Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior.

Abstract

How do attempts to regulate one's own behavior affect the inferences one draws about others? We suggest that perceivers draw dispositional inferences about targets (characterization) and then adjust those inferences with information about the constraints on the targets' behaviors (correction). Because correction is more effortful than characterization, perceivers who devote cognitive resources to the regulation of their own behavior should be able to characterize targets but unable to correct those characterizations. In Experiment 1, unregulated subjects incidentally ignored an irrelevant stimulus while they observed a target's behavior, whereas self-regulated subjects purposefully ignored the same irrelevant stimulus. In Experiment 2, unregulated subjects expressed their sincere affection toward a target, whereas self-regulated subjects expressed false affection. In both experiments, self-regulated subjects were less likely than unregulated subjects to correct their characterizations of the target. The results suggest that social interaction (which generally requires the selfregulation of ongoing behavior) may profoundly affect the way in which active perceivers process information about others.