Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2025 Jan;64(1):e12793. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12793. Epub 2024 Aug 7.
People constantly make inferences about others' beliefs and preferences. People can draw on various sources of information to make these inferences, including stereotypes, self-knowledge, and target-specific knowledge. What leads people to use each of these sources of information over others? The current study examined factors that influence the use of these sources of information, focusing on three interpersonal dimensions - the extent to which people feel (a) familiar with, (b) similar to, or (c) like the target. In four studies (total N = 1136), participants inferred the beliefs and preferences of others - celebrities (Studies 1a-1b), constructed fictional targets (Study 2), and actual acquaintances (Study 3). Participants also rated familiarity with, similarity to, and liking of the target. Analyses assessed the use of each source of information by comparing inferences with information provided by those sources. Familiarity was associated with greater use of target-specific knowledge, while similarity and liking were associated with self-knowledge. Low similarity and high liking were associated with increased use of stereotypes. We discuss the implication of these findings and their applicability to unique cases, including inferences about celebrities, public figures, and positively stereotyped groups, in which familiarity, similarity, and liking do not perfectly align.
人们经常根据他人的信仰和偏好进行推断。人们可以利用各种信息来源来进行这些推断，包括刻板印象、自我认知和针对特定目标的知识。那么，是什么促使人们使用这些信息来源中的某一个，而不是其他来源呢？本研究考察了影响这些信息来源使用的因素，重点关注三个人际关系维度——人们对目标的熟悉程度、相似程度和喜好程度。在四项研究（总计 N=1136）中，参与者推断了名人（研究 1a-1b）、虚构目标（研究 2）和实际熟人（研究 3）的信仰和偏好。参与者还对目标的熟悉程度、相似程度和喜好程度进行了评分。分析通过将推断与这些来源提供的信息进行比较，评估了每种信息来源的使用情况。熟悉程度与更广泛地使用特定于目标的知识相关，而相似程度和喜好程度与自我认知相关。低相似度和高喜好度与刻板印象的使用增加有关。我们讨论了这些发现的含义及其在独特情况下的适用性，包括对名人、公众人物和受到积极刻板印象影响的群体的推断，在这些情况下，熟悉程度、相似程度和喜好程度并不完全一致。
