ERP responses to person names as a measure of trait inference in person perception

Abstract

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this study examines how trait information inferred from behaviors is associated with person names. In linguistic discourses, person names were associated with descriptions of either positive or negative behaviors. In a subsequent explicit evaluation task, the previously described person names were presented in isolation, and the participants were asked to judge the emotional valence of these names. We found that the names associated with positive descriptions elicited a larger positivity in the ERP than the names associated with negative descriptions. The results indicate that the emotional valence of person names attached to person perception can be dynamically influenced by short descriptions of the target person, probably due to trait inference based on the provided behavioral descriptions.

Keywords:

• Person perception
• Trait inference
• Person names
• Emotional valence
• ERPs

We thank Ning Ma and Frank Van Overwalle for their generous supply of materials, which were adapted and used as part of the stimuli in the current study.

This work was supported by the Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number Y1CX312005] and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry [grant number 112000H377].