Trait Inference In Effect And The Impact Of Gender Stereotypes

Judging other people's personality traits is a common task people face in everyday life.Trait ascriptions help people to explain others' behavior, predict others' future behavior, andguide their own behavior toward others. Traits inferences which refer infering personalitytraits based on observed behavioral have long been of interest to social psychologists. Ifparticipants see the behavior that"Tom hits the saleswoman without any apparent reason", thetrait concept"aggressive"may be activated. Inferring people's traits from their behavior hasimportant social functions. It helps us to understand people and their behaviors, to predictwhat to expect from them, and to prepare smooth interactions with them. From the broadperspective of dual-process models which posit that information processing involves eithercontrolled reasoning or automatic processes in general and in person perception in particular,many authors have argued that trait inference the involves two separate processes: intentionaltrait inferences (ITIs) and spontaneous trait inferences (STIs). ITIs are made with the explicitintention to form an impression about the target. Hence, ITIs are under the control of theperceiver and require some amount of mental capacity to be performed; In contrast, STIs canbe defined as impressions that are formed about a target person without intention orawareness. They are relatively automatic in the sense that they require little mental effort, aredifficult to suppress, and are hard to interfere with.In recent years, research on social judgment including interpersonal perception andgroup judgment has converged on the important realization that two fundamental contentdimensions underlie these various social cognition. Although different names have been used,there is wide agreement on the common core of those dimensions. That is, those twodimensions reflect the other's intent (positive or negative) and competence, thesecharacteristics correspond to perceptions of warmth and competence which was labeled byFiske, respectively. According to recent theory and research, the warmth dimension captures traits that are related to perceived intent, such as friendliness, helpfulness, sincerity,trustworthiness and morality, whereas the competence dimension reflects traits that are relatedto perceived ability, including intelligence, skill, creativity and efficacy. Although bothdimensions are fundamental to social judgment, warmth traits information is not onlyweighted more heavily in social judgments, but is also processed preferentially on earlierstages of information processing, such as recognition, categorization. Furthermore, warmthtraits information is processed preferentially in spontaneous person descriptions. The primacyof warmth over competence categories reflects the importance of assessing other people'sintentions before determining their ability to carry out those intentions. This demonstrates asensitivity to potential threats, which aids survival in all organisms.Although people are more sensitive to warmth information than to competenceinformation for trait rating, surprisingly little empirical research examines whether it is truefor trait inference. By now, a few empirical evidence for priority for infering warmth overcompetent has been obtained from research conducted on ITIs. Some researcher argued thattrait inferences become progressively more automatic through practice. In other words,STIs seems to develop by the inference of traits from behaviors intentionally, repeatedly,and consistently. However, the others think that it is difference between ITIs and STIs. Theresults of comparing the content effect of ITIs with STIs will not only lead to a betterunderstanding of the raltionship between ITIs and STIs, but also provide more insight into themechanism of ITIs and STIs.As yet, most research into STIs has focused solely on behaviors, whereas the features ofthe actors have remained nondescript (e.g., John, Mary) or have been described by anirrelevant category label. In real life, however, we know considerably more about the actorswhose behaviors we observe. For example, gender, age, and skin color are salient features thatperceivers will use to rapidly categorize a person. These social categories and the stereotypes associated with such categories may greatly influence interpretations of an actor's behavior.As such, it might be expected that stereotypes would influence the likelihood that traitinferences would be drawn spontaneously from observed behaviors. Recent studiesdemonstrated the influence of stereotype associated with an actor's features (e.g., gender, race)on trait inferences. There are reasons to expect that content effect on trait inferencesinfluenced by gender stereotype.It should be noted that the previous studies about the influence of stereotypes on traitinferences have mainly focused on the features of stimulus persons (actors), but thecharacteristics of perceivers, such as their gender schematicity, have not been investigated.Therefore, the present research was designed to explore whether individual differences ingender schematicity may moderate that the content effect on STIs influenced by genderstereotype.In the present article, a comprehensive literature review was made with regard to theimportant empirical findings, theoretical explanations as well as the research methodology inthe area of trait inferences, and on the basis of review, four studies were conducted. The firststudy explored the content effect on trait inferences. The second study was conducted toexplore that gender stereotype influenced the effect of content effect on trait inferences.The aim of the third study was to investigate the way how gender stereotype influenced theeffect of content effect on trait inferences. And the forth study was conducted to investigatethe individual differences in gender schematicity moderate that the content effect on STIsinfluenced by gender stereotype. The findings in the above four studies were as follows:(1) Participants were more likely to engage in inferences for negative warmth traits frombehaviors than negative competence traits for intentional trait inferences and spontaneous traitinferences.(2) The content effect on trait inferences was affected by the gender stereotypes. For intentional trait inferences, when masculine stereotypes activated, participants were morelikely to engage in inferences for negative warmth traits from behaviors than negativecompetence traits and to engage in inferences for positive warmth traits from behaviors thanpositive competence traits; when feminine stereotypes activated, participants were more likelyto engage in inferences for negative warmth traits from behaviors than negative competencetrait but to engage in inferences for positive competence traits from behaviors than positivewarmth traits. For spontaneous trait inferences, when masculine stereotypes activated,participants were more likely to engage in inferences for negative warmth traits frombehaviors than negative competence traits; when feminine stereotypes activated, participantswere more likely to engage in inferences for positive warmth traits from behaviors thanpositive competence traits.(3) When masculine stereotypes activated, participants made stronger intentional traitinferences for positive warmth behaviors and stronger spontaneous trait inference fornegative warmth behaviors and weaker spontaneous trait inference for positive competencebehaviors compared to the baseline; When feminine stereotypes activated, participantsmade stronger intentional trait inferences for positive competence behaviors and strongerspontaneous trait inference for positive warmth behaviors and weaker spontaneous traitinference for negative competence behaviors compared to the baseline.(4) Individual differences in gender schematicity may moderate that the content effecton ITIs and STIs influenced by gender stereotype.In concrete terms, when masculine stereotypes activated, gender-schematics madestronger intentional trait inferences for negative warmth traits from behaviors than negativecompetence traits and to stronger inferences for positive warmth traits from behaviors thanpositive competence traits and weaker spontaneous trait inferences for negative warmth traitsfrom behaviors than negative competence traits; when feminine stereotypes activated, participants were more likely to engage in intentional trait inferences for negative warmthtraits from behaviors than negative competence trait but to engage in inferences for positivecompetence traits from behaviors than positive warmth traits, and were more likely to engagein spontaneous trait inferences for positive warmth traits from behaviors than positivecompetence traits. However, none of these effects of gender stereotypes on content effects forITIs and STIs were found for gender-aschematics.