The recall of information about persons and groups

Two experiments investigated the effects of instructions to form an impression of individuals or groups on the recall of behavioral information. Several underlying factors that may affect recall were examined, including the organization of the material in memory, the availability of trait concepts as retrieval cues, the amount of processing, and the distinctiveness of the behaviors presented. In Experiment 1, subjects under instructions either to form an impression of a person, to form an impression of a group, or to remember the information received a series of trait adjectives followed by behaviors that varied in their evaluative and descriptive consistency with these adjectives. Behaviors were recalled better under person impression conditions than under other conditions; however, this difference occurred only if subjects had also recalled adjectives describing the traits that the recalled behaviors exemplified. Behaviors were recalled better under person impression conditions if they were evaluatively inconsistent with the trait adjectives presented than if they were evaluatively consistent with the adjectives; however, descriptive consistency had little effect on recall under these conditions. The effects of consistency variables under other instructional conditions were quite different. In Experiment 2, subjects received information about 12 behaviors, presented in either a list or a paragraph, under instructions either to form an impression of a person or to remember the behaviors. Unfavorable behaviors were recalled better under person impression than memory set conditions, but favorable behaviors were not. Behaviors were better recalled when they pertained to many traits than when they pertained to few, but this increase was the same regardless of instructional set. Finally, there was no evidence that the organization of the information in a list or a paragraph affected the recall of the behaviors. The implications of the results for the determinants of recall under different instructional conditions, and for the nature of cognitive representations of the information formed under different instructional sets, are discussed.