DOES THE GRIST CHANGE THE MILL - THE EFFECT OF THE PERCEIVERS INFERENTIAL GOAL ON THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFERENCE

Previous research suggests that perceivers estimate the cause of behav ior by (a) identifying the behavior, (b) inferring the actor's disposi tion from the behavior, and (c) correcting this inference for situatio nal constraints. An experiment investigated whether perceivers' infere ntial goals alter this process. Perceivers viewed a silent videotape o f an anxious interviewee. Some perceivers estimated the target's dispo sitional anxiety; others estimated the degree of anxiety provoked by t he interview questions. Within these conditions, half simultaneously p erformed a cognitive rehearsal task. Of perceivers who estimated the t arget's dispositional anxiety, those who performed the rehearsal task inferred more dispositional anxiety. In contrast, of perceivers who es timated the anxiety provoked by the questions, those who performed the rehearsal task inferred less dispositional anxiety. These findings su ggest that social inference is more flexible than previously thought.