Implicit personality theory describes the specific patterns and biases an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of initial information about an unfamiliar person.Pedersen, D.M. (1965). The measurement of individual differences in perceived personality-trait relationships and their relation to certain determinants. The Journal of Social Psychology, 65, 233-258. While there are parts of the impression formation process that are context-dependent, individuals also tend to exhibit certain tendencies in forming impressions across a variety of situations. There is not one singular implicit personality theory utilized by all; rather, each individual approaches the task of impression formation in his or her own unique way.Cronbach, L.J. (1955). Processes affecting scores on "Understanding of Others" and "Assumed Similarity". Psychological Bulletin, 52(3), 177-193. However, there are some components of implicit personality theories that are consistent across individuals, or within groups of similar individuals. These components are of particular interest to social psychologists because they have the potential to give insight into what impression one person will form of another.
Origins One of the first psychologists to extensively explore the concept of impression formation was Solomon Asch. His research, dating back to the mid-1940s, provided a substantial amount of the initial data explaining factors that affect impression formation. He was particularly interested in the differences between central and peripheral traits. Many of the ideas produced from Asch's experiments are still relevant to the study of impression formation, and have played a significant role in establishing a foundation for modern implicit personality theory research.Schneider, D.J. (1973). Implicit personality theory: A review. Psychological Review, 79(5), 294-309
Asch believed that the traits a person portrays all dynamically interact with each other to form another person's impression of them. This is contrary to an additive model of impression which suggests that a general impression of a person is created which consists of the sum of their traits. Asch focused on establishing how impressions are formed holistically rather than just being a collection of individual traits. In his initial study on impression formation, Asch establishes several main points including this dynamic interaction of traits, the existence of central traits indicating that not all traits are equally weighted when forming an impression, as well as claiming that traits are representative of an entire person and that the same trait between two people can be drastically different depending on the other traits that they possess. In Asch's initial experiments developing implicit personality theory, he established several main points about the impression formation of an individual.
An impression is formed of the entire person, not just part of the individual. The formation of the impression in an attempt to describe the core of the person. Once multiple traits are assigned to an individual, they are immediately no longer 2 separate traits, but instead the traits dynamically interact to more completely describe the individual Not all traits are weighted evenly. Central traits have the most influence on impression formation. A single trait has an impact on many if not all traits of an individual and traits cannot be isolated. Each trait describes the entire individual - not just a small part of them Each trait functions as a representative of the person The portrayal of a trait depends on the surrounding environments/dynamic interaction between the other traits of an individual. "The envy of a proud man is, for example, seen to have a different basis from the envy of a modest man" Traits can cooperate or contradict with each other. The impression formed is an attempt to piece together consistencies of an individual to generate something complete. The value of a trait depends heavily on the context of the person and their surrounding traits. A trait may be central to one individual while only secondary to another.
Automaticity One of the most notable characteristics of implicit personality theories is that they are, in fact, implicit. In this context, "implicit" is taken to mean "automatic". It is a common belief that much of the process of social perception actually is automated.Bargh, J.A., & Chartrand, T.L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462-479. For example, it is possible for a person to experience automatic thought processes, and for those processes occur without that person's intention or awareness of their occurrence.Bargh, J. A. (1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. Unintended thought, 3, 51-69. In terms of impression formation, this means that an observer may perceive another person's behavior and automatically make trait inferences from that behavior, without being aware that these inferences were being made.Winter, L., & Uleman, J.S. (1984). When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(2), 237-252.Carlston, D.E., & Skowronski, J.J. (1994). Savings in the relearning of trait information as evidence for spontaneous inference generation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(5), 840-856. The strongest evidence for the implicitness of impression formation comes from observed "savings effects" when trying to learn another person's traits. In a study by Carlston & Skowronski (1994), participants who were exposed to descriptive stimuli containing implied trait information learned the target person's traits more easily than participants who had not been previously exposed to implied trait information. Moreover, this effect could not be accounted for by simple priming mechanisms. The participants exhibited a true savings effect, which suggested that they had gained implicit trait information from the descriptive stimuli. Some theorists also argue that implicit personality theories act as personal belief systems guiding how individuals interpret social information additionally to being automatic perceptual mechanisms. Under this perspective Implicit Personality Theory influence depends on both availability of previous trait beliefs as well as the accessibility of the beliefs in a situation. Factors like motivation, context, and stereotype activation can all determine which trait concepts have the largest impact on impression formation. These findings demonstrate Implicit Personality Theories not being a fixed set of trait association rules but flexible structures with varying effects across situations.
