Category Accessibility and Impression Formation

Category Accessibility and Impression Formation E. Tory Higgins William S. Rholes Carl R. Jones

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Category Accessibility and Impression Formation 1977 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10.1016/S0022-1031(77)80007-3 higgins1977-category-accessibility higgins1977-category-accessibility.txt, the project's staged copy 4b3a4a2f63ae303e9a78904387aa42d16ae33ec0 personal-copy social-psychology

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0 spans located by searching the stored text for the quote's exact words, allowing any whitespace between them mechanism Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. category accessibility in impression formation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. behavioural-experiment behavioural-experiment Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The null reproduction result may be an artefact of instructing subjects to memorise the passage; different instructions might have produced reconstructive distortion. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The desirability scale had no zero point and so was not an equal-interval scale. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. the order of the rating scales across the two sessions was counterbalanced so that an equal number of subjects in each condition used each scale type in each session eliminates: that the effect is a scale or session-order artefact rather than category accessibility · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. category accessibility category accessibility Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. trait categories trait categories Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. categorization categorization Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. judgment judgment Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. discounting cue discounting cue Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. THE APPLICABILITY NULL IS THE CONTROL THAT RULES OUT A VALENCE ACCOUNT, AND IT IS THE HARDEST WORKING RESULT IN THE PAPER: `the absence of any effects for nonapplicable trait terms suggested that exposure to trait terms with positive or negative associations was not in itself sufficient to determine attributions and evaluations.` Positive and negative words that did not FIT the target did nothing. So the effect is not mood, not evaluative contagion and not `nice words make you nicer` - it needs a CATEGORY the target can be sorted into. Necessary-but-not-sufficient, stated in 1977, and the same logical shape unknown2009 states for object recognition thirty-two years later Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. THE DELAYED EFFECT IS BIGGER THAN THE IMMEDIATE ONE, AND THE EXPLANATION IS CORRECTION RATHER THAN ACTIVATION: `It may be that an AWARENESS that one's categorizations are BIASED accounts of the stimulus information can function as a `DISCOUNTING CUE` ... that ATTENUATES the direct impact of the categorizations.` The activation does not grow; the correction fades. So awareness here REDUCES the measured effect, and an immediate test UNDERSTATES it - the opposite sign to Holcomb2005, where prime visibility PREDICTED the size of semantic priming. Two literatures with awareness pushing the measurement in opposite directions, which is a reason to record the direction and not only the presence of an awareness check Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. A SECOND NULL SEPARATES TWO ROUTES: a category could bias judgement INDIRECTLY, by distorting what is remembered, or DIRECTLY, through its own implications. Reproduction of the description was unaffected, so `the characterization and evaluation effects found were due mainly to a DIRECT effect of categorization on judgment.` The prime changed what people concluded without changing what they recalled - which is what makes this a claim about judgement rather than about memory, and it is settled by an absence Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. AND THEY UNDERCUT THAT NULL THEMSELVES, IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. Subjects `probably felt they should MEMORIZE the stimulus information because it was part of a `reading comprehension` test`, and Spiro (1975) found that reconstructive errors do NOT occur under memorise instructions - so `Reproductive errors consistent with the activated categories might have occurred in the present study if subjects had been given different instructions.` The absence that carries their direct-effect conclusion is attributed to their own design rather than to the world, in the same discussion that uses it Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. THE AMBIGUITY CONDITION IS HERE TOO, IN 1977, AND THAT MAKES THREE PAPERS ACROSS 38 YEARS. `Quotation withheld.` North1999 says the effect holds `only when there is an element of UNCERTAINTY in product choice or when customers are in a state of LOW INVOLVEMENT`. money2013 says `a situation that does not leave much room for interpretation is unlikely to show a consistent or large priming effect`. Social psychology 1977, marketing 1999, social psychology 2015 - the founding paper, a field study and a reply to a failed replication - all naming the same condition: a prime needs somewhere to act. Higgins states it first and almost in passing, as a qualifier on a sentence about something else Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. builds-on → Warren (1972) status: the paper's own words: Indirect evidence Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. builds-on → Bartlett (1932) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. builds-on → Spiro (1975) Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. categorization —causes→ judgment categorization judgment direction on the measure: increases · strength of the relation: 0.9 · note: A CAUSAL EDGE ESTABLISHED BY AN ABSENCE. The route is settled by what did NOT happen: reproduction of the description was unaffected, so the category acted on judgement directly rather than by distorting memory. 'suggests' and 'mainly' are the hedges and both are in the quote - and the paper undercuts this null itself two paragraphs later (fourth sense), which is why this is 0.9 rather than 0.95. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the absence of a reproduction effect 'suggests' a direct effect of categorization; hedged. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. impressions shift toward the accessible/primed trait category Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. ANOVA ANOVA Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. correlation correlation Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. hypothesis-testing hypothesis-testing Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. median median Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. p-value p-value Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. statistical-significance statistical-significance Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. t-test t-test Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. variance variance Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution.

The full text of this article is not redistributable, so it is not included here. The evidence sentences are withheld with it; the tag layer and its grounding status remain. The article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(77)80007-3.