Familiarity and person construal: Individuating knowledge moderates the automaticity of category activation

In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categoriz...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of social psychology 2009-08, Vol.39 (5), p.852-861
Main Authors: Quinn, Kimberly A., Mason, Malia F., Macrae, C. Neil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Behavioural psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Epistemology
Face
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Information processing
Knowledge
Memory
Perception
Physical Characteristics
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sex
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
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Summary:In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar others (about whom a great deal of individuating information is available). Results from an automatic priming paradigm provided evidence for our reasoning: Participants categorized unfamiliar faces according to the most salient categorical dimension available in the visual information (in this case, sex), but did not do so for familiar faces. Implications for models of person perception are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:0046-2772
1099-0992
DOI:10.1002/ejsp.596