Abstract

The present experiments were aimed to see the effects of behavioral informations which instructed to disregard on subsequent person judgments. In two related experiments, subjects were given discriptions of a target person's behaviors. Subjects in memory set were instructed to memorize the given behavioral informations, subjects in impression formation set were instructed to form an impression of the person with these informations. After receiving the first set of behaviors, some subjects were told that an error had been made and that the behaviors should be disregarded. Other subjects were told to disregarded the last behaviors presented. The effects of to-be-disregarded information on trait judgments, likableness, and its recall were different according to task set and position of to-be-disregarded information. In impression formation set, to-be-disregarded informations at the end of the series did more influence on specific trait judgment of the target person than did to-be-disregarded informations at the first of the series. But the result of its recall was opposite. These results were discussed in terms of the association model of person memory (Wyer & Srull, 1984) and the relationship between memory and judgment.