Dispositional and Behavioral Inferences About Inherently Democratic and Unanimous Groups

Abstract

Inferences about individuals may consist of an initial characterization stage and a subsequent correction stage (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988), but do inferences about group targets follow this same process? We proposed that group inference shares individual inference's initial stage of characterization but also features two types of corrections that reflect perceivers' recognition of unique properties of groups. Specifically, perceivers first correct for the inherent democratic or unanimous nature of the target group, and if they perceive the group to be inherently democratic, they then correct for the formal group decision rule in operation. Three experiments provided support for this process model of dispositional and behavioral inferences about group targets. The results are discussed in terms of current conceptualizations of the social inference process.