Spontaneous social role inferences

Abstract

• Perceivers spontaneously infer information about people from their behavior.• We proposed that perceivers infer others' social roles from their behaviors.• Three studies documented spontaneous role inferences (SRIs).• SRIs were cognitively efficient, forming under cognitive load.• SRIs had downstream consequences for trait impressions of targets. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Past research has demonstrated that perceivers spontaneously infer individuals' goals, beliefs, and traits from their behaviors. These inferences processes are essential for predicting others' future behaviors and, thus, for smooth social interaction. Given that social roles (e.g., professor, mother) are also predictive of an individual's future behaviors, we proposed that perceivers spontaneously infer individuals' social roles from their behaviors. Across three experiments, including two different paradigms, we documented that perceivers formed spontaneous role inferences (SRIs) from single behaviors. SRIs occurred unintentionally, efficiently, and had important downstream consequences for impression formation. Namely, SRIs led perceivers to rate targets as higher on role-consistent traits. Together, these findings provide the first empirical demonstration of a novel process in impression formation.Published by Elsevier Inc. Spontaneous social role inferencesOne of the earliest questions asked by social psychologists was: how do perceivers distill knowledge of another person from his or her behaviors? Humans have an unparalleled ability to extract valuable social information, such as intentions and dispositions, from the mere observation of another person's behavior. Given that others' social roles also provide important information about their intentions and future behaviors, we propose that perceivers also readily infer individuals' social roles from their behaviors.

The Relationship Between Spontaneous Trait Inferences and Spontaneous Situational Inferences: A Developmental Approach

“…The results of error rate analysis indicated that participants in all age groups did not make both STIs and SSIs. Although we did not find evidence of spontaneous inferences, as reflected by higher error rates, the results showed significant differences on reaction times, which are considered to be sufficient evidence of spontaneous inferences (Chen, Banerji, Moons, & Sherman, 2014;Todd, Molden, Ham, & Vonk, 2011). …”

Predictive social perception: Towards a unifying framework from action observation to person knowledge

“…Humans store a vast amount of behaviour-relevant information about other people, reaching from the fact that our kid likes to pick his nose, to political and musical preferences of our friends, to more abstract traits that predict people's behaviour across situations (Barresi & Moore, 1996;Park, 1986;Park, DeKay, & Kraus, 1994; for neuroimaging evidence, see Greven, Downing, & Ramsey, 2016;Hassabis et al, 2013). This knowledge can be supplemented by knowledge about the individual's group (e.g., stereotyping; boys like football; Quadflieg et al, 2011), their social role (mother or professor; Chen, Banerji, Moons, & Sherman, 2014) or what humans, generally, are like (cf. Quinn & Rosenthal, 2012).…”

Consequences of being unable to categorize: Racial ambiguity and spontaneous trait inferences

“…If an individual has already exerted resources when processing a face and is unable to categorize that face, they may be unlikely to form impressions using a further cognitively taxing method. This could be examined by placing participants in a cognitive load condition or a control condition during an STI paradigm (see Chen, Banerji, Moons, & Sherman, 2014 for a similar procedure). If cognitive load is driving these effects, it can be expected that those in the cognitive load condition would show weaker ambiguity effects than those in the no load condition (e.g., more similar patterns across ambiguous and unambiguous faces).…”