Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior.

Suggests that perceivers draw dispositional inferences about targets (characterization) and then adjust those inferences with information about the constraints on the targets' behaviors (correction). Because correction is more effortful than characterization, perceivers who devote cognitive resources to the regulation of their own behavior should be able to characterize targets but unable to correct those characterizations. In Exp 1, unregulated Ss incidentally ignored an irrelevant stimulus while they observed a target's behavior, whereas self-regulated Ss purposefully ignored the same irrelevant stimulus. In Exp 2, unregulated Ss expressed their sincere affection toward a target, whereas self-regulated Ss expressed false affection. In both experiments, self-regulated Ss were less likely than unregulated Ss to correct their characterizations of the target. The results suggest that social interaction (which generally requires the self-regulation of ongoing behavior) may profoundly affect the way in which active perceivers process information about others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (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)     

Mediation among attributional inferences and comprehension processes: Initial findings and a general method.

Attribution theories have not specified whether attributions are made by perceivers as part of the process of comprehending an event or only later in response to specific attributional questions. Theories also disagree about the types of attributional inferences (judgments of causation, of the actor's traits, or of intentionality) that are most likely to be made initially and to mediate further inferences. Whereas previous research has been unable to address these issues, a design using 2 RT measures provided relevant evidence. Results of 2 studies involving 100 undergraduates show that judgments of intention and of the actor's traits may have been made in the process of comprehension; affective judgments and inferences about the repetition of an event and the event's personal or situational causation were probably made later. Implications for a model of schema-based attributional inference are discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Violations of Implicit Theories and the Sense of Prediction and Control: Implications for Motivated Person Perception.

Beginning with the assumption that implicit theories of personality are crucial tools for understanding social behavior, the authors tested the hypothesis that perceivers would process person information that violated their predominant theory in a biased manner. Using an attentional probe paradigm (Experiment 1) and a recognition memory paradigm (Experiment 2), the authors presented entity theorists (who believe that human attributes are fixed) and incremental theorists (who believe that human attributes are malleable) with stereotype-relevant information about a target person that supported or violated their respective theory. Both groups of participants showed evidence of motivated, selective processing only with respect to theory-violating information. In Experiment 3, the authors found that after exposure to theory-violating information, participants felt greater anxiety and worked harder to reestablish their sense of prediction and control mastery. The authors discuss the epistemic functions of implicit theories of personality and the impact of violated assumptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing less and knowing more: The benefits of perceptual ignorance.

We suggest that dispositions are more automatically inferred from nonlinguistic than from linguistic behavior, and thus the attributional processing of linguistic behavior is more easily impaired by peripheral cognitive activities. In Exp 1, Ss observed an applicant who claimed to possess the requisite attributes for a desirable job, but who failed to display nonlinguistic behavior to support that claim. Ss who performed a concurrent visual detection task based their attributions primarily on the applicant's nonlinguistic behavior and drew less biased inferences than did control Ss. In Exps 2 and 3, Ss heard an unenthusiastic essayist who was constrained to read a political speech. Ss who performed either a concurrent visual detection task or a concurrent social influence task drew less biased inferences than did controls. These studies suggest that person perception includes subprocesses that differ in their characteristic degrees of automaticity and that performing simultaneous cognitive operations may enable perceivers to avoid certain kinds of inferential errors. (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.     

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)     

On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived.

Person perception includes three sequential processes: categorization (what is the actor doing?), characterization (what trait does the action imply?), and correction (what situational constraints may have caused the action?). We argue that correction is less automatic (i.e., more easily disrupted) than either categorization or characterization. In Experiment 1, subjects observed a target behave anxiously in an anxiety-provoking situation. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to a target read a political speech that he had been constrained to write. In both experiments, control subjects used information about situational constraints when drawing inferences about the target, but cognitively busy subjects (who performed an additional cognitive task during encoding) did not. The results (a) suggest that person perception is a combination of lower and higher order processes that differ in their susceptibility to disruption and (b) highlight the fundamental differences between active and passive perceivers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for in-group and out-group information in a minimal group context: The self as an informational base.

The authors argue that persons derive in-group expectancies from self-knowledge. This implies that perceivers process information about novel in-groups on the basis of the self-congruency of this information and not simply its valence. In Experiment 1, participants recalled more negative self-discrepant behaviors about an in-group than about an out-group. Experiment 2 replicated this effect under low cognitive load but not under high load. Experiment 3 replicated the effect using an idiographic procedure. These findings suggest that perceivers engage in elaborative inconsistency processing when they encounter negative self-discrepant information about an in-group but not when they encounter negative self-congruent information. Participants were also more likely to attribute self-congruent information to the in-group than to the out-group, regardless of information valence. Implications for models of social memory and self-categorization theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relevance of action in perceiving affordances: Perception of catchableness of fly balls.

The catchableness of a fly ball depends on whether the catcher can get to the ball in time; accurate judgments of catchableness must reflect both spatial and temporal aspects. Two experiments examined the perception of catchableness under conditions of restricted information pickup. Experiment 1 compared perceptual judgments with actual catching and revealed that stationary observers are poor perceivers of catchableness, as would be expected by the lack of information about running capabilities. In Experiment 2, participants saw the 1st part of ball trajectories before their vision was occluded. In 1 condition, they started to run (as if to catch the ball) before occlusion; in another, they remained stationary. Moving judgments were better than stationary judgments. This supports the idea that perceiving affordances that depend on kinematic, rather than merely geometric, body characteristics may require the relevant action to be performed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects on mood during exposure to target information on subsequently reported judgments: An on-line model of misattribution and correction.

