Tacit, Manifest, and Intentional Reference: How Spontaneous Trait Inferences Refer to Persons

When people infer traits unintentionally and unconsciously from actors' behaviors, in what senses might these spontaneous traits refer to the actors? Spontaneous trait inferences “manifestly” refer to the actors if there are direct links in explicit memory from traits to actors. They “tacitly” refer to the actors if trait-irrelevant features of the actor influence their frequency. Three studies examined whether more realistic presentations of trait-implying sentences affect either type of spontaneous trait reference. In each study, sentences were accompanied by photos of either actors, behavior settings, or abstract patterns. Subjects memorized the sentences (Experiment 1), and then to test boundary conditions, read them as distractors (Experiment 2) or visualized them (Experiment 3). These conditions did not affect manifest reference, for which there was no evidence. But tacit reference occurred in Experiments 1 and 3. Other effects, possible underlying processes, vividness and attention, and implications for models of impression formation are discussed.