The Content Effect And Its Influence Factors In Spontaneous Trait Inference

The cognitive of personality traits is an important part in the field of social cognition. The investigation of human trait inference ability is one of the important ways to study the characteristics of cognition. Trait inference is the process of which observer to judge the personality traits of the actors according to his acts, with the characteristics of lack of awareness and control, no intention and without any specific purpose. Studies have shown that cognitive trait dimensions can be roughly classified into two dimensions of warmth and ability. Trait inference process not only by the impact of external factors, but also affected by the observer, actors, actors’ behavior and so on. This study first examines the content effect of social cognition in the spontaneous trait inference with probe recognition paradigm. The influence of subject and objective factors and their interaction effects on the basis of investigation the content effect in the spontaneous trait inference.This research mainly consists of four parts: first, whether there is the content effect in the spontaneous trait inference. Second, the effect of need for cognitive closure on the content effect of spontaneous trait inference. Third, the appearance stereotype on the content effect of spontaneous trait inference: research 3a, supraliminal priming appearance stereotypes(300ms’ faces presentation); research 3b, subliminal priming appearance stereotypes(33ms’ faces presentation). Fourth, the interaction effect between the need for cognitive closure, the appearance stereotypes on the content effect of the spontaneous trait inference.The conclusion: 1、there is content effect in the spontaneous trait inference under specifiedconditions. 2、The content effect of spontaneous trait inference is regulated by the need forcognitive closure, for the high need cognitive group, there is no content effect inthe spontaneous trait inference; for the low need cognitive group, there hascontent effect in the spontaneous trait inference. 3、We didn’t find the effect of the appearance stereotype on the content effect ofspontaneous trait inference,With supraliminal priming appearance stereotypes,there exists the content effect of enthusiasm priority on the whole; subliminalpriming appearance stereotype, we can not found content effect on both high/lowattraction.