Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Perceiving Individuals And Groups as Coherent: How Do Perceivers Make Sense of Variable Behavior?

2003; Guilford Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1521/soco.21.1.26.21191

1943-2798

Jason E. Plaks, Jennifer L. Shafer, Yuichi Shoda,

Psychology of Social Influence

An actor may display inconsistent behavior across different situations (e.g., conscientious in one situation, nonconscientious in another) and yet still be perceived as a coherent person. How do perceivers accomplish this? To investigate this question, in two experiments, participants read about a target person whose behavior across eight situations varied randomly or covaried systematically with goal-relevant situations. In Experiment 1, although the two targets displayed equivalent amounts of variability, participants (a) found the systematic target more coherent and (b) were more likely to associate the systematic target with an underlying goal. In Experiment 2, this finding was extended to group targets but, as expected, not to low entitativity groups, suggesting that participants make such inferences only when there is an a priori expectation of coherence. These findings indicate that the target's goal is an important component of perceived coherence.