ACCESSIBILITY AND APPLICABILITY - SOME ACTIVATION RULES INFLUENCING JUDGMENT

Individuals with varying levels of chronic accessibility for the const ruct ''conceited'' read about a target person and gave their spontaneo us impressions of the target's behaviors. The construct ''conceited'' was either contextually primed or not, and the priming-to-stimulus del ay was either short or long. The stimulus behaviors also varied in app licability to the construct ''conceited,'' with three different types of non-''unambiguous'' stimuli being examined. The stimulus behaviors were either only weakly related to ''conceited'' (vague), strongly and equally related to both ''conceited'' and ''self-confident'' (ambiguo us), or more strongly related to self-confident than to ''conceited'' (contrary). We found that the extremely vague target behaviors yielded conceited-related spontaneous impressions when the accessibility of t he construct conceited was maximized-contextual priming [without aware ness], short priming-to-stimulus delay, and relatively high levels of chronic accessibility. This result supports the ''activation rule'' th at strong accessibility can compensate for weak applicability. Two oth er activation rules were suggested by the results for the ambiguous an d the contrary stimuli, respectively: (a) higher accessibility can yie ld stronger judgments even when perceivers are aware of contextual pri ming events if the additional contribution to activation from applicab ility and chronic accessibility is sufficiently great, and (b) the rel ation between higher accessibility and stronger judgments is constrain ed when the applicability of a competing alternative construct is both strong and stronger than the target construct's applicability. (C) 19 95 Academic Press. Inc.