TY - JOUR
T1 - Inferring abilities after influencing performance
AU - Aronson, Joshua M.
AU - Jones, Edward E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8907925 to Edward E. Jones. Joshua Aronson is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. We thank Bill Klein, Dale Miller, and Debbie Prentice for useful comments. We are also indebted to Ron Kinchla, who provided insightful comments for our memory analyses, and to Michelle Buck, who helped prepare stimulus materials. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Edward E. Jones, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1010.
PY - 1992/5
Y1 - 1992/5
N2 - Two experiments investigated the effects of "perceiver-induced constraint" in the realm of ability attribution. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to influence a target person's performance on a series of anagram problems by offering clues. Half the subjects were motivated to enhance the target person's score whereas the remaining subjects focused their clue-giving efforts at enhancing the target person's ability to solve anagrams. The nature of the target person's performance was also manipulated. The pattern of success was either descending or ascending, but equal in overall performance level. As predicted, subjects trying to improve ability saw the ascending performer as more intelligent whereas subjects trying to enhance performance were more impressed by the descending performer, thus demonstrating the well-established primacy effect in ability attribution. Experiment 2 examined the attributions of observers given goal instructions and performance feedback identical to those in the first experiment. All subjects, regardless of the goal orientation of the clue-giver they observed, saw the descending performer as more intelligent, indicating that the results of the first experiment were not solely the result of the experimental instructions. The results suggest that performance-oriented "inducers" were more concerned with the immediate contingency between their interventions and the target persons response. In contrast ability-enhancing inducers were more focused on the long-term contingency between intervention and performance.
AB - Two experiments investigated the effects of "perceiver-induced constraint" in the realm of ability attribution. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to influence a target person's performance on a series of anagram problems by offering clues. Half the subjects were motivated to enhance the target person's score whereas the remaining subjects focused their clue-giving efforts at enhancing the target person's ability to solve anagrams. The nature of the target person's performance was also manipulated. The pattern of success was either descending or ascending, but equal in overall performance level. As predicted, subjects trying to improve ability saw the ascending performer as more intelligent whereas subjects trying to enhance performance were more impressed by the descending performer, thus demonstrating the well-established primacy effect in ability attribution. Experiment 2 examined the attributions of observers given goal instructions and performance feedback identical to those in the first experiment. All subjects, regardless of the goal orientation of the clue-giver they observed, saw the descending performer as more intelligent, indicating that the results of the first experiment were not solely the result of the experimental instructions. The results suggest that performance-oriented "inducers" were more concerned with the immediate contingency between their interventions and the target persons response. In contrast ability-enhancing inducers were more focused on the long-term contingency between intervention and performance.
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U2 - 10.1016/0022-1031(92)90056-P
DO - 10.1016/0022-1031(92)90056-P
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:38249011243
SN - 0022-1031
VL - 28
SP - 277
EP - 299
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
IS - 3
ER -