Abstract
Spontaneous trait inference: influence of trait type and goal process. One of the most controversial research issues currently under discussion in the area of social inference of traits based on behavioral information is whether these inferences are formulated spontaneously or if they are consciously controlled by perceivers. This article opposes this dichotomy considering the debate over spontaneity vs. control of the process is a matter of degree involving the type of trait and the perceivers goal in the process. To this end we have carried out an experiment involving 108 subjects,distributed in various groups according to the aim of the process (impression formation, memorization of behavior or numbers), trait type (facility vs. difficulty to be associated with a type of behavior), and the clue that was provided in the memory test (related to the actor, to the behavior or without clue). The dependent variable was the number of remembered behaviors. The results showed that there is a spontaneous inference in conditions of impression formation and memorization of sentences but not in the memorization of numbers. Furthermore, the spontaneous inference only occurred when the traits were easy to associate with a type of behavior. Therefore it leads us to conclude that the two factors considered have influence on spontaneity in the process of trait inference.
