The Relationship Between Mood And Spontaneous Trait Association And The Gender Stereotype Effect

Spontaneous trait inferences (STAs) refer to that the individual made withoutintention or conscious awareness on attach or binding the trait concept from thetrait-implying sentence to an actor in long-term memory. When we read that “Li chaowill thieves bundled to the ground”，we will refer the concept brave to Li chao.Inanother ways, we will think Li chao is thought to have brave traits. STAs as animportant component of individual cognitive processes, taking universal attention byresearchersThough numerous researches have demonstrated the existence of STAs, but fewresearches investigate the relationship between emotion and STAs. Emotions areshort-lived experiences that produce coordinated changes in people’s thoughts, actions,and physiological responses. Research on emotion suggests that happy and sad moodsinduce diferent styles of information processing. They concluded that happy moods areassociated with a heuristic processing style in which attitudes and judgments are basedon peripheral cues rather than a thoughtful consideration of the information, whereassad moods are associated with a systematic processing style in which attitudes andjudgments are based on a careful scrutiny and elaboration of information. As animportant component of cognition processes, it is possible that STAs will be influencedby emotions. compared with negative emotions，people in positive emotions will havestronger STAs.As an impotant part of social stereotypes, gender stereotype has drawn the focus ofpsychologists in the field of social cognition. Research found that the genderstereotype-consistency of the actor’s gender influenced the association between theactor and the activated traits. When the actor’s gender and his/her behavior was genderstereotype-consistent, the association between the actor and the activated was facilitated.However, when the actor’s gender and his/her behavior was gender stereotype-inconsistent, the association between the actor and the activated traits was inhibited. So it is possible that gender stereotype play a moderating role in the relationship betweenthe emotions and the STAs.As the first step in the present dissertation, a comprehensive literature review wasmade with regard to STAs, and then limitations about this field were analyzed. On thebasis of this, three related studies were conducted with a sample of165undergraduatesto explore STAs and its Relationship between Mood and Spontaneous Trait Associationand the Gender stereotype Effect.The findings are as follows:1The Spontaneous trait association existed significantly among Chineseundergraduates.2The Spontaneous trait association was effected by Emotions. Positive emotionscould facilitate the association between the actor and the activated traits; however,negative emotions could inhabit the association between the actor and the activatedtraits.3gender stereotypes played a moderating role in the relationship between theemotions and the STAs. The gender stretotype effect on individuals’ spontaneous traitinferences was founded in positive mood, but not in negative mood.