Action-Oriented Representations of Implicit Personality Theories

Abstract

120 female undergraduates rated significant persons in their lives on repertory test dimensions. The 5 independent variables were priming (for family life vs, peer life vs, no priming), instrumentality of the psychological dimensions to the actors' goals from family vs peer life, consistency of knowledge about family and peer actors' goals, types of rated persons, and concentration on the persons before ratings. Ratings on dimensions instrumental to family goals were more variable after priming for family life. In contrast, the dimensions instrumental to peer goals were more variable, after priming for peer life. These relations were more marked after concentration, especially among Ss with high consistency of knowledge about family or peer actors' goals. Results support the hypotheses that an individual may have alternative systems of psychological knowledge that are organized in the form of action-oriented representations and in which categories of actors' goals and psychological conditions of achieving the goals play a central role. Ratings in the no-priming conditions corresponded well to the findings of earlier studies on implicit personality theories. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)