The recapitulation hypothesis in person retrieval

Abstract

In retrieving a person from memory, subjects retrace the course of acquaintanceship: they invoke a social stereotype, then apply a personality correction. The present article tests thisrecapitulation hypothesis. In a pair of experiments, subjects saw two serially presented cues and retrieved an acquaintance whom both of the cues described. As hypothesized, retrievals were faster if the first cue was a social category and the second cue a personality category, rather than vice versa. The experiments assess several explanations for this order effect: a social context-personality index explanation, a size difference explanation, and a criterion shift explanation. Results show that the order effect cannot be fully accounted for by differences in the size of social and personality categories, nor by the relaxation of personality criteria. The findings implicate a hierarchical social context-personality index memory structure.

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ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

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