Study On Interaction Of Trait And Situation In Social Perception

The study on social perception was tightly related to that of personality. Based on personality traits theories, social perception paid special attention to situational factors that made behavioral change, regarded individual as a person with a certain trait, and explained behavior either as situational factors or personal traits. However, in some cases, such dichotomy could not completely explain all the aspects that perceivers' thoughts of other behaviors. The latest research in personality showed that personality is a relatively stable system of social-cognitive-emotional mediation process, and the interaction between such process and a certain situation forms individuals' unique behavioral pattern. This personality notion provided a new perspective for social perception research.Based on social perception theories and the new personality notion, this paper confirmed the interaction between traits and situations in interpersonal interaction with the methods of investigation and experiment. Firstly, through depth interview, an important variable in social perception, others' importance to oneself was gotten, it was found that the representation for others' behavior changed with time, and some situations related to undergraduates' campus life were collected. Secondly, the interaction between traits and situations was confirmed through three studies. In the first and second study, the representations of others' behaviors and their explanations and forecast were studies with investigation and analyzed with content analysis. In the third study, the responsibility in Big Five personality was used as the target person' trait, combined with 8 situations to form three level of the independent variable, which were respectively behavior regularly changed in different situations, behavior randomly changed and behavior unchanged. And the perceivers' perception for the target person' personality consistency, and their inference for the target person' potential aim were used as dependent variables. Data was analyzed with One-Way ANOVA and the results were as follows:(1) In most cases, the representation of important others' behavior was cognitive-emotional units, while the representation of unimportant others' behavior was traits.(2) Perceivers were more confident in forecast important others' behavior in different situations, and explained their behavior more as mental state; while for unimportant others' behavior, they often explained it as non-mental state.(3) Perceivers could judge other' personality consistency based on his stable "if.. .then..." behavioral pattern.(4) Perceivers could infer the potential aim of other' behavior based on his stable "if.. .then..." behavioral pattern.