Three experiments investigated the effects of participants' mood during exposure to target information on delayed judgments of the target. Participants were exposed to a mood induction immediately before they acquired information about a political candidate and then reported their evaluation of the candidate at a later time. Effects of mood on judgment were moderated by 2 individual-differences measures that can be interpreted in terms of processing efficiency. These were political expertise and total recall for the candidate information, with higher scores on these indices interpreted as reflecting more efficient processing. Among low-expertise (or low-recall) perceivers, mood produced an assimilation effect on evaluative judgments. Among high-expertise (or high-recall) perceivers, mood produced a contrast effect on judgments. When pooling across these individual differences, mood exerted no influence on judgments. These findings are consistent with an on-line model of mood misattribution and overcorrection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prophecies of power: Motivational implications of social power for behavioral confirmation.

The effects of relative social power on social motivation and behavioral confirmation were assessed. Participants, randomly assigned to the roles of perceiver and target, conversed over an intercom system as a prelude to choosing partners for an ostensibly subsequent reward-laden game. Relative power was manipulated by giving 1 participant the power to choose a partner for the game. Also, perceivers received a game-related target expectation. Participants' motives and trait-based impression of their partners were assessed. High-power participants were more concerned with learning about their partners than low-power participants, who were generally more concerned with facilitating favorable interaction outcomes. Furthermore, whereas high-power perceivers effected behavioral confirmation from their targets, low-power perceivers did not. Implications of social power for motivational approaches to and understandings of expectation confirmation processes are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiver, target, and situational influences on social cognition: An interactional analysis.

Examined the mechanisms through which characteristics of the perceiver and the social context interact with attributes of the stimulus person to determine cognitive and affective outcomes of social cognition processes. Based on the assumption that perceivers process social information to predict and control their hedonic outcomes, it was hypothesized that the relative salience of particular behaviors of a stimulus person would be affected both by perceivers' characteristic social motives and by the nature of their social relationship with the stimulus person. Moreover, the associated features of social cognition, perceivers' liking for the stimulus person, and their expectations about the pleasantness and success of an anticipated interaction, were predicted to be based on a related pattern of interactions between perceiver motivation, the behavior of the stimulus person, and the nature of their social relationship. These hypotheses were tested by having 160 male dominant and dependent (as assessed by the Dominance scale of the California Psychological Inventory and the Succorance scale of the EPPS) undergraduates observe a stimulus person, who was either assertive or unassertive and either affiliative or disaffiliative, under the expectation of either cooperating with or competing against that person in a future interaction. Findings support the hypotheses. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thinking backward: Some curable and incurable consequences of cognitive busyness.

Social interaction imposes a variety of attentional demands on those who attempt it. Such cognitively busy persons often fail to use contextual information to correct the impressions they form of others. The 4 experiments reported here examined the corrigibility of this effect. Although formerly busy perceivers were able to correct their mistaken impressions retroactively (Experiment 1), such retroactive correction was not inevitable (Experiment 2). In addition, when perceivers were able to correct their original impressions retroactively, they were still unable to correct subsequent inferences that had been biased by those original impressions (Experiments 3 and 4). As such, perceivers were occasionally able to overcome the primary, but not the subsidiary, effects of cognitive busyness. The results are discussed in terms of the metastasis of false knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiver-induced constraint: Interpretations of self-generated reality.

Two experiments, with 87 university students, examined whether perceivers tend to infer correspondent attitudes when an actor expresses opinions that the perceivers know to have been completely controlled by the perceivers themselves. Exp I demonstrated that such "inducers" of behavior were no more likely than observers to adjust their attributions for the constraining effects of their inducing behaviors when access to relevant situational information was equalized. Exp II replicated and clarified this finding. Inducers were just as likely to infer correspondent attitudes from constrained opinions when they were merely the instruments of behavioral induction (i.e., causing the actor to behave as the experimenter requested) as when they were the origins of behavioral induction (i.e., having a choice with regard to the actor's behavior). Results suggest that correspondence bias (the tendency to infer correspondent dispositions from constrained behavior) may not simply be a reflection of the relatively low salience of situtational forces and that inducers who are clearly aware of their control may nevertheless treat constrained behavior as diagnostic. The experiments also present a flexible paradigm for further studies of constraints induced by the social perceiver. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The personality of familiar and significant people: The lay perceiver as a social–cognitive theorist.

When are perceivers guided more by implicit social-cognitive theories of personality and when more by trait theories? As perceivers become more familiar with a person they infer relatively more psychological mediating variables (e.g., construals, goals) that underlie the person's behavior and relatively fewer broad, uncontextualized traits such as aggressive or friendly (Study 1). The effects of familiarity are moderated by the importance of the target to perceivers (Study 2). Specifically, perceivers make relatively more inferences using mediating variables and fewer inferences with traits as the target becomes more familiar, if and only if the target plays an important role in their lives. The findings indicate that psychological mediating variables play a significant role in lay perceptions of people and specify conditions in which perceivers function like implicit social-cognitive theorists, namely, when the perceived is familiar and important to the perceiver. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social categorization and perceptual judgment of size: When perception is social.

Social knowledge may affect not only people's thoughts and judgments but also their actual perceptions of physical magnitude. The physical magnitude of a stimulus is perceived in a relative way, comparing the magnitude of the target surrounding context stimuli. Because similar objects invite comparison processes more easily than dissimilar objects ("similarity breeds comparability"), social knowledge can affect judgments of physical magnitude by determining what is perceived as (dis) similar. In Experiment 1, the authors show that social categorizations that are based on physical cues (e. g., gender) may affect the magnitude of perceptual contrast effects (the Ebbinghaus illusion). More important, in Experiment 2, the influence of social categorizations that have no physical bases is shown to affect the magnitude of perceptual contrast effects. Implications of these findings for theories of social knowledge effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)