This paper investigated the hypotheses that (a) inferences from behaviors to traits would occur more frequently than vice versa, (b) this induction-deduction asymmetry would be facilitated by stereotype congruence but inhibited by incongruence, and (c) the tendency to draw trait inferences from stereotype-congruent but not from stereotype-incongruent behaviors would become more pronounced with increasing levels of Need for Cognitive Closure. Participants read information about a female or male job applicant that was in part relevant to gender, in part gender-neutral. The gender-relevant information was either stereotype-congruent or incongruent. Half of the information was presented as trait-adjectives, half as behavior-descriptive verbs. A recognition task was constructed so that some of the items (traits and behaviors) had actually been seen, some were entirely new, and some were new but had been implied by the information given. All three hypotheses were supported. Implications for intra-individual and interpersonal stereotype maintenance are discussed.
Beike, D. R. , & Sherman, S. J. (1994). Social inference: Inductions, deductions, and analogies. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 209-285). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum .
2.
Boudreau, L. A. , Baron, R. , & Oliver, P. V. (1992). Effects of expected communication target expertise and timing of set on trait use in person description . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 447-452 .
3.
Bourhis, R. Y. , & Maass, A. (in press). Linguistic prejudice and stereotypes. In U. Ammon , N. Dittmar , K. J. Mattheier , & P. Trudgill, P. (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society (2nd ed). New York: De Gruyter .
4.
Brehm, S. S. , & Kassin, S. M. (1996). Social psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin .
5.
Carlston, D. E. , & Skowronski, J. J. (1986). Trait memory and behavior memory: The effects of alternative pathways on impression judgment response times . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 5-13 .
6.
Carlston, D. E. , Skowronski, J. J. , & Sparks, C. (1995). Savings in relearning: II. On the formation of the behavior-based trait associations and inferences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 420-436 .
7.
De Leo, D. , & Villa, A. (1986). Il problema del rilevamento delle tipologie sessuali e il Bem Gender Role Inventory. [The problem of measuring gender typologies and Bem’s gender role inventory]. Firenze: Organizzazioni Speciali .
8.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18 .
9.
Douglas, K. M. , & Sutton, R. M. (2003). Effects of communication goals and expectancies on language abstraction . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 682-696 .
10.
Fiedler, K. , Semin, G. , & Bolten, S. (1989). Language use and reification of social information: Top-down and bottom-up processing in person cognition . European Journal of Social Psychology, 19, 271-295 .
11.
Hamilton, D. L. , & Rose, T. L. (1980). Illusory correlation and the maintenance of stereotypic beliefs . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 832-845 .
12.
Hastie, R. , & Kumar, P. A. (1979). Person memory: Personality traits as organizing principles in memory for behavior . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 25-38 .
13.
Katz, D. , & Braly, K. W. (1933). Racial stereotypes of 100 college students . Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, 280-290 .
14.
Kawakami, K. , Dovidio, J. F. , Moll, J. , Hermsen, S. , & Russin, A. (2000). Just say no (to stereotyping): Effects of training in the negation of stereotypic associations on stereotype activation . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 871-888 .
15.
Maass, A. (1999). Linguistic intergroup bias: Stereotype-perpetuation through language. In M. Zanna (Ed.) , Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 79-121 .
16.
Maass, A. , Cadinu, M. , Taroni, M. , & Masserini, M. (2004). The Induction-Deduction-Asymmetry: Fact or artifact? Unpublished manuscript, Università di Padova .
17.
Maass, A. , Colombo, A. , Colombo, A. , & Sherman, S. J. (2001). Inferring traits from behaviors vs. behaviors from traits: The Induction-Deduction Asymmetry . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 391-404 .
18.
Maass, A. , Montalcini, F. , & Biciotti (1998). On the (dis-) confirmability of stereotypic attributes . European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 383-402 .
19.
Macrae, C. N. , Bodenhausen, G. V. , Milne, A. B. , & Castelli, L. (1999). On disregarding deviants: Exemplar typicality and person perception . Current-Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 18, 47-70 .
20.
Macrae, C. N. , Stangor, C. , & Milne, A. B. (1994). Activating social stereotypes: A functional analysis . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 370-389 .
