Person perception and the bounded rationality of social judgment.

In this article, we develop a bounded rationality view of the relation between person perception and social behavior. Two theses of this approach are that behaviors vary in their significance to observers, and that observers pursue bounded rather than global utility in forming personality impressions. Observers are expected to be sensitive to targets' overall behavioral tendencies and to the variability of their behavior across situations, but both sensitivities are bounded, being greater for behaviors that directly affect observers' outcomes. In two investigations involving extensive hourly and 6-s observations, we examined the bounded utility of people's impressions of personality, demonstrating how impression accuracy is linked to the significance of behaviors. Observers were sensitive to the organization of aggressive behaviors, but less sensitive to the organization of withdrawn behaviors, even when the consistency of those behaviors was comparable. The results clarify the relation between people's inferential shortcomings in laboratory paradigms and the bounded utility of person perception in the natural environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The act frequency approach to personality.

Personality dispositions are viewed as summaries of act frequencies that, in themselves, possess no explanatory status. As sociocultural emergents, dispositions function as natural cognitive categories with acts as members. Category boundaries are fuzzy, and acts within each category differ in their prototypicality of membership. This formulation is illustrated by a series of studies involving undergraduate raters, which focused on indices of act trends and on a comparative analysis of the internal structure of dispositions. The act frequency approach is placed within a taxonomic framework of the relations among act categories and hierarchic classification. Theoretical implications of the act frequency approach are examined. Dispositional consistency is distinguished from behavioral consistency, and several act frequency indices (e.g., dispositional versatility and situational scope) are defined. Situational analysis and personality coherence are viewed from the act frequency perspective. Discussion focuses on the possible origins and development of dispositional categories and implications of alternative middle-level constructs for act categorization and personality theory. (102 ref) (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)     

Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events.

Argue that attribution patterns reflect implicit theories acquired from induction and socialization and hence differentially distributed across human cultures. In particular, the authors tested the hypothesis that dispositionalism in attribution for behavior reflects a theory of social behavior more widespread in individualist than collectivist cultures. Study 1 demonstrated that causal perceptions of social events but not physical events differed between American and Chinese students. Study 2 found English-language newspapers were more dispositional and Chinese-language newspapers were more situational in explanations of the same crimes. Study 3 found that Chinese survey respondents differed in weightings of personal dispositions and situational factors as causes of recent murders and in counterfactual judgments about how murders might have been averted by changed situations. Implications for issues in cognitive, social, and organizational psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation.

For clear and unambiguous social categories, person perception occurs quite accurately from minimal cues. This article addresses the perception of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from minimal cues. Across 5 studies, the authors examined individuals' actual and self-assessed accuracy when judging male sexual orientation from faces and facial features. Although participants were able to make accurate judgments from multiple facial features (i.e., hair, the eyes, and the mouth area), their perceived accuracy was calibrated with their actual accuracy only when making judgments based on hairstyle, a controllable feature. These findings provide evidence that suggests different processes for extracting social category information during perception: explicit judgments based on obvious cues (hairstyle) and intuitive judgments based on nonobvious cues (information from the eyes and mouth area). Differences in the accuracy of judgments based on targets' controllability and perceivers' awareness of cues provides insight into the processes underlying intuitive predictions and intuitive judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental psychopathology and the reciprocal patterning of behavior and environment: Distinctive situational and behavioral signatures of internalizing, externalizing, and mixed-syndrome children.

In contrast to assessment approaches that conceptualize traits as generalized response tendencies, this research develops a conditional approach that conceptualizes traits as patterns of relations between contexts and behaviors. Using extensive observations of social interactions, this study investigated internalizing, externalizing, and mixed-syndrome children identified by T. M. Achenbach's (1993) measures. Children in these groups differed in the patterning of their responses to social contexts and in the likelihood of encountering them. Mixed-syndrome children showed a distinctive behavior pattern consisting of aggressive and withdrawn responses to nonaversive contexts. The results demonstrate how measures of overall tendencies confound person and environment influences and obscure differences between children that are revealed by contextualized measures. The need to incorporate contexts more fully into clinical assessment is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of situational demands and cognitive competencies in behavior organization and personality coherence.

Consistency in the natural organization of aggressive and prosocial (constructive) behavior, assessed repeatedly in vivo over a summer in a residential camp for children, was predicted from situational and personal characteristics. Similarity of situations in the types of competencies they demand in part predicted cross-situational consistency in individual differences in aggressive behaviors (Study 1). Study 2 examined the effect of cognitive competence on the discriminative patterning of behavior variation across situations. More cognitively competent Ss showed such discriminative patterning, which was reflected in greater Person?×?Situation interaction variance in their prosocial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual models of social behavior.

