Conditional activation of associative semantic structures:forming and transmitting impressions of personality
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In the presented line of research we intended to systematically study the importance of memory to the formation and transmission of impressions of personality. We consider that impressions of personality are grounded in associative structures (e.g., Asch, 1946), which should be prone to similar memory distortions that other associative memory structures are (e.g., Roediger& McDermott, 1995). These distortions, which are a performance cost of flexible structures that allow us to adapt to the world (e.g., Howe, 2011), should also influence the transmission of information. More specifically, when information is retrieved from memory and transmitted serially between people, the information should be progressively changed by individual memory distortions, which must reflect previous representations of the transmitted concepts (Bartlett, 1932). In a set of five studies we investigated the susceptibility of the associative structure underlying impression formation to memory biases, using an adaptation of the DRM paradigm (Roediger& McDermott, 1995); the organization of personality traits in memory and the classic impression formation effects of centrality and primacy; and the pattern of distortions implied in serial transmission of personality traits. Our results pointed that a paradigm typically used to study memory can be adapted to study impression formation and that the beliefs that people hold about others’ personalities can be represented by an associative memory structure that is susceptible to memory distortions. Also, the organization of personality traits in memory seems to be responsible for classic impression formation effects, such as the centrality and primacy effects. Interestingly, by showing that some of these effects only occur when the impression formation goal is active, we obtained evidence for the conditional nature of the activation of the memory structure implied in impression formation. Moreover, we verified that serial transmission of information leads to systematic and predictable changes, with both information loss and intrusions.
Author: Ludmila Nunes
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2247747505