Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2022 May;26(2):160-179. doi: 10.1177/10888683221076688. Epub 2022 Feb 28.
Social perceivers seek to understand the opportunities and threats others potentially afford-for example, whether a teammate will behave tenaciously or a romantic partner, faithfully. We typically detect affordances and draw trait inferences by observing behaviors that reveal or predict others' likely intentions and characteristics. However, detection and inference from simple observation are often difficult (e.g., even dishonest people are frequently honest, people often mask unpopular beliefs). In such cases, we propose that people test, actively manipulating others' circumstances to reveal hard-to-observe affordances and characteristics. The Observation-Testing Model is a framework predicting circumstances under which testing is more likely to happen, which affordances and characteristics are more likely to be tested for, and which people are more likely to test and be tested. We identify preliminary support for the model from a range of literatures (e.g., employment assessment, coming-of-age rituals, dating processes) and identify areas needing further research.
社会感知者试图理解他人可能提供的机会和威胁——例如，队友是否会顽强表现，或者浪漫伴侣是否会忠诚。我们通常通过观察揭示或预测他人可能意图和特征的行为来检测和进行特质推断。然而，通过简单观察进行检测和推断往往很困难（例如，即使不诚实的人也经常是诚实的，人们常常掩盖不受欢迎的信仰）。在这种情况下，我们提出人们会进行测试，主动操纵他人的环境，以揭示难以观察到的机会和特征。观察-测试模型是一个预测测试更可能发生的情况、更可能测试哪些机会和特征以及更可能进行测试和被测试的人的框架。我们从一系列文献（例如，就业评估、成年礼、约会过程）中找到了对该模型的初步支持，并确定了需要进一步研究的领域。
