Implict person theories and forming impressions of others:

The implications of implicit theories for social information processing were examined. Implicit theory proposes that entity theorists see others' traits as fixed and stable, whereas incremental theorists see others' traits as malleable and changeable. It was found that entity theorists formed on-line judgments and incremental theorists formed memory-based judgments of target individuals. These process differences were observed in amount of recall, primacy effects in recall, memory-judgment relations, and illusory correlation formation using natural differences in perceivers' implicit theories (Experiment 1) and by manipulating their implicit theories (Experiment 2). Results indicate that implicit theories affect the process by which perceivers form impressions of others. The implications of these findings for the relation between implicit theory and social perception are discussed.