Trait ambiguity and impression formation sufficiency tests of the meaning change model

Two experiments tested the meaning change model's prediction for the effect of trait ambiguity on impression formation. Participants were all college students, 43 males and 29 females in Experiment 1 and 20 males and 28 females in Experiment 2. Standard impression formation tasks were used. The results revealed greater context effects for high as compared to low ambiguous traits and greater influence on description ratings for low as compared to high ambigous traits, supporting the meaning change model. When ratings of descriptions and of individual traits were clearly separated, context effects were observed only for low ambiguous traits. The implications of this finding for meaning change and information integration models of impression formation are discussed