Personality and Judgment Heuristics: Contextual and Individual Difference Interactions in Social Judgment

Abstract

Research on judgment heuristics has shown the importance of context in influencing the information used (and that ignored) in making judgments. The authors tested the hypothesis that personality differences also affect susceptibility to heuristic reasoning processes. Participants scoring high and low on the Sociable scale of the Personality Adjective Checklist were given problems like those used by Kahneman and Tversky to study the representativeness heuristic under experimental conditions that differed in the extent to which contextual cues intended to activate theoretically relevant motives and concerns about approval and rejection were present. Significant differences between sociability groups were found only in a sociability-relevant condition in which the judgment problem dealt with a theme of rejection and abandonment. Results are discussed in terms of the priming of relevant schemas by contextual cues and resulting effects on attentional deployment and judgmental processes.

References

Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Bargh, J. A. , & Pratto, F. (1986). Individual construct accessibility and perceptual selection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22 293-311.

Beck, A. T. , Freeman, A., & Associates (1990). Cognitive therapy of personality disorders. New York: Guilford.

Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (Rev. ed.). New York: Academic Press.

Easterbrook, J. A. (1959). The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior. Psychological Review, 66, 183-201.

Erdelyi, M. (1992). Psychodynamics and the unconscious. American Psychologist, 47, 784-787.

Fiske S. T. , & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Kahneman, D. , & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430-454.

10.

Kahneman, D. , & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80, 237-251.

11.

Kahneman, D. , & Tversky, A. (1982). On the study of statistical intuitions. Cognition, 11, 123-141.

12.

Kelly, G. A. (1955). 7he psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton.

13.

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.

14.

Magaro, P. A. , Smith, P. , & Ashbrook, R. (1983). Personality style differences in visual search performance. Psychiatric Research, 10, 131-138.

15.

McClelland, D. C. , Atkinson, J. W. , Clark, R. , & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

16.

McMullen, L. , & Rogers, D. (1984). WAIS characteristics of non-pathological obsessive and hysteric styles. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 40, 577-579.

17.

Millon, T. (1981). Disorders of personality: DSM-IH, Axis H. New York: John Wiley.

18.

Millon, T. (1990). Toward a new personology: An evolutionary model. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

19.

Murphy, G. (1947). Personality: A biosocial approach to origins and structure. New York: Harper.

20.

Nisbett, R. E. , & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

21.

Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science (pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw-Hill.

22.

Rosenthal, R. , & Rosnow, R. L. (1985). Contrast analysis. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press.

23.

Shapiro, D. (1965). Neurotic styles. New York: Basic Books.

24.

Silverman, L. , & Silverman, D. (1964). A clinical-experimental approach to the study of subliminal stimulation: The effects of a drive-related stimulus upon Rorschach responses. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69, 158-172.

25.

Strack, S. (1987). Development and validation of an adjective checklist to assess the Millon personality types in a normal population. Journal of Personality Assessment 51, 572-587.

26.

Strack, S. (1990). Manual for the Personality Adjective Checklist (PACL). Richland, WA: Pacific Psychological.

27.

Underwood, B. J. (1975). Individual differences as a crucible in theory construction. American Psychologist, 30, 128-134.

28.

Young, J. E. (1994). Cognitive therapy for personality disorders: A schema-focused approach. Sarasota, FL Professional Resource Press.