Re-examining Spontaneous Trait Transference from an Attributional Perspective

In spontaneous trait transference (STT), communicators describing the behavior of others (i.e., actors) are perceived as having the personality traits implied by the behavior they describe. We tested whether this effect relies on moderators that are indicative of rule-based, attributional processes: the communicator-actor relation (friends vs. enemies; Experiment 1), the diagnosticity of the statement for inferring the implied trait to the communicator (Experiment 2), and the validity of the statement (i.e., whether it was actually provided by the communicator; Experiment 3). In line with attributional theories, trait ratings revealed a joint impact of the three moderators. Experiment 4 showed that communicators were attributed alternative traits-not implied by the behavior itself, but by the fact that they described the behavior. Together, our results suggest that participants attribute traits to the communicator based on the communicator's behavior (i.e., the act of describing the behavior of someone else).