Thinking about people: Contributions of a typological alternative to associationistic and dimensional models of person perception.

Abstract

The associationistic view of person perception states that people are perceived in terms of trait covariations. The dimensional view maintains that others are perceived by means of a limited number of dimensions. In contrast, the typological view is that others are perceived in terms of person types, and traits within a given person type have a unique interactive relation. In Experiment l, associationistic, dimensional, and typological representations of implicit personality theories were empirically derived. The derived stimuli were used in Experiment 2, which examined the effects of person type membership on impression priming and perceived trait belongingness, controlling for associationistic and dimensional factors. As expected, results validated the unique contribution of a typological approach to person perception. Implications of the present findings for the implicit personality theory, stereotype, and person memory literatures are discussed. People constitute important categories of objects. It is of no surprise, then, that thinking about people is such a pervasive phenomenon. We routinely form impressions of other people's personalities, make predictions about their behavior, wonder about their intentions, and evaluate their performance outcomes. In this article, we are concerned with the issue of how we think about, perceive, or cognitively represent other people. How Do People Think About People? There are at least three general views that speak to this issue: The associationistic, the dimensional, and the typological view. i Associationistic and Dimensional Views The simplest view, the associationistic, is that people think about others in terms of trait covariations. Expectations about a target person's standing on some unknown trait (e.g., shyness) are derived from beliefs about the correlations of that trait with known traits (e.g., outgoingness, aloofness). More formally, Trait A is expected to accurately describe a person who has Traits B, C, and D to the extent that A is believed to correlate positively with B, C, and D. The expectation for a given unknown trait depends on the perceived relations between that trait and all We thank the participants in the Nags Head Conference on Social Cognition, especially Dave Schneider, for their helpful suggestions. We also thank Rob Nosofsky and the anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments on drafts of this article and Phil Wood for his expert advice on multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The help of Mary Finch, Deborah Weaver, and Lee Metzler in conducting this research is gratefully acknowledged.

Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups.

“…Responses were given on a seven-point scale, anchored by 1 (not very important) and 7 (very important). In an improvement on previous research at the group level, morality (α = .80) was assessed with the traits "honest," "sincere," and "trustworthy" (see also Anderson & Sedikides, 1991;Osgood et al, 1957;Rosenberg et al, 1968). As in a good deal of stereotype research, sociability was assessed with the traits "likeable," "warm," and "friendly" (α = .69)…”

“…Although morality and sociability can be seen as falling along the same general dimension of evaluation (i.e., benevolence), they are conceptually distinct characteristics. Indeed, research at the individual level shows people to treat personality traits related to morality as distinct from traits related to sociability (e.g., Anderson & Sedikides, 1991;Rosenberg et al, 1968;White, 1980). There is no reason this should not also be the case at the group level.…”

Forming Impressions of Personality

“…Much like punch cards and slide carousels, the Gestalt-view on impression formation has slowly but surely gone out of fashion (partly because there were more simple explanations for Asch's 1946data, e.g., Anderson, 1981Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968;Wishner, 1960), though some of its premises have resonated in typological models of impression formation (e.g., Anderson & Sedikides, 1991;Sedikides & Anderson, 1994). These typological models failed to gain a strong foothold in the field: Instead, dimensional models became increasingly popular.…”

Parenting Dimensions and Styles: A Brief History and Recommendations for Future Research

“…12 Two of the major dimensions identified in factor analytic and multidimensional scaling studies of person perception, for example, are evaluation and activity/potency 13,14 -dimensions that are close to warmth and control when applied to parenting. Thus, similar dimensions emerge for parents and nonparents when raters describe individuals with general trait terms (e.g., kind, active, strict).…”