ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EUCLIDEAN REPRESENTATION OF IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORY

The overall purpose of the present study was to investigate the psycho logical significance of the Euclidean representation of implicit perso nality theory (IPT) by testing the predictive usefulness of this repre sentation. Multidimensional scaling analyses of 18 subjects' estimates of assumed trait co-occurences (IPT) gave Euclidean trait-distance ma trices which were used to predict the subjects' trait-to-trait inferen ces. The results showed that: (1) The Euclidean representations of sub jects' IPTs can be used to predict (p<0.10) most subjects' (14 of 18) trait-to-trait inferences; (2) The similarity between the Euclidean re presentation of subjects' IPTs was positively correlated (r(s) = 0.43, p<0.001) with the similarity between subjects' trait-to-trait inferen ces. These results suggest that the Euclidean representation of IPT ha s some predictive value, and thus, may at least to some extent, be jus tified and considered as psychologically significant.