Presents a technique that extracts individual models of social behavior. Such models reflect each individual's ideas about what social behaviors are interrelated, and what aspects of social situations are linked to different levels of probability that particular patterns of social behavior will occur. The method was used in 2 studies, one with bicultural Ss (1 American, 6 Latin Americans, 2 Hong Kong Chinese, and 1 Greek) and the other with 22 monocultural Mexican and Chinese Ss and 8 of the bilinguals from the 1st study. For each S, factor analysis of the judgments concerning the probability of occurrence of specific social behaviors in specific social situations provided information of how the S linked social behaviors. ANOVA on the factor scores provided information about the S's beliefs concerning how attributes of social situations are linked to social behaviors. Inspection of the individual models of social behavior indicated that some common elements across models are probably linked to culture. The technique has wide applicability for social and personality psychology because it permits idiographic comparison of models of social behavior across individuals who share some attribute. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of intent and harm in judgments of prejudice and discrimination.

Four experiments examined how an actor's intent and the harm experienced by a target influence judgments of prejudice and discrimination. The presence of intent increased the likelihood that participants judged an actor as prejudiced and the actor's behavior as discriminatory. When intent was uncertain, harm influenced judgments of the behavior, which in turn influenced judgments of the actor, and participants were more cautious in their judgments about an actor than an actor's behavior. Harm also played a stronger role in targets' than observers' judgments. Understanding the role of intent and harm on perceptions of prejudice can help explain variations in targets' versus observers', and possibly targets' versus actors', judgments of discrimination and prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting adolescent peer problems and antisocial activities: The relative roles of aggression and dysregulation.

This study examined the relative roles of aggression and other dysregulated behaviors in the prediction of adolescent peer problems and antisocial behavior. The social adjustment of 145 boys studied first in Grades 3–6 was assessed again 4 years later in Grades 7–10. At each time, peer ratings of aggressive, hyperactive-disruptive, withdrawn, and irritable-inattentive behaviors were collected. Aggression and withdrawal showed stability and were linked to peer difficulties in elementary school and in adolescence, but these behaviors indicated significant risk for adolescent rejection, victimization, and antisocial activity primarily when accompanied by irritable-inattentive behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of the potential role that difficulties regulating negative affect may play in the genesis of the particular constellation of irritable-inattentive behaviors studied here and the developmental significance of aggressive or withdrawn problem profiles that are or are not accompanied by these behavioral indicators of dysregulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naive causal understanding of valenced behaviors and its implications for social information processing.

People bring to bear on their understanding of others' behaviors naive theories of the causes of valenced behaviors. Generally, positive behaviors are understood to be caused by social demands, whereas negative behaviors are understood to be caused by people's dispositions. Various research findings are reviewed in support of the idea that people possess such naive theories. The analysis is extended to establish how these sense-making tendencies affect the manner in which people approach and process information about others. A second set of studies is reviewed in support of these implications for person perception. Comparisons to other models of social inference are considered, implications of the framework are examined, and the framework is situated within a general model of the attribution process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Changes in interpersonal distances and categories of play behavior in the early weeks of preschool.

Observations of 57 children were made using time lapse and moving film techniques in a preschool over a 10-wk period. Ss attended 5, 3, or 2 days/wk. Behavior was recorded in 5 categories: aggressive behavior, rough and tumble behavior, distance from the nearest child, distance from the teacher, and frequency of close proximity; a 6th category, play behavior, was related to the potential for social interaction in preschool play. Behavior was related to measures of attendance at preschool, preschool group, age, and sex via multiple regression analyses. Scores on all measures of social interaction except aggressive behavior increased with preschool experience. The 3 preschool groups showed different degrees of change, and this was directly related to the number of days of attendance at preschool. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating dispositions, signatures, and the interpersonal domain.

A person's behavior across situations can be characterized in terms of a mean level (disposition), a dispersion within the person around that mean level, and a stable organization to the pattern of dispersion (signature). The authors' goals were to examine the structure and stability of behavior, both at the level of behavioral dispositions and at the level of behavioral signatures. Participants completed event-contingent records of their social interactions over a 20-day period. Participants recorded their own social behavior (dominant, agreeable, submissive, quarrelsome) in 4 situations defined by the perceived social behavior of their primary interaction partners (agreeable-dominant, agreeable-submissive, quarrelsome- submissive, quarrelsome-dominant). Findings suggest that (a) once the normative influences of situations on behavior are removed, the remaining behavioral variation reflects both consistent cross-situational differences between individuals (dispositions) and consistent situational differences within individuals (signatures); (b) both dispositions and signatures display a 2-dimensional structure in adherence to the interpersonal circle; and (c) both dispositions and signatures constitute stable aspects of personality functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of positive mood and category importance on crossed categorization effects.

Four studies examined the effect of positive versus neutral affect on preference among potential discussion partners who were members of two in-groups, two out-groups, or both an in-group and out-group (crossed targets). The importance of targets' category memberships was manipulated by idiographically based selection. Positive affect elevated evaluation of crossed targets with a dominant (differentially important) in-group (Study 1). When categories were made equally important, positive affect had no impact (Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 presented crossed targets with both equally differentially important group memberships and showed that differential category importance (dominance) is necessary for positive affect to influence judgments about them. These results are explained by the broadened categorization induced by positive affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)