A COGNITIVE DETERMINANT OF IMPRESSION FORMATION.

Concrete functioning individuals were shown to generalize in their impressions further than abstract functioning individuals at both higher and lower levels of informational input when the input was hedonically consistent with the direction of inference. Concrete functioning individuals generalized less than abstract functioning individuals, however, when the input information was hedonically inconsistent with the direction of inference. These findings may be interpreted as supporting the notion that concrete persons, more than abstract individuals, are disposed toward seeing the good person as all good and the bad person as all bad, minimizing the plausibility that the same person could simultaneously possess both good and bad characteristics. The findings thus point to concrete-abstract functioning as a variable of considerable weight in the extent of inferences people make of others. Author