Lay personality knowledge and confidence in social inferences, individual differences, temporal change, and momentary activation

Abstract

This thesis investigated the relationship between people's lay conceptions about the malleability of personality and their social inferences. In Part I, a series of studies was conducted to examine how people who subscribe to the belief that personality is fixed (entity theorists) differ from people who subscribe to the belief that personality is malleable (incremental theorists) in their confidence in inferring an individual's standing on a certain trait based on knowledge about the individual's standing on another trait construct (i.e., inter-construct inferences). Based on a program of research by Dweek, Chiu and Hong (1995), we hypothesized that entity theorists would make more confident or extreme inferences than would incremental theorists. This hypothesis was clearly borne out only under limited conditions. Participants' theories were related to the extremity of their inferences involving only conceptually related, and not unrelated, construct pairs. Moreover, participants' theories exhibited temporal instability, and the extremity of their inferences was strongly related to their theories only as measured at the time of inference. A strict individual-differences approach cannot explain or predict such intra-individual variability.

In Part II, a knowledge-activation perspective was used to illuminate the social-cognitive processes underlying intra-individual variations in states of knowledge and confidence in social inferences. Assuming that most people possess some knowledge consistent with the notion that personality is fixed (entity knowledge) and with the notion that personality is malleable (incremental knowledge), it was hypothesized that social inferences would be made with greater confidence when entity knowledge is more accessible than when incremental knowledge is more accessible. Participants' pre-existing entity or incremental knowledge was made temporarily more accessible (or primed) in two studies. In one study, participants were exposed to a biography of a fictitious character whose personality remained stable (entity-prime condition) or changed a lot (incremental-prime condition) over the course of his lifetime. In another study, participants evaluated the meaning of proverbs consistent with the notion that personality is fixed (entity-prime condition) or with the notion that personality is malleable (incremental-prime condition). As predicted, across both studies, participants in the entity-prime condition made more extreme or confident inferences than did participants in the incremental-prime condition. Expressed beliefs about the malleability of personality elicited following the priming manipulations also differed across the two conditions in the direction consistent with the primed knowledge. Overall, Part II illustrates the value of using a knowledge-activation framework to understand how people's lay personality knowledge influences their social inferences.