Person memory and judgment: pragmatic influences on impressions formed in a social context.
Ss who receive information about a person's traits and behaviors in a social context are likely to focus their attention on the pragmatic implications of this information (i.e., why the information was conveyed). To examine this hypothesis, Ss listened to a taped conversation in which a male target (T) and another speaker (O) exchanged anecdotal accounts of T's behavior. Ss typically used O's trait description of T to form an evaluative concept of O rather than of T, whereas T's trait description of himself had no effect on evaluations of him. Ss had better recall of statements O made when they were unfavorable and, therefore, violated a conversational norm to be polite. However, behaviors that T himself mentioned were often recalled better when they were favorable, and therefore, in violation of a normative expectation to appear modest. The inconsistency of T's behaviors with initial trait descriptions of him had little effect on the recall of these behaviors.
Wyer
R S
RS
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 61820.
Budesheim
T L
TL
Lambert
A J
AJ
Swan
S
S
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010552:Personality Assessment; D012919:Social Behavior; D012928:Social Desirability; D012931:Social Environment; D012938:Social Perception; D012945:Social Values; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior