Trait-specificity versus global positivity: A critical test of alternative sources of assumed similarity in personality judgments.

Thielmann, Isabel; Rau, Richard; Locke, Kenneth D.

doi:10.1037/pspp0000420

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Honesty‐Humility has indeed been (conceptually) linked to dispositional trust through the process of social projection or assumed similarity, respectively (Thielmann & Hilbig, 2015a). Specifically, research suggests that individuals high in Honesty‐Humility—who tend to be trustworthy (Thielmann & Hilbig, 2015b)—expect others to be high in Honesty‐Humility as well (Lee et al, 2009; Thielmann et al, 2020, 2022). Correspondingly, Honesty‐Humility has also been empirically linked to trust (Pfattheicher & Böhm, 2018) as well as to conspiracy mentality (Bowes et al, 2021; Jolley et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality

Thielmann

Hilbig

2023

Political Psychology

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Populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories fuel societal division as both rely on a Manichean us-versusthem, good-versus-evil narrative. However, whether both constructs have the same dispositional roots is essentially unknown. Across three studies conducted in two different countries and using diverse samples (total N = 1,888), we show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a strong common core as evidenced using bifactor modeling. This common core was uniquely linked to (aversive) personality, namely the Dark Factor of Personality (D), beyond basic personality traits from the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure. The association between D and the common core, in turn, was fully accounted for by distrust-related beliefs as captured in cynicism, dangerous and competitive social worldviews, sensitivity to befallen injustice, and (low) trust propensity. Taken together, the results show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a shared psychological basis that is well described as a sociopolitically flavored manifestation of generalized dispositional distrust. The findings thus underscore the value of generalized trust for societal functioning and suggest that increasing trust may simultaneously combat both populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality

Thielmann

Hilbig

2023

Political Psychology

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“…Each trait set was chosen to represent a distinct, logically consistent personality type or gist (see Reyna, 2012). By avoiding logical contradictions (e.g., a group said to be both casual and methodical or both withdrawn and showy ), each trait set contained considerable trait‐specific information to go with the overall or global positivity information (Rau et al., 2021; Thielmann et al., 2023). The cover story, which also had to be believable, conveyed considerable non‐trait information (see Leising et al., 2015) about the target group's members all living in the same region, presumably speaking the same language and sharing cultural norms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of biased extrapolation on attitude extremity

Decker,

Lord

2023

Euro J Social Psych

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Previous research has shown that merely thinking about an attitude object can make both positive and negative attitudes more extreme. The present research explored whether a specific type of thought—extrapolating from known to unknown attributes—might make attitudes and behavioural intentions more extreme than reviewing known attributes. In three experiments, extrapolating from a social group's ‘known’ personality traits made positive and negative attitudes and behavioural intentions more extreme than reviewing those traits. This pattern of results occurred whether participants self‐generated extrapolations (Experiment 1) or rated the likelihood of frequently extrapolated traits (Experiment 2). Attitudes were also more extreme after extrapolating traits high versus low in cognitive relevance to known traits, regardless of trait positivity/negativity (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the effect of biased trait extrapolation on attitude extremity was mediated by more extreme associations with the extrapolated group. The current findings are consistent with attitude theories that emphasize cognitive processes.

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“…We use data from a larger project approved and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation; Grant LE 2151/6-1) that investigates the present and other fundamental questions in behavior observation and person perception. Some investigations of other research questions with these data are already published (Heynicke et al, 2022; Thielmann et al, 2023; Wiedenroth et al, 2020; Wiedenroth & Leising, 2020a); the following data description therefore draws from these prior accounts. Note that in one of the previous investigations (Wiedenroth & Leising, 2020a), information quantity, consistency, and shared meaning also played a role.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, we first extrapolated the degree of shared meaning (i.e., reliability) that would be present in ratings averaged across 10 perceivers. This was done using the Spearman-Brown formula (Brown, 1910;Spearman, 1910): This formula can be used to, for example, calculate what the reliability of an instrument (e.g., questionnaire) would be if it had more or less items to assess the dimension of interest than it does. Instead of different items assessing one variable, we have different perceivers rating one target, and we can calculate the reliability of 10 perceivers from the reliability of individual perceivers (Kenny, 2019).…”

Section: Bt Conditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of consensus in person judgments: The joint influence of information overlap, information quantity, cross-situational consistency, and shared meaning.

Wiedenroth,

Wessels,

Leising

2024

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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This study investigated the effects and interplay of several core determinants of consensus in person perception: information overlap, information quantity, cross-situational consistency, and shared meaning. Targets (N = 200) were filmed in different standardized situations. Perceivers either watched the same target in different situations (N = 1,395 perceivers) or different targets in the same situation (N = 3,963 perceivers) and then rated the targets' personalities after each video. Overlap of the observed situations was systematically varied across perceivers. Consensus was higher when perceivers (a) observed a target in more overlapping situations, (b) observed a target in more situations overall, judged characteristics (c) for which between-target differences were more consistent across situations, or (d) for which perceivers had more similar meaning systems. The effect of overlap was more important with low consistency or information quantity, but moderate in size overall. In light of prior research failing to adequately operationalize overlap and consider its interplay with other factors, this study presents the strongest evidence to date on these issues.

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Trait-specificity versus global positivity: A critical test of alternative sources of assumed similarity in personality judgments.

Cited by 9 publications

References 90 publications

Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality

Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality

Effects of biased extrapolation on attitude extremity

Determinants of consensus in person judgments: The joint influence of information overlap, information quantity, cross-situational consistency, and shared meaning.

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