The Effects Of Psychological Distance And Trait Words Valence On Spontaneous Trait Inferences

Spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) are trait inferences that are made without intention or conscious awareness on exposure to trait-implying behaviors. Spontaneous trait inferences generally exist in people’s daily life and work, reflecting the individual’s cognition and interpretation of the behavior of others and affecting many aspects of social judgment and interpersonal decision-making etc. In recent years, spontaneous trait inferences are becoming the focus of attention in the field of social cognition. This paper mainly studies the effects of psychological distance from the actor to the perceiver and positive and negative valence of trait on spontaneous trait inferences.In study1, the false recognition paradigm is used to explore the effects of time distance on spontaneous trait inferences of positive and negative trait-implying behavior, results show that:1) subjects more prone to spontaneous trait inferences for behaviors of far time distance actors;2) subjects more prone to spontaneous trait inferences for negative trait-implying behaviors. In study1, the false recognition paradigm is used to explore the effects of spatial distance on spontaneous trait inferences of positive and negative trait-implying behavior, results show that:1) spontaneous trait inferences is not affected by the spatial distance;2) the subjects implied negative behavior traits more spontaneous trait inference.In summary, the following conclusions can be drawn:1) The effects of time distance and spatial distance on spontaneous trait inferences are not consistent. Time distance have significant effects on spontaneous trait inferences, in conditions of time distance, representation of trait-implying behaviors is agreement with the construal level theory, individual tend to generate high level interpretation, and more prone to spontaneous trait inference for behaviors of far time distance actors, individual tend to generate low level interpretation, and not easy to produce spontaneous trait inferences for behaviors of near time distance actors; spatial distance have no significant effect on spontaneous trait inferences, in conditions of space distance, spontaneous trait inferences does not exist significant differences2) Spontaneous trait inferences exist negative bias, individual more prone to spontaneous trait inferences for positive trait-implying behaviors than negative trait-implying behaviors.