Mind & behavior · 2018
When only names are shown, do personality impressions stick to the person reporting someone else's behavior?
This study did not find evidence that they did. When names replaced faces, participants linked inferred personality traits to the person who performed a behavior, but not to the person who reported it. That negative result does not establish that such a link can never form.
Details
Earlier research described in the abstract found that people can infer personality traits from behavior and associate those traits in memory with the face of the person who acted. The traits can also become linked to the face of someone who reports the behavior, even though that person did not perform it.
The present study replaced faces with names to test whether both kinds of memory association would still occur. It found evidence for linking traits to the person who acted, but not for linking them to the person who reported the behavior. The authors interpret this pattern as suggesting that the messenger's visual prominence matters more for the second association, whereas impressions of the person who acted can form without a visually prominent face.
The abstract does not give the sample size, participant characteristics or effect sizes. The finding concerns memory associations under these study conditions, not whether telling a story about someone else will change how people judge the storyteller in everyday conversation.
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