Procedural Efficiency and the Spontaneity of Trait Inference

This experiment examined the effect of practice with behavior-to-trait judgments on spontaneous trait inference. Subjects engaged in two tasks that were presented to them as separate experiments. The first task required subjects to make 200 yes/no judgments involving either behavior-trait inferences or behavior-object inferences. In the second task, subjects were asked to memorize 18 sentences that implied traits. The recall of half the sentences was then cued by the implied traits to assess whether the traits had been inferred spontaneously at encoding. Subjects who had practiced behavior-trait inferences were more likely to make spontaneous trait inferences than subjects who had practiced behavior-object inferences. Spontaneous trait inference was particularly likely following practice with different behaviors and the same trait. These results show that practice with trait inferences contributes to the spontaneity of these inferences.