Acknowledging the role of word-based activation in spontaneous trait inferences

Abstract

The first goal of the present paper is to call attention to a confounder in studies that explore Spontaneous Trait Inferences (STI). These studies use, most of the times, behavioral descriptions which strongly imply personality traits about the actor of the behavior. However, a potential limitation of this material is the possibility of the trait being activated by specific words in the sentence (wordbased priming) and not, or not only, by an inference made based on the comprehension of the behavioral sentence as a whole (text-based priming). This aspect has been recurrently ignored in previous studies. In the present paper, we discuss how the word-based priming may have obscured the interpretation of previous results in the STI literature. A second goal of this paper is to present a potential solution for this problem. We created a set of 122 trait-implying sentences and their correspondent control versions. These control sentences have approximately the same words as the trait-implying sentences, but the words are rearranged in such a way that the sentences no longer imply the target traits. By keeping the words constant, we control for the activation from individual words in the sentences (word-based priming). Thus, differences in trait activation between the two sentences can only be attributed to text-based priming. Researchers interested in investigating STI in the Portuguese language can use these materials in their studies. With this paper, we hope to stimulate a discussion about the mechanisms responsible for the trait activation in STI studies.

Spontaneous state inferences.

“…Furthermore, we always compared responses to the state and trait adjectives implied by the actors' behavior to trait and state adjectives implied by behaviors of other actors during the same learning phase. It is thus not mere familiarity or traces of prior activation of text-based associations of behaviors with trait or state words that increase false recognition rates (e.g., reading the verb laughing activating associations like jolly or amused), but inferences directly tied to the specific actors of that behavior (e.g., Laughing Dave is jolly and/or amused; see also Orghian, Ramos, Reis, & Garcia-Marques, 2018).…”