PERSONALITY TRAIT INFERENCES ABOUT WHAT THE PERSON IS LIKE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In unit 2, we discussed understanding some important factors in person perception and impression formation. Also, the unit served to introduce us to other units in this course. You can now describe person perception. You can also identify important factors in person perception and explain the most important aspects of impressions. We are now ready to discuss another interesting unit: personality traits inferences about what the person is like. We will now consider traits. Let us take a look at what other content you should learn in this unit as specified in the objectives below.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. identify behaviour traits; and 
2. explain categorization 

3.0 MAIN CONTENT

3.1 From Behaviour to Traits

We will move from observable information, such as appearance, behaviour, even gestures, to personality trait inferences about what the person is like. Note that referring to traits is a more economical and general way of describing a person than is referring to behaviour. If someone asked you what your roommate (in the secondary school) was like and you had to recount each behaviour you could remember, it would take you a long time and the person to whom you were describing your roommate to might not become much better informed in the process. Instead, you would use traits to summarize aspect of your roommate.
He was a good-natured, sloppy night person with a penchant for loud rock music’.

This process appears to occur spontaneously, even automatically, as behaviour is perceived. These traits, in turn, can act as indicators for predicting future behaviour (Newman 1996). The fact that we move from behaviours to traits so quickly is compounded by the fact that traits imply each other. On observing a person patting a dog in a friendly manner, we may infer that she is kind, and from our inference of kindness, we may infer that she is friendly, warm, and helpful to her friends. From a very simple incident of behaviour, then we can infer almost a whole personality. The implications that traits have for other traits is called ‘implicit personality theory’.


People use traits to describe others form the moment they first observe them, although the more they know someone, the more likely they are to use traits to describe the person (park, 1986 cited in Taylor 2000). Nonetheless, there are individual differences in the degree to which people make trait inferences. People who demonstrate a high need for structure, that is a need to have organized and distinct patterns of information, are more likely to make continuous inferences than individuals who do not demonstrate this quality.

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
a. Which traits will you use to describe the principal of your secondary school?
b. Which traits will you use to describe the English language teacher in your SSS III class?

Competence and Sociability

The traits inferences that we make about other people fall out along two important dimensions:
1. We tend to evaluate others in terms of their task-related qualities or intellectual competence.
2. We tend to evaluate others in terms of their interpersonal or social qualities.

It is important for you to note that within these general dimensions, we also make more detailed impressions or judgments about a person, such as how he treats his parents versus his friends or how good he is at physics versus music.

Central Traits

According to Asch (1986), debate has raged over whether some traits are more central than others. Let us cite examples to make our discussion clearer and more understandable. The pair of traits, warm-cold, appears to be associated with a great number of other characteristics, whereas the pair, polite-blunt is associated with fewer. Traits that are highly associated with many other characteristics have been called central traits.


In a unique demonstration of their importance of traits, Kelley (1950) gave students in psychology course personality trait descriptions of a guest lecturer before he spoke. Half the students received a description containing the word ‘warm’, and the other half were told the speaker was ‘cold’; in all other respects, the lists were identical. The lecturer then came into the class and led a discussion for about 20 minutes, after which the students were asked to give their impressions of him.

It is to be noted that there were great differences between the impressions formed by students who were told the lecturer was warm and those who were told he was cold. In addition, those students who expected the speaker to be warm tended to interact with him more freely and to initiate more conversations with him. Remember that different descriptions affected not only the students’ impressions of the lecturer, but also their behaviour towards him.

The Perseverance of Traits

Once we have made personality trait inferences about the meaning of another person’s behaviour, those inferences take on a life of their own. Let us cite an example. You may recall your impression of your friend as kind and helpful long after you have forgotten the specific instance when she helped the elderly person across the street. Asked if your friend is kind and helpful, you are more likely to refer to your more prior trait judgment than to a specific event. Trait inferences, then, ale made quickly, great virtually spontaneously, on the basis of minimal information about a person and then persists long after the information on which they were originally based has been forgotten. 

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2

1.  Will you describe your best friend as ‘cold’? 
2. Will you describe your best friend as ‘warm’? 
3.  Will you describe your best friend as ‘cold’ and ‘warm’? 

3.2 Categorisation

Social’ categories, such as gender, tribe, religion, and social class influence our perceptions as well. Perceivers do not respond to salient stimuli in isolation; they immediately and spontaneously perceive stimuli as part of some group or category. Let us give an example. We do not see that unshaven, dirty, disorganized man in the pork with worn-out shoes and a couple of old shopping bags as just another human being; we immediately categorize him as a derelict. When we go to a basketball game, we usually categorize people immediately as members of one or another of five social groups: members of one team or the other, referees, cheerleaders, team supporters and spectators.

The categorization or grouping process is immediate and spontaneous and does not take any time or thought. At the crudest level we categorize on the basis of natural similarities appearance. We tend to assign people to the category of ‘men’ or ‘women’ on the basis of their physical characteristics, usually culturally defined differences in appearance (hair length, make-up, type of clothing.)

At this stage, we need to ask a relevant question. What are the consequences of categorization? Determining that an individual is a member of a particular category may lead to social judgments about that person that are consistent with the category-based stereotype. The observation that someone is a Yoruba may call up a stereotype about Yorubas in general. In addition, categorizing a person also speeds information processing time: For example, Brewer et. al. (1981 cited in Taylor, 2000) presented participants with photos of people in three categories -’grandmother’, ‘young woman’, and ’senior citizen’-along with verbal labels clearly identifying their category. Then they presented the participants with additional information about each target person and measured how long the participants took to incorporate the information into their impressions.

It is to be noted that if we place a person into category, often our impression of the person is based on that category, and the person's individual characteristics are assimilated to the overall impressions we have of that category.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this unit, you learnt behaviours, you have therefore moved from behaviours to traits. In addition, you have learnt categorization and how social categories influence our perception.

5.0 SUMMARY

1.  What you have learnt in this unit concerns how we move from behaviour to traits. 
2.  You also learnt that social categories, such as gender, tribe, religion and social class, influence our perceptions. 
3. You have therefore learnt that perceivers immediately and spontaneously perceive stimuli as part of some group or category. 

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. . On what basis are traits inferences made? 
2.  If you go to a football game, state six (6) categories of people you will see and 
3. c. State how people use traits