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Perceiving individuals and groups: expectancies, dispositional inferences, and causal attributions.
J Susskind1, K Maurer, V Thakkar
1Department of Psychology, Mary Washington College, USA.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|March 13, 1999
Summary
People form impressions of individuals more extremely and quickly than groups. This difference stems from assumptions about individual unity versus group coherence, impacting causal attributions.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Understanding impression formation is key to social cognition.
- Distinguishing between individual and group targets influences social perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how perceivers form impressions of individual versus group targets.
- To identify differences in judgment extremity, speed, confidence, recall, and causal attribution.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted comparing impression formation for individual and group targets.
- Participants made trait judgments, recalled information, and engaged in causal attribution tasks.
Main Results:
- Individual targets elicited more extreme and confident trait judgments, faster processing, and better recall than group targets.
- Expectancy-inconsistent behaviors prompted spontaneous causal attributions for individuals but not groups.
Conclusions:
- Perceivers assume greater unity and coherence in individual targets compared to group targets.
- These assumptions shape the cognitive processes involved in impression formation and attribution.