Suspicion and Dispositional Inference

Abstract

The role of suspicion in the dispositional inference process is examined. Perceivers who are led to become suspicious of the motives underlying a target's behavior appear to engage in more active and thoughtful attributional analyses than nonsuspicious perceivers. Suspicious perceivers resist drawing inferences from a target's behavior that reflect the correspondence bias (or fundamental attribution error), and they consciously deliberate about questions of plausible causes and categorizations of the target's behavior They are, however, quite willing to make strong correspondent inferences about the target if they learn additional contextual information that renders alternative explanations for the target's behavior less plausible. Implications of these findings for current multiple-stage models of the dispositional inference process are discussed, and the need for these and other models to give more consideration to the social nature of social perception is asserted.

Deception Detection Accuracy is a Predictable Linear Function of Message Veracity Base-Rate: A Formal Test of Park and Levine's Probability Model

“…Further, it is likely that individuals have schemas or stereotypes concerning certain situations in which one should be alert to the possibility of deception, and people are likely less truthbiased in situations where they perceive that another person might be motivated to deceive (cf. Hilton, Fein, & Miller, 1993). Thus, the truth and lie accuracy discrepancy should vary predictably across situations, and understanding situational determinants of truth-bias is a central concern in forecasting truth and lie detection accuracy.…”

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

“…A better strategy would be to invest in more elaborate information processing (Chiappe et al, 2004;Hilton, Fein, & Miller, 1993;Schul et al, 1996) and to prepare for both appearances being true and appearances not being true, thus considering rival interpretations of a counterpart's behavior or of given information. It seems that this is exactly what the cognitive system automatically turns to when receivers doubt the validity of a message: Information is processed as if it were true and as if it were not true at the same time.…”

“…When in a distrust state of mind, people are not likely to stop at simultaneously considering any given information to be both true and untrue, but to proceed by thinking about possible alternative scenarios in the event that the given information is misleading (see e.g., Hilton et al, 1993). This notion is consistent with research showing that people do not only elaborate more when suspicious (Chiappe et al, 2004;Hilton et al, 1993;Schul, 1993;Schul et al, 1996), but that they do so by entertaining multiple interpretations of the motives of a potentially deceitful person (Marchand & Vonk, 2005) or of potentially invalid information rather than elaborating intensely on that information within only one interpretative frame (Fein et al, 1990;Schul et al, 1996). The ability to think about multiple alternatives, in turn, is a central aspect of creative thinking and the basis for performing well in so-called divergent thinking tasks-tasks that are widely used for measuring creativity.…”

The supernatural guilt trip does not take us far enough

“…Because natural selection is pragmatic, the illusion of a supernatural morality, if it served to curb selfish behaviors and thus preserved social reputation in the ancestral past, may be an illusion by design (Alcorta & Sosis 2005;Bering 2005;Bering & Johnson 2005;Bering et al 2005;Boyer 2001;Bulbulia 2004;Dunbar 2004;Hinde 1999;Johnson & Krü ger 2004). Many writers have argued that, at some point in the recent evolutionary past, hominid sociality underwent a relatively abrupt shift that was characterized by strong selective forces operating on reputation-related behaviors (Alexander 1987, p. 110;Bering & Bjorklund, in press;Bering & Shackelford 2004;Daly & Wilson 1994;Emler 1994;Frank 1988;Goffman 1959Goffman , 1963Hilton et al 1993;Schelling 1960;Wright 1994). Because of the risks associated with social detection of selfish acts, and the peculiar "stickiness" of bad reputations (e.g., Baumeister et al 2001;Goffman 1963), psychological traits that facilitated the inhibition of selfish acts were likely subjected to natural selection.…”