Effects of salience and time pressure on ratings of social causality

A model is proposed to account for the effects of a target person's salience on judgments of that target. It is argued that salience leads to more extreme inferences in the direction implied by prior knowledge that is relevant to the judgment. This knowledge may include both specific information about the target being rated and general information about the class of stimuli to which the target belongs. Two experiments supported these hypotheses. When subjects were under time pressure to make judgments of a target person's influence in a social situation, their judgments increased with the salience of the target when they had prior knowledge that the target was generally high in social influence. However, their judgments decreased with the target's salience when subjects had prior knowledge that the target was generally low in social influence. When subjects were given ample time to make their judgments, however, the effects of target salience were attenuated. Possible implications of these findings for prior research on salience effects are discussed.     

The ultimate sampling dilemma in experience-based decision making

Computer simulations and 2 experiments demonstrate the ultimate sampling dilemma, which constitutes a serious obstacle to inductive inferences in a probabilistic world. Participants were asked to take the role of a manager who is to make purchasing decisions based on positive versus negative feedback about 3 providers in 2 different product domains. When information sampling (from a computerized database) was over, they had to make inferences about actual differences in the database from which the sample was drawn (e.g., about the actual superiority of different providers, or about the most likely origins of negatively valenced products). The ultimate sampling dilemma consists in a forced choice between 2 search strategies that both have their advantages and their drawbacks: natural sampling and deliberate sampling of information relevant to the inference task. Both strategies leave the sample unbiased for specific inferences but create errors or biases for other inferences.     

Consumer Inference: A Review of Processes,Bases, and Judgment Contexts

Because products are rarely described completely, consumers often form inferences that go beyond the information given. We review research on the processes, bases, and the judgment contexts in which inferences are formed. The most basic processes are induction (inferences from specific instances to general principles) versus deduction (inferences from general principles to specific instances). Stimulus‐based inferences are formed on‐line (as information is encountered) using situationally available information, whereas memory‐based (or theory‐based) inferences are formed using prior knowledge and experience. Inferences can pertain to a single product judged in isolation (a singular judgment context) or to multiple products considered in relation to one another (a comparative judgment context). This 2x2x2 (Induction vs. Deduction x Stimulus‐Based vs. Memory‐Based x Singular vs. Comparative Judgment) theoretical framework suggests that there are 8 different types of inferences that consumers may form. Based on this framework, we identify gaps in the literature and suggest directions for future research.     

Priming and communication: Social determinants of information use in judgments of life satisfaction

Two experiments examined the effects of answering a question about a specific component of life satisfaction on respondents' assessment of their overall satisfaction with life. The results suggest that the use of primed information in forming subsequent judgments is determined by Grice's conversational norms. In general, answering the specific question increases the accessibility of information relevant to that question. However, the effect that this has on the general judgment depends on the way in which the two questions are presented. When the two questions are merely placed in sequence without a conversational context, the answer to the subsequent general question is based in part on the primed specific information. As a result, the answer to the general question becomes similar to that for the specific question (i.e. assimilation). However, this does not occur when the two questions are placed in a communication context. Conversational rules dictate that communicators should be informative and should avoid redundancy in their answers. Therefore, when a specific and a general question are perceived as belonging to the same conversational context, the information on which the answer to the specific question was based is disregarded when answering the general one. This attenuates the assimilation effect. The conditions under which these different processes occur are identified and experimentally manipulated, and the implications of these findings for models of information use in judgment are discussed.     

Adjusting Social Inferences in Familiar and Unfamiliar Domains: The Generality of Response to Situational Pragmatics

Two experiments investigated the influence of situational pragmatics on the selective use of specific instances and generalized knowledge structures to make social inferences. In Experiment 1, social inferences were made in an unfamiliar domain similar in structure to a typical situation of social greetings and address, but devoid of useful cues to social schemas. Participants were told that either one or another of the features of the situation was more pragmatically important for deriving inferences about appropriate social behaviour; consistent with predictions from a computational model of analogical mapping (ACME), they made reliable inferences based on analogies to specific instances, with the situational importance of relations guiding the selection of the optimal analogue. In Experiment 2, social inferences were examined in the more familiar domain of predicting social behavior between low and high status persons and between members of an ingroup and an outgroup in Japan. The availability of specific examples was varied, as was the perceived importance of status and group membership. The situation was isomorphic to that in the first experiment, except for the availability of generalized knowledge structures to guide inferences. Participants made relatively veridical inferences that were sensitive to variations in the pragmatic importance of dimensions. Provision of specific analogues had little impact on inferences, suggesting that participants were relying instead on more general and cross-culturally applicable knowledge about adjusting social relations according to situational pragmatics.     

