The Mnemonic Functions of Interpersonal Verbs

Abstract

The two studies we report here examine spontaneous trait inferences from a linguistic perspective using an uncued recall paradigm. From earlier studies (Semin & Marsman, 1994), we know that the degree to which dispositional inferences are made varies as a function of the verb type used to describe an event. For all types of verbs (e.g., “John helps Peter”), people make stronger dispositional inferences about the sentence subject (John) than about the sentence object (Peter). This pattern is found to be stronger for action verbs (e.g., hit) than for state verbs (e.g., hate). From this pattern of results we predicted that if the verb type influences strength of dispositional inference, and if spontaneous trait inferences are a function of the strength of dispositional inferences drawn from a verb, then verb type should influence such inferences differentially. We found that sentence subject recall is stronger for action verbs than for state verbs. These results suggest that the degree to which spontaneous trait inferences are drawn is a function of the verb type used in the stimulus material. We discuss the implications of language for social cognitive processes.