21.
Mikulincer, M. , Yinon, A. , & Kabili, D. (1991). Epistemic needs and learned helplessness . European Journal of Personality, 5, 249-258 .
22.
Perdue, C. W. , Dovidio, J. F. , Gurtman, M. B. , & Tyler, R. B. (1990). Us and them: Social categorization and the process of intergroup bias . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 475-486 .
23.
Pierro, A. , Mannetti, L. , Converso, D. , Garsia, V. , Miglietta, A. , Ravenna, M.et al. (1995). Caratteristiche strutturali della versione italiana della scala di bisogno di chiusura cognitiva di Webster e Kruglanski. [Structural characteristics of the Italian version of Webster and Kruglanksi’s Need for Cognition Scale] . Testing, Psicometria, Metodologia, 2, 125-141 .
24.
Posner, M. I. , & Keele, S. W. (1968). On the genesis of abstract ideas . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 353-363 .
25.
Posner, M. I. , & Keele, S. W. (1970). Retention of abstract ideas . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83, 304-308 .
26.
Roedinger, H. L. , & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21, 803-814 .
27.
Semin, G. R. , & Fiedler, K. (1988). The cognitive functions of linguistic categories in describing persons: Social cognition and language . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 19, 491-508 .
28.
Semin, G. R. , & Smith, E. R. (1999). Revisiting the past and back to the future: Memory systems and the linguistic representation of social events . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 877-892 .
29.
Strange, W. , Keeney, T. , Kessel, F. S. , & Jenkins, J. J. (1970). Abstraction over time of prototypes from distortions of random dot patterns: A replication . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83, 508-510 .
30.
Uleman, J. S. (1987). Consciousness and control: The case of spontaneous inferences . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13, 337-354 .
31.
Uleman, J. S. , Hon, A. , Roman, R. J. , & Moskowitz, G. B. (1996). On-line evidence for spontaneous trait inferences at encoding . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 377-394 .
32.
Uleman, J. S. , & Moskowitz, G. B. (1994). Unintended effects of goals on unintended inferences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 490-501 .
33.
Uleman, J. S. , Newman, L. , & Winter, L. (1986). Can personality traits be inferred automatically? Spontaneous inferences require cognitive capacity at encoding . Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 77-90 .
34.
Uleman, J. S. , Winborne, W. C. , Winter, L. , & Shechter, D. (1986). Personality differences in spontaneous personality inferences at encoding . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 396-403 .
35.
Van Overwalle, F. , Drenth, T. , & Marsman, G. (1999). Spontaneous trait inferences: Are they linked to the actor or to the action?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 450-462 .
36.
Webster, D. M. , & Kruglanksi, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in the need for cognitive closure . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1049-1062 .
37.
Webster, D. M. , Kruglanksi, A. W. , & Pattison, D. A. (1997) Motivated language use in intergroup contexts: Need-for-closure effects on the linguistic intergroup bias . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1122-1131 .
38.
Wigboldus, D. H. J. , Dijksterhuis, A. , & van Knippenberg, A. (2003). When stereotypes get in the way: Stereotypes obstruct stereotype-inconsistent trait inferences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 470-484 .
39.
Wigboldus, D. H. J. , Semin, G. R. , & Spears, R. (2000). How do we communicate stereotypes? Linguistic bases and inferential consequences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 5-18 .
40.
Wigboldus, D. H. J. , Spears, R. , & Semin, G. R. (1999). Categorization, content and the context of communicative behaviour. In N. Ellemers & R. Spears (Eds.), Social identity: Context, commitment, content (pp. 147-163). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science .
41.
Winter, L. , & Uleman, J. S. (1984). When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 237-252 .
42.
Winter, L. , Uleman, J. S. , & Cunniff, C. (1985). How automatic are social judgments?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 904-917 .
43.
Wyer, R. S. , & Lambert, A. J. (1994). The role of trait constructs in person perception: A historical perspective. In P. G. Devine , D. L. Hamilton , & T. M. Ostrom (Eds.), Social cognition: Impact on social psychology (pp. 109-142). San Diego, CA: Academic Press .
