Research On College Students’ Trait Inferences And Situational Inferences

When people watch others’behavior, they will make lots of spontaneous inferences (spontaneous trait inference, spontaneous situational inference, etc.). Research has shown that there have been differences between implicit social cognition and explicit cognition. Spontaneous inference (including spontaneous trait inference and spontaneous situational inference) is as part of the implicit social cognition. What’s the difference between intentional inference (such as intentional trait inference and intentional situational inference) and spontaneous inference?In recent years, the researches on spontaneous trait inference play an important role in the study of social psychology and developmental psychology which contained by social cognition. Its research results are also very rich. By comparison, the research on spontaneous situational inference and intentional inference are less than spontaneous trait inference. By summing up domestic and abroad researches and theories on the trait inference and situational inference, this paper takes college students as subjects and mainly discusses the effect of cognitive load and the target instruction on spontaneous trait inference and situational inference. And what’s more, this paper explore whether the cognitive load influence the intentional trait inference and intentional situational inference or not.In this study, there are two experiments are used to explores the Characteristics of SSI and STI (unconscious, effectiveness, etc.) that under cognitive load and different inference goals. The third experiment discussed the relationship between the intentional trait inference and intentional situational inference that under the presence of cognitive load by asking participants to assess scoresThere are three mainly results of this study as follows.Firstly, the activation of SSI and STI are unconscious (in consciousness, subjects is not making a consciousness for this process), effective (both of them only cost little even no resources, that is to say, that process is not affected by the limited resource), concurrent (spontaneous trait inference and spontaneous situational inference are activated at the same time). It does not depend on cognition and goal instructions.Secondly, under the cognitive load, there is a significantly negative correlation between intentional trait inference and intentional situational inference. And in the absence of cognitive load, there is the positive correlation but not significant between them.