According to the Implicit Rules Model (Meyer, 1990), individuals acquire implicit rules that connect request situation schemas to behaviors. Two experiments asked whether people acquire knowledge of this form. In each experiment, participants learned, based on feedback, which behavior was “correct” for multiple instances of several situation schemas. Subsequent transfer tests showed that they could choose the correct behavior for new instances of each schema. A recognition test was employed to determine whether participants confused their memories for the transfer situations with schemas abstracted during the learning phase. In Experiment 1, a schema confusion effect was observed for situations containing requests similar to those in learning instances, but not for situations with different requests. In Experiment 2, recognition accuracy scores revealed strong schema confusion effects for situations with repeated and different requests and a weak effect for situations with similar requests. The results provide support for the assumptions of the Implicit Rules Model.
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