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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 1, 106-117 (1985)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167285111010

Whatever Happened to Pollyanna?

The Effects of Evaluative Congruence on Speed of Trait Inference

Sarah E. Hampson

Birkbeck College, University of London

W. J.M. Dawson

Birkbeck College, University of London

The Polyanna Principle (Matlin & Stang, 1978) predicts that trait inferences will be made more rapidly for evaluatively positive targets and/or traits than for evaluatively negative targets and/or traits. In contrast, the congruence principle proposed here predicts that evaluatively congruent inferences (favorable inferences for positive targets and unfavorable inferences for negative targets) will be made more rapidly than evaluatively incongruent inferences (unfavorable inferences for positive targets and favorable inferences for negative targets) regardless of the positive or negative nature of either target or trait. Decision times were compared for evaluatively positive and negative trait inferences for liked (L+) and disliked (L-) real targets. The results indicated that both the Pollyanna and the congruence principles were operating. Although decisions were made more rapidly for L+ than L-targets, supporting the Pollyanna hypothesis, congruent decisions were made more rapidly than incongruent decisions even when incongruent decisions involved L+ targets and congruent decisions involved L-targets. The most rapid decisions were made when the two principles were operating in the same direction (ie., congruent decisions for L+ targets).


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