Some but not all dispreferred turn markers help to interpret scalar terms in polite contexts

In polite contexts, people find it difficult to perceive whether they can derive scalar inferences from what others say (e.g., does “some people hated your idea” mean that not everyone hated it?). Because this uncertainty can lead to costly misunderstandings, it is important to identify the cues people can rely on to solve their interpretative problem. In this article, we consider two such cues: Making a long Pause before the statement, and prefacing the statement with Well. Data from eight experiments show that Pauses are more effective than Wells as cues to scalar inferences in polite contexts—because they appear to give a specific signal to switch expectations in the direction of bad news, whereas Well appears to give a generic signal to make extra processing effort. We consider the applied value of these findings for human–human and human–machine interaction, as well as their implications for the study of reasoning and discourse.     

Spontaneous trait inference and construal level theory: Psychological distance increases nonconscious trait thinking

Can psychological distance affect how much perceivers form spontaneous trait inferences (STI) from others’ behaviors? On the basis of construal level theory (CLT) which posits that distant (vs. near) entities are represented more in terms of their abstract, global, and decontextualized features, we predicted that perceived distance would increase the tendency for perceivers to draw spontaneous trait inferences from behavioral information about actors. In two experiments, participants learned about people who were perceived as being distant or proximal to the self, and STI formation was subsequently assessed. We found that perceivers were more likely to form STIs about distant vs. near actors from the same behavioral information. These findings generalized across two distance dimensions: space and time. In addition, we found that priming individuals to adopt a high-level (vs. low-level) construal mindset also resulted in increased STI (Experiment 3). In sum, psychological distance facilitates STI formation, and this occurs via high-level construal of actors and their behaviors.     

On Adaptation in Analogy: Tests of Pragmatic Importance and Adaptability in Analogical Problem Solving

When people use analogies to solve problems, they form an analogical mapping between two domains of knowledge. This mapping may support inferences by analogy that suggest a novel solution to a problem. Several factors have been proposed to be important in selecting this mapping from among several alternative mappings: structural factors (systematicity and structural consistency) and pragmatic factors (the exploitation of higher-order planning categories). We suggest another set of factors plays a role in selecting mappings: adaptability. Specifically, if a mapped solution can be adapted easily to a problem, then it will be preferred over an alternative mapping that is less adaptable. Two experiments are reported which test the effects of pragmatic and adaptation factors, using a novel technique in which the story analogue has two alternative plans, either of which can be used to solve an insight problem. In Experiment 1, these plans were varied in terms of their pragmatic importance (success or failure) and their adaptability. In Experiment 2, the relative adaptability of plans was manipulated. The results suggest that there is little evidence for these specific pragmatic factors, but that adaptability plays a definite role in selecting an analogous plan. The findings suggest that most models need to be extended to include adaptation constraints.     

Early understanding of age- and environment-related noxiousness in biological kinds: Evidence for a naive theory

Four experiments evaluated whether children have a naive theory in which biological kinds, specifically foods, are distinguished by potential for decomposition. In the first two experiments, 4- through 6-year-olds judged that natural changes such as aging make biological natural kinds (BNK; e.g., apple) noxious, but do not have a comparable effect on nonbiological natural kinds (e.g., rock) or artifacts. In Experiment 3, few children were able to articulate specific biological mechanisms responsible for perceptible signs of noxiousness. But most children in Experiment 4 exhibited the more general understanding that the processes by which BNK become noxious are irreversible. In sum, young children seem to have a domain-specific theory of biological kinds, although they are unaware of the exact mechanisms operative in the domain. Children may thus develop a theory that picks out a domain of objects before the causal principles organizing this domain are fully understood.     

Analogical and category-based inference: a theoretical integration with Bayesian causal models

A fundamental issue for theories of human induction is to specify constraints on potential inferences. For inferences based on shared category membership, an analogy, and/or a relational schema, it appears that the basic goal of induction is to make accurate and goal-relevant inferences that are sensitive to uncertainty. People can use source information at various levels of abstraction (including both specific instances and more general categories), coupled with prior causal knowledge, to build a causal model for a target situation, which in turn constrains inferences about the target. We propose a computational theory in the framework of Bayesian inference and test its predictions (parameter-free for the cases we consider) in a series of experiments in which people were asked to assess the probabilities of various causal predictions and attributions about a target on the basis of source knowledge about generative and preventive causes. The theory proved successful in accounting for systematic patterns of judgments about interrelated types of causal inferences, including evidence that analogical inferences are partially dissociable from overall mapping quality.     

