TARGET ENTITATIVITY - IMPLICATIONS FOR INFORMATION-PROCESSING ABOUT INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP TARGETS

It is hypothesized that perceptions of entitativity (i.e., seeing soci al targets as possessing unity and coherence) have important implicati ons for how one organizes information about, and forms impressions of, individual and group targets. When perceivers expect entitativity, th ey should form an integrated impression of the target, resulting in on -line judgments. However, when perceivers expect little entitativity, they should not process target-relevant information in an integrative fashion, resulting in memory-based judgments. Although many factors af fect perceptions of entitativity, the current study focused on expecta tions of similarity and behavioral consistency. It was predicted that in general, perceivers expect greater entitativity for individual than group targets. However, when explicitly provided with similar expecta ncies of entitativity, information processing would be similar for bot h individual and group targets. Two experiments supported these predic tions, using recall, memory-judgment correlation, and illusory correla tion measures.