Person memory and judgment: pragmatic influences on impressions formed in a social context

Ss who receive information about a person's traits and behaviors in a social context are likely to focus their attention on the pragmatic implications of this information (i.e., why the information was conveyed). To examine this hypothesis, Ss listened to a taped conversation in which a male target (T) and another speaker (O) exchanged anecdotal accounts of T's behavior. Ss typically used O's trait description of T to form an evaluative concept of O rather than of T, whereas T's trait description of himself had no effect on evaluations of him. Ss had better recall of statements O made when they were unfavorable and, therefore, violated a conversational norm to be polite. However, behaviors that T himself mentioned were often recalled better when they were favorable, and therefore, in violation of a normative expectation to appear modest. The inconsistency of T's behaviors with initial trait descriptions of him had little effect on the recall of these behaviors.