Affect and retrieval of personal memories

The relationship of pleasantness and intensity of affect to retrieval of reallife experiences was investigated in three experiments. Subjects reported the first specific personal experience that came to mind for a series of prompt words. Latency of report was regarded as a measure of memory accessibility. The first study compared retrieval time for prompts that sampled affects varying in pleasantness and intensity. Experiments II and III assessed the possible contributions of demand characteristics and implicit inferential processes to retrospective judgments of feelings. Judgments of the intensity of feeling engendered when the events occurred were inversely related to report latency. Results support the conclusion that intensity ratings were reliable indices of memory information rather than inferences or reconstructions mediated by report latency. Other characteristics of recollections such as pleasantness, recency, or relative frequency of the specific affects were not correlated with report latency. Two explanations of the findings are considered: an arousal hypothesis and an extent-of-processing hypothesis. The latter provides the most adequate account and relates the present findings to a more general theory of memory processes. The results are also relevant to investigations of mood-dependent retrieval.This is an expanded version of a paper presented in the Symposium on Naturally Occurring Memories, at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 1978.     

On difficult questions and evident answers: dispositional inference from role-constrained behavior

The present research investigated the underlying processes of how perceivers draw correspondent dispositional inferences about two interacting targets in the presence of situationally induced role constraints. Specifically, it is argued that a sufficient under-standing of role-dependent attributional biases (e.g., the fundamental attribution error) requires a separate consideration of the respective dispositional inference processes about each of the tar-gets involved, particularly with respect to deliberate attributional inferences. Employing the quiz-role paradigm results from four experiments generally support this assumption. Moreover, the present findings suggest that perceivers are much more sensitive to situationally induced role constraints than previous results may suggest. Implications for the fundamental attribution error and theories of dispositional inference are discussed.     

Readers’ sensitivity to linguistic cues in narratives: How salience influences anaphor resolution

Despite the general assumption that anaphoric inferences are necessary inferences, Levine, Guzmán, and Klin (2000) concluded that the probability of resolving noun phrase anaphors depends both on the degree of accessibility in memory of the antecedent concepts and the extent to which resolution is necessary to create a coherent discourse representation. Four experiments are presented in which the factors that influence readers' standard of coherence are investigated. We examine the hypothesis that readers are more likely to resolve anaphors that are perceived as salient; salience was manipulated both with a syntactic focusing structure (wh- clefts) and with the addition of prenominal adjectival modifiers. The results of a probe recognition time task provide support for the hypothesis that a variety of linguistic cues serve as mental processing instructions (Givón, 1992), which instruct readers as to how much attention to devote to processing.     

What plausibly affects plausibility? Concept coherence and distributional word coherence as factors influencing plausibility judgments

Our goal was to investigate the basis of human plausibility judgements. Previous research had suggested that plausibility is affected by two factors: concept coherence (the inferences made between parts of a discourse) and word coherence (the distributional properties of the words used). In two experiments, participants were asked to rate the plausibility of sentence pairs describing events. In the first, we manipulated concept coherence by using different inference types to link the sentences in a pair (e.g., causal or temporal). In the second, we manipulated word coherence by using latent semantic analysis, so two sentence pairs describing the same event had different distributional properties. The results showed that inference type affects plausibility; sentence pairs linked by causal inferences were rated highest, followed by attributal, temporal, and unrelated inferences. The distributional manipulations had no reliable effect on plausibility ratings. We conclude that the processes involved in rating plausibility are based on evaluating concept coherence, not word coherence.     

Are conjunctive inferences easier than disjunctive inferences? A comparison of rules and models

We report four experiments investigating conjunctive inferences (from a conjunction and two conditional premises) and disjunctive inferences (from a disjunction and the same two conditionals). The mental model theory predicts that the conjunctive inferences, which require one model, should be easier than the disjunctive inferences, which require multiple models. Formal rule theories predict either the opposite result or no difference between the inferences. The experiments showed that the inferences were equally easy when the participants evaluated given conclusions, but that the conjunctive inferences were easier than the disjunctive inferences (1) when the participants drew their own conclusions, (2) when the conjunction and disjunction came last in the premises, (3) in the time the participants spent reading the premises and in responding to given conclusions, and (4) in their ratings of the difficulty of the inferences. The results support the model theory and demonstrate the importance of reasoners' inferential strategies.     

