lecture 5

Question 1

What is a trait?

Answer 1

Relatively stable characteristics, such as personality (but still debated)

Trait is second most frequently used category and unique to person perception

Forming organized, stable impression

Question 2

what is Experiment 1: trait impression

Answer 2

Stage 1: view a list of traits describing a stranger
Stage 2: provide impressions of stranger
Cover eyes and go through one list
Changing one word from each characteristic list from “warm” to “cold” will change your impression on the person

Question 3

what is Experiment 3: trait impression

Answer 3

change that central trait to other terms and ask questions again about the person
Person perception as impression formation
Central traits, qualities that when changed alter the entire impression of a person, qualities that when changed alter the meaning of other traits

Question 4

What makes a trait central?

Answer 4

Took that same list and got students to rate their instructors on each of the 53 traits
Researchers computed the correlations between the 53 traits
Central traits (warm and cold) are more correlated with other traits (if instructor is warm then they are polite, intelligent)
Absolute correlation with other traits
Given high correlations, changing central traits will change the persons standing on many other traits, thus changing overall impression

Question 5

What’s the problem with the central trait definition?

Answer 5

Some traits are synonyms so they will be rated similarly
Any traits can become central traits
Central traits will differ given different subsets of traits examined (if determined is central trait then the list will be all synonyms of determined)
Central traits will differ given different specific trait terms (target traits) used..if warm gets swapped for friendly then friendly is central trait

Question 6

what is the Lexical approach

Answer 6

Important traits become apart of our language

identify and record lexical chunks and fixed phrases in texts they read