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Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

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Interfering with inferential, but not associative, processes underlying spontaneous trait inference.

Matthew T Crawford¹, John J Skowronski, Chris Stiff

¹University of Bristol. M.Crawford@bristol.ac.uk

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin

|April 19, 2007

Summary

People form spontaneous trait inferences about themselves, differing from how they judge others. Instructions to consider truth or lies impact self-judgments but not judgments of others.

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Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Cognitive Psychology

Background:

Spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) occur automatically when observing others' behavior.
Spontaneous trait transference (STT) describes the tendency to attribute traits to targets based on behaviors described by others.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the underlying mental processes of STIs for self- versus third-party informants.
To differentiate the cognitive mechanisms involved in self-perception and social perception.

Main Methods:

Three studies were conducted comparing self-informant and third-party informant scenarios.
Participants' trait judgments and trait-savings effects were measured under different instructional conditions (e.g., truth vs. lie).
Cognitive load was manipulated in one study to test its explanatory power.

Main Results:

Instructions prompting nontrait inferences (truth/lie) reduced self-informant trait-savings and trait judgments.
These instructions had no effect on third-party informants' trait judgments.
Results ruled out cognitive load as the primary explanation for observed differences.

Conclusions:

Spontaneous trait inferences, not mere associations, form during self-information processing.
Spontaneous trait transference does not stem from misidentifying third-party informants as self-informants.
Distinct cognitive processes underlie self-perception and social perception.