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.     

Perceiving individuals and groups: Expectancies, dispositional inferences, and causal attributions.

Two experiments investigated differences in forming impressions of individual and group targets. Experiment 1 showed that when forming an impression of an individual, perceivers made more extreme trait judgments, made those judgments more quickly and with greater confidence, and recalled more information than when the impression target was a group. Experiment 2 showed that when participants were forming an impression of an individual, expectancy-inconsistent behaviors spontaneously triggered causal attributions to resolve the inconsistency; this was not the case when the impression target was a group. Results are interpreted as reflecting perceivers' a priori assumptions of unity and coherence in individual versus group targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of exemplars and abstractions in trait judgments: A model of trait knowledge about the self and others.

According to pure exemplar models, trait judgments about the self and others are accomplished by retrieving from memory trait-exemplifying behaviors and computing the similarity between the trait and the exemplars retrieved. By contrast, pure abstraction models argue that trait judgments are made by directly accessing abstract, summary knowledge of the person's traits. In a series of 4 studies, the role of behavioral exemplars and abstract trait knowledge in trait judgments about others and about the self was examined. The findings show that both types of information are used to make trait judgments but that the relative importance of each type is determined by the amount of trait-exemplifying behavioral experience one has with the person being judged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do behavioral observation scales measure observation?

G. Latham and K. Wexley (see record 1980-02200-001) have claimed that behavioral observation scales (BOS) pose a simpler task for the rater than do either behaviorally anchored rating scales or graphic rating scales; with BOS, the rater need only observe and record behavior and need not make complex judgments about performance. Research on person memory suggests that recall for behaviors is structured by the same trait inferences and judgments that BOS are designed to avoid. In 2 experiments, 91 undergraduates rated videotaped lectures; data from the 1st experiment were used to construct BOS measuring clarity and speaking style. In the 2nd experiment, Ss used the BOS and a graphic rating scale to rate videotaped lectures in immediate and delayed rating conditions. As expected, the correlations between BOS ratings and judgmental ratings of performance were stronger when demands were placed on rater's recall. It is suggested that recall of behaviors is determined by the degree to which certain behaviors are representative of general judgments made about Ss being rated, and that BOS measure traitlike judgments rather than behavioral observation. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spontaneous trait inferences are bound to actors' faces: Evidence from a false recognition paradigm.

A false recognition paradigm showed that spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) are bound to the person performing a trait-implying behavior. In 6 experiments, participants memorized faces and behavioral sentences. When faces were paired with implied traits in a recognition test, participants falsely recognized these traits more often than unrelated traits paired with the same faces or the same traits paired with familiar faces. The effect was obtained for a large set of behaviors (120), each presented for 5 sec, and for behaviors that participants did not subsequently recognize or recall. Antonyms of the implied traits were falsely recognized less often than unrelated traits, suggesting that STIs have extended implications. Explicit person-trait judgments predicted both false recognition and response times for implied traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Savings in relearning: II. On the formation of behavior-based trait associations and inferences.

Five experiments based on Carlston and Skowronski's (1994) relearning paradigm suggest that people spontaneously derive trait knowledge about actors from behaviors but that this knowledge may reflect either explicit trait inference processes or implicit actor–trait associations. Experiments 1 and 2 found that inference-instructed and control Ss showed equivalent savings in subsequent efforts to learn actor–trait pairs but not when instructed Ss initially inferred the wrong trait. Experiment 3 showed that savings were equivalent for stimuli from different sources, and Experiment 4 showed that savings effects persisted even when the target was only incidentally associated with a stimulus behavior. Finally, Experiment 5 suggests that after several days, even explicit trait inferences can become inaccessible to intentional retrieval, although the earlier experiments show that they continue to exert an implicit effect on learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferring a trait from a behavior has long-term, highly specific effects.

In 2 experiments, Ss judged whether numerous behaviors implied a target trait (intelligent or friendly) and then, on an ostensibly unrelated questionnaire, evaluated the overall desirability of some behaviors. Repeated behaviors were judged more quickly than new ones, even with 7 days between presentations. In addition, evaluations of previously judged behaviors that had evaluatively mixed implications were dominated by their implications for the practiced trait. This implicit memory effect occurred over a 7-day delay, even when Ss did not recognize that they had previously seen the behavior. Just as a general construct (e.g., a trait) can be made accessible by an individual's past experiences, a specific cue–construct linkage (e.g., a tendency to interpret a specific behavior in terms of a particular trait) can be facilitated for a long time, independent of conscious awareness, by making a single judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related priming effects in social judgments.

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in the impact of previously activated (and thus easily accessible) trait-related information on judgments about people. The authors hypothesized that age-related declines in the efficiency of controlled processing mechanisms during adulthood would be associated with increased susceptibility to judgment biases associated with such information. In each study, different-aged adults made impression judgments about a target, and assimilation of these judgments to trait constructs activated in a previous, unrelated task were examined. Consistent with the authors' hypotheses, older adults were likely to form impressions that were biased toward the primed trait constructs. In contrast, younger adults exhibited greater awareness of the primed information and were more likely to correct for its perceived influence, especially when distinctive contextual cues regarding the source of the primes were available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trait dimensionality and "balance" in subject–verb–object judgments.

Examined the effect of trait dimensionality on subject–verb–object (SVO) judgments. In Exp I, 26 undergraduates made likelihood judgments for sentences in which the S and O were described by traits from either the same or different (idiographically determined) trait dimensions. The SVO effect was found to be greater for unidimensional than for bidimensional sentences. Exp II used a concept-identification task with 126 undergraduates to examine the salience of biases in relational triad sentences and SVO sentences involving either social or intellectual traits. The SVO bias improved learning, relative to 2 nonsubstantive rules, whereas the 2-element biases did not. The SV bias had a greater effect for social sentences than for intellectual traits or triadic relations, suggesting a schema unique to the content of an empirically determinable trait word category. Together, the results of both studies show that the SVO or balance bias plays a greater role in SVO judgments than was previously believed, if the traits are from the same evaluative dimension. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rethinking the role of organization in person memory: An independent trace storage model.

How do people represent information about others in memory when they form impressions? Previous answers to this question have been nearly unanimous in the model they describe. Subjects forming an impression of a person interpret that person's behavior in terms of the traits it exemplifies. When several behaviors exemplify the same trait, subjects organize those behaviors in memory into a trait-based category (e.g., D. L. Hamilton [1989]; and T. K. Srull and R. S. Wyer [see PA, Vol 76:15483]). The present experiments challenge this organized representation model of impression formation, and show instead that a better account of the data from impression formation studies is provided by a model in which behaviors exemplifying the same trait are stored independent of one another in memory. A unique feature of this model is the primary role it gives to retrieval factors, rather than the structure of the representation, in determining organization in subjects' recall of behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of frequency information for trait categorization and behavioral prediction.

Two experiments examined young children's use of behavioral frequency information to make behavioral predictions and global personality attributions. In Experiment 1, participants heard about an actor who behaved positively or negatively toward 1 or several recipients. Generally, children did not differentiate their judgments of the actor on the basis of the amount of information provided. In Experiment 2, the actor behaved positively or negatively toward a single recipient once or repeatedly. Participants were more likely to make appropriate predictions and attributions after exposure to multiple target behaviors and with increasing age. Overall, children's performance was influenced by age-related positivity and negativity biases. These findings indicate that frequency information is important for personality judgments but that its use is affected by contextual complexity and information-processing biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)