Ignorance or integration: the cognitive processes underlying choice behavior

The fast‐and‐frugal heuristic framework assumes noncompensatory tools for human preferences (i.e., priority heuristic) and inferences (i.e., take the best heuristic). According to this framework, these heuristics predict choice behavior as well as model the cognitive processes underlying such behavior. The current paper presents two studies that juxtapose predictions derived from these two simple heuristics with alternative predictions derived from compensatory principles. Dependent measures that included reaction time, choice pattern, confidence level, and accuracy were better predicted by compensatory indices than by noncompensatory indices. These findings suggest that people do not rely on limited arguments only, but tend to integrate all acquired information into their choice processes. This tendency was replicated even when the experimental task facilitated the use of noncompensatory principles. We argue that the fast and frugal heuristics can predict the final outcome only under certain conditions, but even in these particular situations they are not applicable to the processes underlying choice behavior. An integrative model for choice behavior is proposed that better represents the data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resistance is futile: The unwitting insertion of analogical inferences in memory

Analogical inferences can modify people’s understanding, but can this occur even when the inferences are unpalatable? We report two experiments suggesting that this is the case. Participants read a source passage on the role and status of gay people in society. Half then read an analogy describing the historical persecution of left-handers. On a subsequent recognition test, the participants who read the analogy were more likely than the control participants to misrecognize analogical inferences as statements explicitly presented, but the two groups did not differ in recognition rates for other kinds of statements. A priori explicit attitudes toward gays did not moderate these findings, although the participants with more positive attitudes toward gays saw the analogy to left-handers as more sound. Our findings demonstrate that analogical inferences can be seamlessly integrated into mental representations of the target domain even when those inferences are unpalatable; in short, resistance to analogy is futile.     

Inducing Knowledgeability From Niceness: Children Use Social Features for Making Epistemic Inferences

In many ways, evaluating informants based on their features is a problem of induction: Children rely on the assumption that observable informant characteristics (e.g., traits, behaviors, social categories) will predict unobservable characteristics (e.g., future behavior, knowledge states, intentions). Yet to make sensible inferences, children must recognize what informant features are relevant for what types of inferences. The current research investigated whether preschoolers use social features (e.g., niceness) for making epistemic inferences and, conversely, whether they use intellectual features (e.g., expertise) for making social inferences. In the study, 96 preschoolers (M_age = 4.96 years) were asked to attribute knowledge and behaviors to a mean informant, a nice informant, and a neutral informant. Between subjects, we varied which informant had expertise. We found that when attributing knowledge, children used both features: attributing more knowledge to nicer informants, but also attributing more knowledge to an informant when he had expertise. In contrast, when making social inferences, children relied primarily on social features.     

The structure of self-reported aggression, drug use, and delinquent behaviors during early adolescence

Examined the structure of self-report scales designed to assess the frequency of adolescent problem behaviors. Urban (n = 988) and rural (n = 1,895) middle school students completed the Problem Behavior Frequency Scale (Farrell, Danish, & Howard, 1992a) and measures of other relevant constructs. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a model that included specific factors related to aggression, drug use, and delinquent behaviors, and a higher order problem behavior factor. Findings did not support a distinction between physical and nonphysical aggression. Results were generally consistent across settings (i.e., urban vs. rural) and gender. Other relevant constructs, including peer pressure for drug use and attitudes favoring aggression, had both specific associations with relevant first-order factors and more general associations with the second-order factor. These findings support the construction of separate scales assessing specific domains of problem behaviors in studies of adolescents' problem behaviors.     

The Role of Inference in Attribute Framing Effects

Previous research has shown that a speaker's choice between logically equivalent frames is influenced by reference point information, and that listeners draw accurate inferences based on the frame. Less clear, however, is whether these inferences play a causal role in generating attribute framing effects. Two experiments are reported, which suggest that frame‐dependent inferences are sufficient to generate attribute framing effects, and that blocking such inferences may block framing effects. Experiment 1 decomposed the typical framing design into two parts: One group of participants saw a target described in one of two attribute frames and reported their estimates (inferences) of the typical attribute value. These estimates were then given to a second group of yoked participants, who evaluated the target. Although this latter group was not exposed to different attribute frames, they nevertheless exhibited a “framing effect” as a result of receiving systematically different inferences. In contrast, Experiment 2 shows that experts—who are familiar with an attribute's distribution and are therefore less likely to draw strong frame‐based inferences—exhibit a diminished framing effect. Together, these findings underscore the role of inferences in the generation and attenuation of attribute framing effects. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.