TRAITS AS GOAL-BASED CATEGORIES - THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS IN THE COHERENCE OF DISPOSITIONAL CATEGORIES

It is argued that goals are central to the meaning and structure of many traits and help define the prototypicality structure of those traits. Partly on the basis of Barsalou's (1985) work on goal-derived categories, it was predicted that goals help define the judged prototypicality of many trait-related behaviors and the confidence with which people make trait inferences from those behaviors. Consistent with this hypothesis, ratings of the extent to which behaviors achieved the goal associated with a trait strongly predicted the typicality of the behaviors. Furthermore, the rated goal-relatedness of a behavior also strongly predicted the confidence with which people would make a trait inference from that behavior. It is suggested that goals play a major role in the conceptual coherence of traits and other social categories.