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

Abstract

Ss who receive information about a person's traits and behaviors in a social context are likeiy 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.

Limiting the spread of spontaneous trait transference

“…For example, Wyer and his colleagues (Wyer, Budesheim, Lambert, & Swan, 1994;Wyer, Swan, & Gruenfeld, 1995) have suggested that judgments of communicators in informal conversation depend on two considerations: (a) the literal meaning of what is said, and (b) the pragmatic implications of the information. These latter implications can be aVected by perceptions of why the statement was made as well as the manner in which the behavior was described (i.e., how the statement is made).…”

Evaluating courses: an examination of the impact of student gender

“…The favourable and the unfavourable responses were scored separately but both were scored in the same way, so the first favourable comment made would be scored 4 and the first unfavourable comment would also be scored 4. This took into account the order effect noted by Sherman and Klein, (1994);Wyer et al, (1994) and Swann and Gill, (1997).…”

The Influence of Tone, Target, and Issue Ownership on Political Advertising Effects in Primary Versus General Elections

“…In such a case, a source who makes negative statements about a target presents the audience with an attributional ambiguity: Are the statements a reflection of the target's personality or the source's? As a rule, people tend to judge the source unfavorably as a result of such statements (Wyer, Budesheim, Lambert, and Swan 1994).…”