Personality and Social Contexts Commons^™

What A ____ Thing To Do! Formally Characterizing Actions By Their Expected Effects, Dustin Wood, William Tov, Cory Costello

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A number of personality frameworks assume traits describe central tendencies of action-for instance, calling someone assertive indicates they have a tendency to perform assertive actions. But what makes it appropriate to characterize an action by terms like assertive, kind, or honest? We propose that actions are characterized by such terms in large part by having expected effects on the environment which match particular conceptual templates. In the present studies, we attempt to better identify the expected effect dimensions perceivers seem to utilize to make action characterizations related to the Big Five and HEXACO personality dimensions. To do so, a set …