General theories
Consistency theory Consistency, in terms of implicit personality theories, refers to the way in which a newly formed impression that relates to what is already known about the other person. There are two dimensions of consistency involved with inferring traits in respect to the other known traits of a person. Evaluative consistency suggests that inferred traits will match the overall impression of the person formed by the traits of that person that have already been established.Felipe, A.I. (1970). Evaluative versus descriptive consistency in trait inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(4), 627-638. There is a tendency to infer favorable traits to people who have already exhibited mostly favorable traits. Likewise, evaluative consistency implies that if a person is known to have mostly unfavorable traits, others will likely attribute other unfavorable traits to that individual.Rosenberg, S., & Olshan, K. (1970). Evaluative and descriptive aspects in personality perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(4), 619-626. On the other hand, descriptive consistency suggests that trait inferences about a person occur when there are similarities between the descriptive attributes of the person and the assumed trait. An example of two traits that are descriptively similar are "skeptical" and "distrustful". An observer using descriptive similarity to form an impression of a "skeptical" person would most likely also believe that person to be "distrustful", because these two traits similarly describe a person who questions what other people tell him.
Both dimensions of consistency can be used in forming impressions and inferring traits-one is not more "correct" than the other. Most likely they are used in sequence, with descriptive consistency used before evaluative consistency is enacted. A study by Felipe (1970) revealed that, after traits that exhibit both evaluative and descriptive consistency, traits that are descriptively but not evaluatively consistent ("stingy" and "firm") are assumed to co-occur more often than traits that show evaluative but not descriptive consistency ("stingy" and "over permissive"). However, evaluative consistency is preferred in scenarios when making a quick, "all-or-nothing" judgment is necessary.
Complementary research suggests implicit personality theories as holistic belief systems varying across individuals, similar to personality traits. These beliefs guide how people interpret information of others, impacting not only what traits are expected of the person but also how impactful that trait information is overall to the perception of the person. While these beliefs often appear as stable, the level of influence is dependent on the situation and can adjust based on goals, attention, or context cues. This framework views implicit personality theories as a broad lens people interpret social information through, as opposed to a fixed set of rules on how traits connect to each other.
Attribution theory Attribution theory describes how people view trait stability in another person. This theory does not deal exclusively with traits, but rather describes a general worldview a person takes in life. The two main attribute theories are entity theory and incremental theory. People who exhibit entity theory tend to believe that traits are fixed and stable over time and across situations.Chiu, C. Y., Hong, Y. Y., & Dweck, C. S. (1997). Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 19-30. When making judgments about a person's behavior, they are inclined to emphasize the traits of that person. Moreover, entity theorists tend to make assumptions about others' traits based on a limited sample of their behaviors. Incremental theorists believe that traits are more dynamic and can vary over time. They also place less significance on traits when interpreting another person's actions, focusing rather on other types of mediators that may be influencing their behavior.Dweck, C.S., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. (1995). Implicit theories and their role in judgments and reactions: A world from two perspectives. Psychological Inquiry, 6(4), 267-285. The biggest distinguishing factor between these two theories is that entity theorists tend to make stronger and broader inferences from traits than incremental theorists do. This distinction holds true even when there are situational explanations for the observed behavior,Erdley, C. A., & Dweck, C. S. (1993). Children's implicit personality theories as predictors of their social judgments. Child Development, 64(3), 863-878. and when the behavior is unintentional. Because entity theorists believe that traits are stable over time, they are more confident in attributing a person's behavior to their traits.