INFERRING COMPETENCE FROM INCOMPETENCE - AN IRONIC PROCESS ASSOCIATEDWITH PERSON DESCRIPTORS

To what extent is a competently-functioning person also interested in the person descriptors associated with that competence? A thesis by Wi cklund (1986a, b) charges that a dwelling on static person qualities ( overt appearance; superficial traits) is often to be found among indiv iduals who are themselves incompetent in the performance area in quest ion: several studies in recent years have supported this thesis, and o ne of these provides the basis of the present work: Wicklund, Braun an d Waibel (1993) found that athletes, scientists, farmers and other gro ups were disinclined to characterize their performance areas in terms of the static traits of the expert. In sharp contrast, respondents who were relatively non-skilled in a performance area ('distant' area) we re inclined to depict the area in terms of static elements, such as ov ert appearance and traits. Each of the present subjects received two p rotocols from one of these previous subjects (above). In one protocol the earlier subject had depicted his own area (and thereby mentioned, on the average, relatively few static person descriptors); in the othe r protocol he depicted a 'distant' performance area (and usually made reference to one or more person descriptors). The present subjects' ta sk was to infer the original subjects' competence in those two areas, and given that our subjects were inactive in both areas, they came sys tematically to the incorrect conclusion: they reacted to protocols lad en with person descriptors as signalling the author's actual competenc e, a phenomenon consistent with the descriptions of technical societie s in Sennett (1977). Subjects who evidenced some degree of competence in the pertinent areas did not commit this error.