MULTIPLE PERSON INFERENCES: A VIEW OF A CONNECTIONIST INTEGRATION

This paper provides a connectionist account of the processes underlying the multiple inference model of person impression formation proposed by Reeder, Kumar, Hesson-McInnis and Trafimow [7]. First, in a replication and extension of one of their main studies, I found evidence for discounting of trait inferences when facilitating situational forces were present consistent with earlier causality-based theories, while at the same time I replicated the lack of discounting in moral inferences as documented and predicted by Reeder et al. [7]. Second, to provide an account of how these different and sometimes contradictory inferences are formed and integrated in a coherent person impression, I present a recurrent network model that automatically integrates these inferences, resulting in a pattern that closely reproduces the observed data.