with the traditional source task format that encourages relatively stringent decision criteria when making source judgments: Possible sources were listed, and participants categorized names in terms of their source. In contrast to Experiment 1, older adults reduced their false fame errors to the level of younger adults. Encouraging older adults to use relatively stringent decision criteria when making source discriminations can reduce age differences in source misattributions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of advance expectancies in person memory.

Behaviors inconsistent with our general impression of another person are remembered better than are consistent behaviors, especially when only a few inconsistent behaviors occur (the set-size effect). In most previous studies of person memory, the behaviors to be remembered were accompanied by explicit trait information. Our studies showed that set-size effects also occurred when trait information was delayed or absent (Experiment 1) or when it contradicted the behavioral information (Experiment 2), but not when subjects were discouraged from forming a unitary impression (Experiment 3). These data do not support the hypothesis that the recall advantage for inconsistent behaviors depends on the presence of an advance expectancy, nor do they support a list-learning account of person memory. The results are most compatible with a model in which the perceiver spontaneously generates a behavior-based impression that is functionally equivalent to an expectancy-based impression in guiding memory for behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context, feedback, and the calibration and resolution of confidence in perceptual judgments

The effects of variations in the global task difficulty context on judgmental confidence and confidence calibration were investigated in two experiments requiring perceptual comparisons. In Experiment 1, target judgments of moderate difficulty were embedded in a larger set of more difficult (hard context) or less difficult (easy context) judgments. Decisional response time on the target items was longer in the hard context condition, but there was no effect of difficulty context on target judgment confidence, accuracy, over/underconfidence, calibration, or resolution. In Experiment 2, each subject was exposed to three levels of local judgment difficulty. The global contextual difficulty manipulation involved varying the frequency with which the hard and easy judgments appeared, and the presence or absence of trial-by-trial response feedback was manipulated between subjects. As in Experiment 1, contextual difficulty affected decisional response times but not mean confidence ratings or accuracy. However, we found that providing feedback on a globally difficult task makes calibration worse. Also, resolution (the ability to differentiate correct from incorrect judgments) was found to be superior for easy judgments in a difficult context and for difficult judgments in an easy context. We discuss the implication of these findings for research on confidence and confidence calibration.     

Explaining the enigmatic anchoring effect: Mechanisms of selective accessibility.

Results of 3 studies support the notion that anchoring is a special case of semantic priming; specifically, information that is activated to solve a comparative anchoring task will subsequently be more accessible when participants make absolute judgments. By using the logic of priming research, in Study 1 the authors showed that the strength of the anchor effect depends on the applicability of activated information. Study 2 revealed a contrast effect when the activated information was not representative for the absolute judgment and the targets of the 2 judgment tasks were sufficiently different. Study 3 demonstrated that generating absolute judgments requires more time when comparative judgments include an implausible anchor and can therefore be made without relevant target information that would otherwise be accessible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stereotype formation and endorsement: The role of implicit theories.

Five experiments supported the hypothesis that peoples' implicit theories about the fixedness versus malleability of human attributes (entity versus incremental theories) predict differences in degree of social stereotyping. Relative to those holding an incremental theory, people holding an entity theory made more stereotypical trait judgments of ethnic and occupational groups (Experiments 1, 2, and 5 ) and formed more extreme trait judgments of novel groups ( Experiment 3 ). Implicit theories also predicted the degree to which people attributed stereotyped traits to inborn group qualities versus environmental forces (Experiment 2). Manipulating implicit theories affected level of stereotyping (Experiment 4), suggesting that implicit theories can play a causal role. Finally, implicit theories predicted unique and substantial variance in stereotype endorsement after controlling for the contributions of other stereotype-relevant individual difference variables (Experiment 5). These results highlight the importance of people's basic assumptions about personality in stereotyping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reality Compared With Its Alternatives: Age Differences in Judgments of Regret and Relief.

Three experiments examined developmental change in children's understanding of regret and relief, two second-order emotions whose quality depends on a comparison between reality and "what might have been." In Experiment 1, participants 7 years of age and older, but not 5-year-olds, made regret-related emotion-response judgments that took into account a comparison of reality with its alternatives. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds judged that an individual would feel better, rather than worse, when a counterfactual outcome was better than what actually occurred (the opposite of the pattern found with older children and adults). Experiment 3 focused on the understanding of relief. In contrast to the findings from Experiment I, the 7-year-olds in Experiment 3 made their judgments solely on the basis of what actually occurred. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational influences on impression formation: Outcome dependency, accuracy-driven attention, and individuating processes.

How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention.

The authors report a series of 6 experiments investigating crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention. When participants were informed that visual and tactile targets were more likely on one side than the other, speeded discrimination responses (continuous vs. pulsed, Experiments 1 and 2; or up vs. down, Experiment 3) for targets in both modalities were significantly faster on the expected side, even though target modality was entirely unpredictable. When participants expected a target on a particular side in just one modality, corresponding shifts of covert attention also took place in the other modality, as evidenced by faster elevation judgments on that side (Experiment 4). Larger attentional effects were found when directing visual and tactile attention to the same position rather than to different positions (Experiment 5). A final study with crossed hands revealed that these visuotactile links in spatial attention apply to common positions in external space. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A social relations analysis of agreement in liking judgments.

Using a round-robin design in which every subject served both as judge and target, subjects made liking judgments, trait ratings, and physical attractiveness ratings of each other on each of 4 days. Although there was some agreement in the liking judgments, most of the variance was due to idiosyncratic preferences for different targets. Differences in evaluations were due to at least 2 factors: disagreements in how targets were perceived (is this person honest?) and disagreements in how to weight the trait attributes that predicted liking (is honesty more important than friendliness?) When evaluating the targets in specific roles (as a study partner), judgments showed much greater agreement, as did the weights of the trait attributes. A 2nd study confirmed the differential weighting of trait attributes when rating liking in general and the increased agreement when rating specific roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)