When are You What You Did? Behavior Identification and Dispositional Inference in Person Memory, Attribution, and Social Judgment

Abstract

Recent models of dispositional inference highlight the distinction between the role of traits as descriptions of or labels for behavior and their role as inferred attributes of the people emitting those behaviors. The distinction is an important one; studying the interpersonal consequences of trait inferences requires specifying what such inferences are and what they are not. How current models of person memory accommodate the distinction between behavior identifications and trait inferences is examined, and the possible consequences of identifying a person's behaviors (but not necessarily the person) in trait terms are considered. In addition, research is described suggesting that trait identifications of behavior are likely to occur spontaneously (without impression formation goals). Behavior identifications are essentially incomplete trait inferences, but they have subtle and important effects on subsequent social inference and behavior: