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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38, 87–92 (2002)
doi:10.1006/jesp.2001.1486, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
Spontaneous Trait Associations and the
Case of the Superstitious Banana
Rick D. Brown and John N. Bassili
University of Toronto at Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
Received October 9, 2000; revised March 28, 2001; accepted March 28, 2001; published online July 18, 2001
We explored whether spontaneous trait transference (STT) occurs in cases where inanimate objects, rather than human bystanders,
are presented in the context of trait-implicative behavior. The results provide a vivid demonstration of the associability of primed trait
constructs by demonstrating STT to inanimate objects to which one does not normally attribute traits (e.g., superstitious being
associated with a banana). This finding is consistent with the notion that the trait associations involved in STT are formed independent
of person perception processes. The implications of this finding for the types of associative processes exposed by the popular savings
in relearning methodology are discussed. © 2001 Elsevier Science
Key Words: person perception; attribution; savings in relearning; spontaneous trait inference (STI); spontaneous trait transference (STT).
Spontaneous trait inferences (STI) are inferences that are
made without intention or conscious awareness on exposure
to trait-implying information about behavior. Decades ago,
psychologists interested in processes of impression formation (e.g., Asch, 1946; Tagiuri, 1958) assumed that these
processes occur spontaneously as an integral part of everyday social functioning. A similar assumption was made in
attribution theory (e.g., Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967),
causing most early person perception researchers to believe
that STI involve the same cognitive processes that underlie
explicit trait inferences.
With the advent of cognitive methodologies in socialpsychological inquiry, researchers looked for ways of indexing the occurrence of inferences about others. For example, Winter and Uleman (1984) used a cued-recall
methodology to determine whether people infer traits about
others spontaneously when learning trait-implying information about them. Their results were consistent with the
notion that trait inferences are made spontaneously. However, subsequent research raised questions about whether
inferred trait constructs were associated with actors or were
simple reflections of the activation of trait categories that
labeled behavioral acts (Bassili, 1989, 1993; Higgins &
Bargh, 1987; Whitney, Davis, & Waring, 1994).
New evidence linking trait inferences to actors was presented by Carlston and Skowronski (1994), who reasoned
that trait inferences should be conceptualized as tacit, rather
than strictly explicit, knowledge about actors. To get to this
tacit knowledge, Carlston and Skowronski used an implicit
memory methodology based on the traditional Ebbinghaus
(1885/1964) relearning paradigm. The procedure begins
with participants being presented a series of photographs of
actors accompanied by self-descriptive statements about
behavior highly suggestive of specific traits. This phase
represents an incidental learning task in which associations
between actors and traits can form. After a delay, participants are given a paired-associate learning task in which
they are instructed to learn a series of photo–trait pairs.
Some of the pairs on this learning task correspond to the
same actor–trait pairs implied in the incidental learning task.
To the extent that actor–trait associations were formed in
the incidental learning task, this subsequent task presents an
opportunity to “relearn” the associations. Hence, these actor–trait pairs represent relearning trials. On other control
trials, photos that had been presented during the exposure
task without trait-implying information are paired with a
trait for what is effectively the first time. Subsequently, a
cued-recall test is given in which photos are presented and
participants attempt to recall the trait previously presented
with each photo.
This research was supported by Social Science and Humanities Research
Council of Canada Grant 410-97-1507 to the second author.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Rick D. Brown, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3,
Canada. E-mail: [email protected].
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0022-1031/01 $35.00
© 2001 Elsevier Science
All rights reserved.
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Following the logic of the savings in relearning paradigm, if participants associate a specific trait with an actor
spontaneously during the initial presentation phase, then
this actor–trait association will facilitate “relearning” and
contribute to better cued recall on relearning trials than on
control trials. This methodology seems appropriate for
studying STI because the savings effects reveal implicit
memory processes that might not be picked up by traditional
explicit tests of recall or recognition (MacLeod, 1988; Nelson, 1985).
Carlston and Skowronski (1994) conducted a series of
experiments using the savings in relearning paradigm to test
whether people spontaneously make trait inferences from
behavior descriptions. Significant savings were found in
each of their experiments, demonstrating that participants
tended to learn actor traits from exposure to the actor and
trait-implying statement. Also provocative was the finding
that processing goals in the initial exposure task did not
significantly alter the savings effects, suggesting that these
associations may be the result of automatic processes. Carlston and Skowronski attributed their success in revealing
actor–trait associations where others had failed to the
heightened sensitivity of their paradigm to tacit forms of
knowledge.
To further test the nature of the actor–trait associations
identified by the savings in relearning paradigm, Carlston,
Skowronski, and Sparks (1995) investigated savings effects
in situations where no dispositional inferences should occur.
Specifically, participants were presented with the photo of
an informant who was depicted as issuing a trait-implying
statement describing the behavior of an unseen actor. The
results revealed a significant savings effect (labeled STT for
“spontaneous trait transference”) suggesting that at least a
component of the previously observed actor–trait savings
effects might not be indicative of inferences about actors.
Furthermore, STT, like STI, appeared to be automatic because the induced associations were not affected by processing instructions.
In subsequent research, Skowronski, Carlston, Mae, and
Crawford (1998) provided evidence that STI is stronger
than STT. In an experiment in which the learning and recall
tasks were replaced by a trait rating task, participants were
instructed to familiarize themselves with the stimulus materials and were presented with photos of target persons
issuing either descriptions of their own behavior or descriptions of the behavior of an acquaintance. After a 2-day
delay, a trait rating task revealed stronger STI than STT.
Furthermore, in a similar subsequent experiment in which
participants were told that the pairing of photos with traitimplying statements was random, STI and STT emerged
and were of about equal strength.
It appears, therefore, that under conditions where participants are instructed that actors actually performed the described behaviors and where dispositional inferences are
sensible, actor–trait associations are stronger than incidental
actor–trait associations. Skowronski et al. (1998) interpreted
these results as providing evidence that the stronger actor–
trait associations stem from explicit inferential processes,
whereas the weaker informant–trait associations stem from
incidental associative processes.
THE PRESENT STUDY
The current research extends the exploration of STT to
situations where the stimulus presented with the actor and
the trait-implying information consists of a common inanimate object to which one does not normally attribute
traits. To the extent that it is illogical and nonsensical to
infer traits about inanimate objects (as in the case of a
superstitious banana), the current approach allows us to
test two issues about STT. The first issue consists of an
alternative explanation for STT that stipulates that participants make trait inferences about communicators because they assume communicators to have personalities
that are similar to those of the actors they describe. For
example, perceivers might assume that because the communicator has knowledge of the actor’s behaviors, the
communicator and actor are familiar with each other.
Given the tendency for people to form relationships
based on shared personality characteristics and values, it
is reasonable for perceivers to assume that a communicator who describes an actor as honest is also likely to be
honest. Alternatively, perceivers might assume that a
communicator has chosen to describe a particular characteristic of an actor because that is a trait dimension that
the communicator considers to be important. Specifically,
if a communicator has chosen to describe some behavior
regarding an actor’s honesty, then it may be inferred that
the communicator regards honesty as especially important. Following this logic, it would not be unreasonable
for perceivers to infer that any person with such a value
system is also likely to be honest. The demonstration of
object–trait associations involving inanimate objects
would provide evidence against this explanation because
it is highly unlikely for participants to assume that inanimate objects have personalities at all, let alone personalities that are similar to those of the individuals that are
presented along with them.
The second issue tested here is whether stimulus–trait
associations of the sort that have been demonstrated in the
realm of person perception can also be obtained with inanimate objects, a finding that would support the hypothesis
that these associations can arise in the absence of inferential
processes about the stimulus. This hypothesis is central to
the model of STT advanced by Skowronski et al. (1998), but
it has not been tested directly.
SPONTANEOUS TRAIT ASSOCIATIONS
METHOD
Participants and Design
A total of 97 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course at the Scarborough campus of
the University of Toronto participated in this study. The
experimental design consisted of a 2 (Trial Type: relearning
or control) ⫻ 3 (Cue Type: actor, bystander, or object)
within-subjects repeated-measures analysis of variance
(ANOVA).
Procedure
The procedures were similar to those of the savings in
relearning paradigm used by Carlston and Skowronski
(1994). Participants were seated at individual stations in
front of a video monitor with stimulus presentation and
instructions being controlled by a computer. Participants
were first exposed to a series of stimulus presentations
involving an actor making a self-descriptive statement in the
presence of either a second individual (a “bystander”) or a
common inanimate object. This exposure task provided
participants with an opportunity for STI and STT. That is,
the traits implied by the behavior descriptions could be
associated with the actor and could be transferred to the
bystander or the inanimate object. The exposure task was
followed by a learning task in which participants were
instructed to learn person–trait or object–trait pairs. Some of
the pairs in this learning task corresponded to individuals or
objects from the exposure task along with the traits implied
by the behavior description that accompanied their photos in
the exposure task. On control trials, individuals or objects
that had been presented during the exposure task without
trait-implying information were paired with traits for what
was effectively the first time. A cued-recall task followed in
which participants were presented with a photo and were
asked to recall the trait with which it had been paired in the
learning task.
Following the logic of the savings in relearning paradigm, if associations are formed between the individual and
the trait, or between the object and the trait, during the
initial exposure task, then participants should demonstrate
better trait recall on relearning trials than on control trials.
Instructions. Participants were told that they were participating in a study investigating “general factors affecting
the processing of social information.” They were informed
that to simulate real-life situations in which one comes
across information about individuals in a context that often
involves other people and objects, they would be shown
individuals making statements about themselves in scenes
that involve other individuals or objects.
The experimenter then showed participants a small poster
depicting a typical exposure task trial and demonstrated, by
pointing to relevant elements of the poster, how each trial
would involve the presentation of either two individuals or
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one individual and an inanimate object. Participants were
instructed to familiarize themselves with all the stimulus
materials during the exposure task because these materials
would be relevant to subsequent phases of the experiment.
The exposure task instructions were similar to those used by
Carlston and Skowronski (1994) in the “no-set” condition.
The cover story and instructions aimed at providing a realistic explanation for the nature of the experimental trials
without explicitly guiding participants’ attention to particular elements of each scene.
Exposure task. The exposure task consisted of a series
of trials involving the simultaneous presentation of either
two faces or one face and an inanimate object, accompanied
by a behavior description. In each case, the actor was
portrayed as making a self-descriptive statement. In the
trials involving two faces, one face was that of the actor and
the other was that of a bystander (always of the same
gender) who purportedly listened to what the actor said. In
trials involving the presentation of a face and an object, the
object was in the same position as the face of the bystander.
The stimulus objects for this experiment were common
inanimate objects with which personality traits are not normally associated. The objects included a baseball cap, an
electrical fan, a can of Snapple, a flashlight, a banana, a
coffee cup, a book, and a calculator. Although there is
always a potential for anthropomorphic attributions in perception, such attributions do not usually occur in the absence of cues, such as goal-oriented behavior or expressions
of emotions, that suggest human characteristics (Bassili,
1976; Heider & Simmel, 1944).
The actors’ self-descriptive statements were selected
from those used by Carlston et al. (1995). For example, the
following statement was used to imply the trait of honesty:
“I’m a new volunteer firefighter. Yesterday, after we had put
out a fire in an apartment building, I found a large diamond
ring. I walked around and visited all the tenants to try and
find the owner. I found her, and she told me she was grateful
that it had been found because it meant a lot to her.”
Statements appeared in cartoon-style captions positioned
above the actors’ faces and pointed to them. This depiction,
along with the use of first-person pronouns, made it very
clear that the behavior being described was that of the
actors.
Participants were presented with a random sequence of
eight pairings of two faces and eight pairings of a face and
an inanimate object. A behavioral statement accompanied
each stimulus pair. In eight trials, the actors’ self-descriptions implied a trait. In the remaining trials, the self-descriptions served as controls and were of activities that did not
imply a trait.
Confusion task. To interfere with participants’ ability to
recall what stimulus statement appeared with a particular
photograph in the exposure task, 60 behavioral statements
were presented to participants. These were framed as self-
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BROWN AND BASSILI
statements that were similar to those used in the exposure
task. Among these statements were 16 that suggested the
same traits involved in the eight critical trials of the exposure task. The confusion items were presented in pairs.
Participants were given 30 s to read each pair of statements
and had to decide which person was more likeable. No
pictures accompanied the behavioral statements in the confusion task trials.
Learning task. Next, participants were presented with a
paired-associate learning task involving 24 person–trait
pairs and 8 object–trait pairs. They were instructed to remember the trait term paired with each face and were paced
through the trials at the rate of 1 pair every 6 s. On 16 trials,
participants were presented with stimulus–trait pairs that
involved individuals or objects presented in the critical trials
of the exposure task with behavioral information that had
implied those traits. These represented relearning trials because the trait construct could already have been associated
with the individuals or objects through STI or STT. On the
remaining 16 trials, individuals and objects from the exposure task control trials that had not previously been associated with traits were now presented with traits. These presentations served as control trials because they did not
involve the possibility of relearning and consisted of the
first association of the trait constructs with the individuals or
objects.
At the outset of the experiment, participants were randomly assigned to one of two stimulus sets. The eight trait
constructs implied by the behavior statements of the exposure task critical trials of Set 1 were presented in the control
trials of the learning task for Set 2 and vice versa. Similarly,
the images of actors, bystanders, and objects of the critical
trials of stimulus Set 1 served as the images for the control
trials for stimulus Set 2 and vice versa. In this manner, the
learning task was identical for all participants. However,
any participant would be familiar with the image–trait pairs
of only one stimulus set, with the remaining image–trait
pairs being completely novel. Because the relearning trials
of each set served as a control for the other, differences in
the memorability of specific image–trait pairs were controlled.
In addition to these 32 trials, there were 3 filler trials at
both the beginning and end of the procedure.
Filler task. After the completion of the learning task,
participants were instructed to work on a filler task that
involved completing anagrams from the names of celebrities. The purpose of this task was to eliminate potential
recency effects by allowing 4 min to pass between the
learning and cued-recall tasks.
Cued-recall task. This phase of the experiment involved testing participants’ recall of the trait terms. The
photos from the learning task were presented in a random
order, and participants had to report the trait terms that had
been paired with the corresponding individuals or objects
during the learning task. Participants were instructed to
guess if they could not remember. On completion of the
experiment, participants were debriefed and thanked for
their participation.
RESULTS
The proportion of traits correctly recalled by each participant was entered into a 2 (Trial Type: relearning or control) ⫻ 3 (Cue Type: actor, bystander, or object) withinsubjects repeated-measures ANOVA. An overall savings
effect would be demonstrated by a significant trial type
main effect with superior trait recall on relearning trials
compared to control trials. This effect was obtained, with
participants recalling 54.2% (SD ⫽ 20.1) of the traits on
relearning trials and 40.4% (SD ⫽ 19.8) of the traits on
control trials, F(1, 96) ⫽ 37.48, p ⬍ .001.
The main effect of cue type was also significant, F(2,
96) ⫽ 10.35, p ⬍ .001. Subsequent analyses revealed
superior trait recall on trials cued by actors (M ⫽ 48.7%,
SD ⫽ 19.5) and objects (M ⫽ 50.6%, SD ⫽ 24.0) than
on trials cued by bystanders (M ⫽ 41.1%, SD ⫽ 21.7),
t(96) ⫽ 4.27, p ⬍ .001, and t(96) ⫽ 3.67, p ⬍ .001,
respectively. There was no significant difference in trait
recall cued by actors versus objects, t ⬍ 1. Because this
main effect collapses over relearning and control trials, they
are not of direct import to our interests.
More to the point was a significant trial type by cue type
interaction, F(1, 96) ⫽ 4.07, p ⬍ .02, that indicated that
the magnitude of savings depended on the type of cue (Fig.
1). Subsequent analyses revealed that superior savings effects resulted from actor cues (M ⫽ 18.8%, SD ⫽ 25.3)
compared to bystander cues (M ⫽ 10.1%, SD ⫽ 34.0)
and object cues (M ⫽ 7.5%, SD ⫽ 32.1), t(96) ⫽ 2.36,
p ⬍ .05, and t(96) ⫽ 3.00, p ⬍ .01, respectively.
Therefore, this interaction is consistent with Skowronski et
al.’s (1998) finding of stronger STI than STT. 1 Further
analyses revealed that the savings effects resulting from
bystander and object cues were significant, t(96) ⫽ 2.91,
p ⬍ .01, and t(96) ⫽ 2.29, p ⬍ .05, respectively, and
there was no significant difference between these savings
effects, t ⬍ 1. This finding reveals that STT was found in
this experiment and that the effect generalized to improbable inanimate objects. Finally, there was no significant
difference in the savings effects resulting from actor cues
when the actor had been previously presented with a bystander (M ⫽ 21.6%, SD ⫽ 34.9) or with an object (M ⫽
16.0%, SD ⫽ 33.3), t(96) ⫽ 1.22, p ⫽ .23.
1
Skowronski, Carlston, Mae, and Crawford (1998) outlined three components to STT: trait activation, trait association, and trait influence. In the
current report, we refer to any case of association between a trait and an
entity other than the actor as evidence of STT.
SPONTANEOUS TRAIT ASSOCIATIONS
FIG. 1.
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Mean proportion of traits recalled for the interaction between cue type and trial type.
DISCUSSION
This experiment explored trait associations in situations
where an actor and either an inanimate object or a human
bystander were presented simultaneously along with traitimplying information about the actor. To the extent that it is
illogical and nonsensical to infer traits about inanimate
objects, the current findings provide strong evidence against
the explanation that participants in STT experiments make
trait inferences about transference targets because they assume the targets to have similar personalities to those of the
actors they describe or accompany.
Moreover, the finding that STT occurs with inanimate
objects suggests that trait associations revealed by the savings and relearning paradigm may be formed in the absence
of inferential processing about the stimulus. Skowronski et
al. (1998) demonstrated that STI and STT are of about equal
strength when participants are told that the pairing of photos
with trait-implying behavior is random, and Mae, Carlston,
and Skowronski (1999) demonstrated STT effects of typical
magnitude with traits inconsistent with the personalities of
well-known individuals. The current finding that STT occurs with inanimate objects demonstrates even more directly that a significant component of the trait associations
revealed by the savings and relearning method are formed in
the absence of person perception processes.
Skowronski et al. (1998) suggested that STI is stronger
than STT because of an additional component of trait association created through attribution processes that are missing in STT. However, the magnitude of this additional
component is still not clearly known. In this experiment, we
presented two entities simultaneously on the screen as a
means of equating their visual salience better than is possible in paradigms that present either one of these entities
alone with trait-implying information. The fact that the
magnitude of STI was greater under these circumstances
than the magnitude of either bystander or inanimate object
STT supports the assumption of a two-component associative process, one that applies to any entity present in the
context of trait-implying information and another that applies singularly to actor attributions.
This experiment also provides a vivid demonstration of
the associability of trait constructs by demonstrating trait
transference to common inanimate objects to which one
does not normally attribute traits. This finding suggests that
STI, like STT, may result primarily from automatic associations formed in working memory between trait constructs
activated during the categorization of behavior descriptions
and other stimuli such as actors, bystanders, or even inanimate objects that happen to be part of the context that led
to the activation of the traits. Rather than reflecting only
task-relevant processes of attribution or of impression formation, the actor–trait associations linked to STI may also
reflect the propensity of stimuli that are concurrently active
in working memory to become associated with each other,
a propensity that is at the heart of the well-known Hastie/
Srull model of person memory (Hastie, 1980; Hastie &
Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981; Srull, Lichtenstein, & Rothbart,
1985). Further explorations into the role of incidental associative processes in STI will contribute to our understanding
of trait inference and of person perception processes.
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