By your words shall ye be judged
spontaneous trait inference
Spontaneous trait transference to familiar communi… [J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999] - PubMed result
Spontaneous trait transference to familiar communicators: is a little knowledge a dangerous thing?
Mae L, Carlston DE, Skowronski JJ.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA. lynda@psych.purdue.edu
In most social cognition research participants are presented with unattributed information about unfamiliar stimulus persons. However, in the real world it is more common for people to learn about others through social communication and to know something about those with whom they communicate. Such issues are explored in relation to spontaneous trait transference, a phenomenon in which communicators are perceived as having traits that they merely describe in others. Three studies show that even familiar communicators became associated with, and attributed, the traits implied by their remarks. Surprisingly, these effects occurred even when the implied traits were incongruent with participants’ prior knowledge about these communicators. The results are discussed in terms of (a) the generalizability of social cognition research, (b) the automaticity of simple associative phenomena, and (c) the interplay of simple associative and higher level processes.
This is older research more of new is more to the same.
Brings new meaning to value/sexual elicitation as well as the the octoberman/Feb. sequence and Anchoring values and traits to objects.