Action-oriented representations of implicit personality theories.

Abstract

Concept of Action-Oriented RepresentationAction-oriented representation is not a new idea. It may be found in Schutz's analysis of the common-sense knowledge (1962) but especially in the work of Wittgenstein (1981). He introduced the concept of language games, which give meaning to expressions generated by people and the idea of knowledge about social actions, which determined the acquisition and performance of these language games. Recently, this idea has been expressed more completely in the script concept of Schank and Abelson (1977). Empirical studies and theoretical analyses inspired by this concept are concentrated, almost exclusively on so-called situational scripts. (Abelson, 1981, Bower, Black, & Turner, 1978. It is intriguing to inquire whether more abstract and complex representations of the social world; representations of human psyche, individuals, values, ideologies, social organizations, and so forth, also have, in their natural form, an actionoriented structure.The content of action-oriented representation includes categories of action-goals, and the ways and conditions of achieving them. Basic relations that are represented are 1266 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Goal‐based and situation‐based expectation of behaviour

“…The present study seeks to expand consideration of the role of personality variables in lay people's common-sense psychology or implicit theories of behavior, specifically in terms of the role of goals or motives as perceived causes of behavior. Such an emphasis not only is in accord with Heider's original emphasis but also fits with current developments in personality theory (Pervin, 1983(Pervin, , 1985 and social cognition (Murphy and Medin, 1984;Showers and Cantor, 1985;Trzebinski, 1985). In addition, attention is focused on the anticipation of behavior rather than on attributions for the past events.…”

Social Cognition: A Look at Motivated Strategies

“…private and public self; Trzebinski 1984 on "action-oriented" representations.) Analyses of cognitive strategies reveal meaningful patterns of behavioral variation; but those strategies can and will change in line with situational contingencies and individuals' goals.…”

Spontaneous Goal Inference (SGI)

“…They concluded that knowledge about an individual may be organized mainly in categories of his or her goals, with goal inference as a necessary step in understanding another person. Such findings argue against the conclusion of the person memory literature (and Asch, 1946) that traits are the organizing principle around which perceiver's understand behavior, positing instead that information about an actor is "organized mainly in categories of his or her basic goals and means and/or condition of achieving them" (Trzebinski, 1985(Trzebinski, ,p. 1277.…”