A prototype analysis of psychological situations

Abstract Categorical beliefs about everyday situations were submitted to a prototype analysis. The aim was to clarify how the naive perceiver construes, categorizes, and gives meaning to classes of social situations (e.g., parties, work, therapy sessions). Free description, imagery-reaction time, and structured rating paradigms served to analyze structural, processing, and content properties of a sample of situation categories. The results indicated that people shared relatively orderly and easily retrievable prototypes for the 36 situation categories studied here. These situations were often characterized by the typical person-action combinations expected in them. Naive perceivers agree about person-situation matches, sharing knowledge of the most prototypic behaviors and personality types associated with different types of situations. The findings suggested that such knowledge about social situations might prove useful for the perceiver as actor to plan and regulate behavior.

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