People as Flexible Interpreters: Evidence and Issues from Spontaneous Trait Inference

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ways in which readily inferences about others occur when inferences are not the focal task. The evidence and issues from spontaneous trait inference (STI) are also discussed in the chapter. STI occurs when attending to another person's behavior produces a trait inference in the absence of explicit intention to infer traits or form an impression of that person. Seven different paradigms have been employed to detect and investigate spontaneous trait inference: (1) cued recall under memory instructions; (2) cued recall of distractors; (3) recognition probe; (4) lexical decision; (5) delayed recognition; (6) word stem completion; and (7) relearning. Informational conditions review the ways in which the trait-relevant information presented in STI studies is systematically varied and its effects. The treatment of cognitive conditions focuses on the efficiency of STI and its minimal demands on cognitive capacity. The motivational conditions are divided into: proximal and distal goals. The chapter also explores whether STI refers to actors or merely to behaviors and the consequences of STI based on awareness, priming, prediction, and correspondence bias.