Press and task difficulty as determinants of preoccupation with person descriptors

Abstract

Two studies address the question of the conditions under which individuals preoccupy themselves with person descriptors (as indicated by traits or related types of behavioral dispositions). In an experiment university students were given anagram problems of varying difficulty. The difficulty variable was crosscut by a manipulation of the amount of performance pressure that was placed on subjects. Using an open answering format, requiring subjects to write a short essay about the task, it turned out that the combination of a very difficult task and high pressure to perform resulted in a singularly high tendency for subjects to occupy themselves with person descriptors. In a second study, a field study that took place in a public school, school children were asked to perform either a mathematics, English, or German task and subsequently the subjects were grouped according to their subjective impression of task difficulty. Using an incomplete sentences dependent variable format, it was found that perceived difficulty was associated with an increment in preoccupation with person descriptors. The experiments were derived from a conceptualization that relates person/task compatibility, within a given task setting, to the tendency to think about the task setting in terms of person descriptorsWicklund, 1986, Wicklund, 1986.