Spontaneous Trait Inferences From Behavior: A Systematic Meta-Analysis

Research suggests that people spontaneously infer traits from behavioral information, thus forming impressions of actors' personalities. Such spontaneous trait inferences (STI) have been examined in a wide range of studies in the last four decades. Here, we provide the first systematic meta-analysis of this vast literature. We included data from k = 86 publications, with overall N = 13,630 participants. The average STI effect was moderate to large (dz = 0.59) and showed substantial heterogeneity. The type of experimental paradigm significantly moderated the STI effect size, with larger effects in long-term memory-based paradigms compared with working memory-based paradigms. Generally, STI effects were robust to various methodological variations and also to potential concerns of publication bias. Contrary to expectations, cultural background (independent vs. interdependent) did not emerge as a significant moderator of STI effects. We discuss these findings with respect to their theoretical relevance and derive implications for future research and theorizing.

Spontaneous Inferences from Pictorially Presented Behaviors

Previous research on spontaneous trait inferences (STI) was based on verbal stimuli. In this research, stimulus behaviors were presented pictorially and STIs were measured in terms of the time needed to identify a trait term that gradually appeared behind a mask. An attempt was made to demonstrate that the STI cannot be reduced to a side effect of language comprehension. A pilot study showed that the phenomenon extends to pictures and that a graphical encoding task leads to even stronger STIs than verbal recoding. Experiment 1 corroborated the basic finding using an improved methodology. In Experiment 2, specific encoding operations were manipulated in a verification task. STIs were strongest when the verification task referred to concrete stimulus aspects. The findings support neither an account in terms of mere language comprehension nor a verbal interference of inferential-distance account, but they are consistent with a concreteness advantage or picture-superiority effect.

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.

Spontaneous Trait Inferences: Are They Linked to the Actor or to the Action?

This article analyzes whether spontaneous trait inferences explicitly refer to a disposition of the actor or whether they only identify the type of behavior in which the actor was engaged. The authors used a novel primed recognition paradigm, in which participants had to indicate whether the implied trait was part of the original sentence after being briefly primed with the name of the actor, verb (i.e., action), or a control word. If traits are spontaneously encoded during reading, participants will tend to erroneously recognize the trait as part of the sentence or will need extra time to inhibit this error. The results from three experiments demonstrate that spontaneous trait inferences are associated with both the actor and action and that information disconfirming a causal attribution to the person eliminates these spontaneous trait inferences.

Situation-Specific Effects in Person Memory

Given that most person memory models have concentrated on trait expectancies, and have ignored situational ones, this article attempts to show that new predictions can arise from an explicit focus on the situation. Participants were led to believe that a target person was kind or unkind either at work or at home. They were subsequently presented with congruent and incongruent behavioral items ostensibly performed by the target person in each of these settings. Consistent with the notion that people form situation-specific expectancies, incongruent behaviors were better recalled than congruent ones, but only if they pertained to the situation specified in the expectancy manipulation; an incongruity effect was not obtained for behaviors performed in the unspecified situation. These data suggest that situation-specific expectancies should be addressed in future person memory models.

Linking versus thinking: Evidence for the different associative and attributional bases of spontaneous trait transference and spontaneous trait inference

Informants who describe others' behaviors are perceived as having more of the trait implied by the behavior they describe (the trait transference effect). Associative and attributional explanations for this phenomenon are reviewed and examined in 3 experiments. Findings were inconsistent with attributional interpretations: (a) transference effects persisted with extended coding times, online judgments, and warnings to participants to avoid the effect; (b) negativity effects were absent in transference but occurred with trait inference; and (c) transference effects failed to generalize beyond the particular trait implied by informants' descriptions. Moreover, forcing participants to recall the target of informants' descriptions just prior to trait judgments eliminated the transference effect while enhancing inference effects. These results contradict nonassociative explanations and indicate that different processes underlie spontaneous trait transference and spontaneous trait inference.

The role of hemispheric activation in person perception: evidence for an attentional focus model

Two studies assessed the role of hemispheric activation in person perception. Results of Study 1 supported an attentional focus model of hemispheric differences in person perception as opposed to a stereotyping/individuating model. Relative to left hemisphere-activated participants, right hemisphere-activated participants made more individuating judgments and engaged in more trait level stereotyping, whereas left hemisphere-activated participants engaged in more global stereotyping. In Study 2, greater individuation by participants under higher levels of motivation and ability was shown to be mediated by relatively greater right hemisphere activation. Results of both studies are interpreted in terms of an attentional focus model of person perception. Implications for dual process models of social perception are also discussed.