Past research has shown that morality plays a stronger role than competence in driving our social impressions. It is not clear, however, whether morality plays a primary role in spontaneous impressions that are formed effortlessly and without an explicit intention to form an impression. Four studies ( N total = 746) tested spontaneous morality and competence inferences from behavioral descriptions with a false recognition paradigm. This paradigm not only allowed us to test the spontaneity in inferring morality versus competence traits from behaviors but also enabled us to tease apart the processes of trait accessibility and binding in memory. Across Experiments 1–3, perceivers were more likely to make spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) from competence (vs. morality) information by binding inferred traits to the relevant actors, indicating competence primacy. Experiment 4 compared spontaneous and intentional inferences and showed that although morality traits were more readily accessible in memory than competence traits when impressions were formed intentionally, competence traits remained more likely to be bound to relevant actors. Together, these findings suggest that morality does not hold primacy in spontaneous impression formation.
Okten et al. (Thu,) studied this question.