Inferential Hopscotch: How People Draw Social Inferences From Behavior

Do Smiles Elicit More Inferences than Do Frowns? The Effect of Emotional Valence on the Production of Spontaneous Inferences

Previous work by Liu, Karasawa, and Weiner suggests that perceivers may draw more causal attributions for positive emotions than for negative emotions. If so, then perceivers may draw more inferences spontaneously for positive emotions than for negative emotions. Participants observed a short video of a target who displayed either happiness or sadness. In the first experiment, half of the participants who viewed each of these behaviors were instructed to diagnose the target's disposition and half were instructed to diagnose the target's situation. Results revealed that although participants who viewed sadness drew only the inference consistent with their instructions, participants who viewed happiness drew both dispositional and situational inferences regardless of their instructions. In a second experiment, participants were instructed to diagnose the behavior of a target who displayed either happiness or sadness. Results revealed that perceivers of happy behavior drew inferences spontaneously. Implications are discussed.

Inferences about Effort and Ability

Perceivers received information about a target person’s level of athletic performance (e.g., kicking a soccer ball) and the situational forces surrounding that performance. Perceivers’ inferences about the effort and ability of the target depended on whether the situational forces involved psychological forces (a bribe offered for low performance) or physical forces (a wind that hindered performance). Replicating past research, psychological forces had a stronger impact on inferred ability given the presence of low performance, as opposed to high performance. Additional analyses indicated that this pattern was mediated by inferences about the effort of the target. In contrast, physical forces appeared to have a direct impact on inferences of ability and affected inferences based on both low and high performance. The results suggest that perceivers make inferences about multiple attributes within a target person and, in the process, attempt to reconcile those inferences.

On Thinking First and Responding Fast: Flexibility in Social Inference Processes

Numerous models of the social inference process have been proposed, but research has not specifically investigated the order in which dispositional and situational information is considered. A paradigm was developed to investigate when people think dispositionally and when they think situationally. Three investigations assessed perceivers' reaction times to answer dispositional, situational, and behavior interpretation questions about an individual behaving in an anxious or a sad manner. Participants were instructed to diagnose either the individual's disposition (dispositional-focus condition) or the individual's situation (situational-focus condition). The results indicate that perceivers are flexible in their inference processes in that they are able to draw either dispositional or situational inferences initially. Implications are discussed.