Smart and easy: Co-occurring activation of spontaneous trait inferences and spontaneous situational inferences

Social perceivers have been shown to draw spontaneous trait inferences (STI's) about the behavior of an actor as well as spontaneous situational inferences (SSI's) about the situation the actor is in. In two studies, we examined inferences about behaviors that allow for both an STI and an SSI. In Experiment 1, using a probe recognition paradigm, we found activation of both STI's and SSI's. In Experiment 2, using a relearning paradigm, we again found activation of both STI's and SSI's, regardless of temporarily activated processing goals. Results are discussed in light of three-stage models of the process of social inference.

[1]  D. Carlston,et al.  Spontaneous trait transference: communicators taken on the qualities they describe in others. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  Morton Ann Gernsbacher,et al.  The role of suppression in sentence comprehension , 1991 .

[3]  A. Dijksterhuis,et al.  The knife that cuts both ways: Facilitated and inhibited access to traits as a result of stereotype activation , 1996 .

[4]  H. Kelley.  The processes of causal attribution. , 1973 .

[5]  J. Bargh.  The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, intention, efficiency, and control in social cognition. , 1994 .

[6]  L. Newman,et al.  Individual Differences in the Spontaneous Construal of Behavior: Idiocentrism and the Automatization of the Trait Inference Process , 1997 .

[7]  J. N. Bassili,et al.  Spontaneous Trait Associations and the Case of the Superstitious Banana , 2002 .

[8]  D. Gilbert,et al.  The correspondence bias. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[9]  Gregory B. Simpson,et al.  Understanding word and sentence , 1991 .

[10]  John J. Skowronski,et al.  Savings in the relearning of trait information as evidence for spontaneous inference generation. , 1994 .

[11]  J. C. Dill,et al.  On Thinking First and Responding Fast: Flexibility in Social Inference Processes , 1996 .

[12]  D. Swinney.  Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration of context effects , 1979 .

[13]  C. Dweck,et al.  Trait- Versus Process-Focused Social Judgment , 1998 .

[14]  Y. Trope.  Identification and Inferential Processes in Dispositional Attribution. , 1986 .

[15]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[16]  H. Kelley.  Attribution theory in social psychology , 1967 .

[17]  J. Uleman,et al.  Spontaneous versus intentional inferences in impression formation , 1999 .

[18]  Gordon B. Moskowitz,et al.  On-Line Evidence for Spontaneous Trait Inferences at Encoding , 1996 .

[19]  Gordon B. Moskowitz,et al.  People as Flexible Interpreters: Evidence and Issues from Spontaneous Trait Inference , 1996 .

[20]  J. Bargh.  Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. , 1989 .

[21]  M. Lupfer,et al.  Impact of context on spontaneous trait and situational attributions. , 1990 .

[22]  J. Uleman,et al.  How automatic are social judgments , 1985 .

[23]  L. Newman,et al.  Can personality traits be inferred automatically? Spontaneous inferences require cognitive capacity at encoding , 1992, Consciousness and Cognition.

[24]  L. Newman.  Why Are Traits Inferred Spontaneously? A Developmental Approach , 1991 .

[25]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Dual-process theories in social psychology , 1999 .

[26]  Ap Dijksterhuis,et al.  When stereotypes get in the way: stereotypes obstruct stereotype-inconsistent trait inferences. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  Paul Whitney,et al.  Task effects on the spontaneous activation of trait concepts , 1992 .

[28]  D. Krull,et al.  Does the Grist Change the Mill? The Effect of the Perceiver's Inferential Goal on the Process of Social Inference , 1993 .

[29]  D. Gilbert,et al.  On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. , 1988 .

[30]  R. Ratcliff.  Methods for dealing with reaction time outliers. , 1993, Psychological bulletin.

[31]  D. Erickson,et al.  Inferential Hopscotch: How People Draw Social Inferences From Behavior , 1995 .

[32]  J. Uleman,et al.  Unintended effects of goals on unintended inferences. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  R. Ratcliff,et al.  Inferences about predictable events. , 1986, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[34]  John J. Skowronski,et al.  Spontaneous trait transference to familiar communicators: is a little knowledge a dangerous thing? , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[35]  John J. Skowronski,et al.  Savings in relearning: II. On the formation of behavior-based trait associations and inferences. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.