Person prototypes and cultural salience: The role of cognitive and cultural factors in impression formation

Abstract

The role of person prototypes in impression formation was examined in two studies. In the first study, free‐response descriptions of naturally occurring person prototypes were subjected to an Individual Differences Multidimensional Scaling (INDSCAL) analysis in order to create a quantified prototype taxonomy. Results showed that three dimensions (academic performance, sociability and radicalism) defined the prototype space. These results were related to research on implicit theories of personality, and the structural properties of naturally used person categories are discussed. In study 2, subjects were asked to remember, predict and form impressions about composite characters who were either consistent or inconsistent with a prototype, and had either high or low cultural salience within the subjects' subculture. Results showed a significant interaction between prototype consistency and cultural salience cues, suggesting that ‘schema’ models of information processing best account for how we form impressions about culturally salient characters, but ‘depth‐of‐processing’ models better approximate judgements of low culturally salient characters. These results are contrasted with findings from earlier studies and it is suggested that (a) the collection and quantification of natural, middle‐level person prototypes is essential in studies of impression formation, and (b) cultural variables, such as values and normative salience, interact with cognitive variables, such as prototypicality, in determining which of several alternative information‐processing strategies are used in forming impressions about a particular target person.