Rusconi Patrice, Sacchi Simona, Capellini Roberta, Brambilla Marco, Cherubini Paolo
School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy.
PLoS One. 2017 Jul 11;12(7):e0180686. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180686. eCollection 2017.
Trait inference in person perception is based on observers' implicit assumptions about the relations between trait adjectives (e.g., fair) and the either consistent or inconsistent behaviors (e.g., having double standards) that an actor can manifest. This article presents new empirical data and theoretical interpretations on people' behavioral expectations, that is, people's perceived trait-behavior relations along the morality (versus competence) dimension. We specifically address the issue of the moderate levels of both traits and behaviors almost neglected by prior research by using a measure of the perceived general frequency of behaviors. A preliminary study identifies a set of competence- and morality-related traits and a subset of traits balanced for valence. Studies 1-2 show that moral target persons are associated with greater behavioral flexibility than immoral ones where abstract categories of behaviors are concerned. For example, participants judge it more likely that a fair person would behave unfairly than an unfair person would behave fairly. Study 3 replicates the results of the first 2 studies using concrete categories of behaviors (e.g., telling the truth/omitting some information). Study 4 shows that the positive asymmetry in morality-related trait-behavior relations holds for both North-American and European (i.e., Italian) individuals. A small-scale meta-analysis confirms the existence of a positive asymmetry in trait-behavior relations along both morality and competence dimensions for moderate levels of both traits and behaviors. We discuss these findings in relation to prior models and results on trait-behavior relations and we advance a motivational explanation based on self-protection.
对他人的特质推断基于观察者对特质形容词（如公平）与行为者可能表现出的一致或不一致行为（如双重标准）之间关系的隐含假设。本文展示了关于人们行为期望的新实证数据和理论解释，即人们在道德（相对于能力）维度上感知到的特质 - 行为关系。我们通过使用行为感知总体频率的测量方法，特别解决了先前研究几乎忽略的特质和行为适度水平的问题。一项初步研究确定了一组与能力和道德相关的特质以及一组效价平衡的特质子集。研究1 - 2表明，在涉及抽象行为类别时，道德目标人物比不道德人物具有更大的行为灵活性。例如，参与者判断一个公平的人做出不公平行为的可能性比一个不公平的人做出公平行为的可能性更大。研究3使用具体行为类别（如说实话/隐瞒某些信息）重复了前两项研究的结果。研究4表明，与道德相关的特质 - 行为关系中的正向不对称性在北美人和欧洲人（即意大利人）中都存在。一项小规模的元分析证实，对于特质和行为的适度水平，在道德和能力维度上的特质 - 行为关系中都存在正向不对称性。我们将这些发现与先前关于特质 - 行为关系的模型和结果相关联进行讨论，并基于自我保护提出了一种动机解释。
