264 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making
audiences use in person perception.^27 Audiences possess role schemata for different profession-
als such as doctors, lawyers, and managers, as well as role schemata for leaders, job applicants, and
speakers.
Role schemata play a critical role in person perception and audience decision making. Audi-ences depend on role schemata more than perceived personality traits to make sense of others.^28
They also use role schemata more than personality traits to cue their memories of their acquain-
tances.^29 For example, it is easier for audience members to think of all the lawyers they know than
to recollect all the introverts they know.
Decision Criteria in Role Schemata
Like decision schemata, role schemata are organized by decision criteria. An experiment with 104
undergraduates explored the organization of their role schemata for political candidates. Students’
information about political candidates appeared to be organized by attributes, or decision criteria
(e.g., experience, personality traits, emotional characteristics, etc.), particularly among those stu-
dents who were more politically expert. Political novices, lacking organized attribute information,
tended to make decisions about candidates based on their intuitive impressions of the candidates.^30
Other studies fi nd that when the audience is asked to form an impression of a person or to make
a prediction about a person’s future behavior, they organize what they know about the person’s
current behaviors almost completely by trait categories^31 within a schema that seldom refl ects any
actual behavioral details.^32
Benchmarks in Role Schemata
Like decision schemata, role schemata include benchmarks. Audiences often judge a professional’s
attributes against group-specifi c standards and expectations.^33 Audiences also use themselves as a
point of comparison when evaluating others.^34 When audiences evaluate another’s leadership skills
and potential, they use their images of prototypical leaders as benchmarks.^35
Recruiters use several types of benchmarks when evaluating job applicants during employmentinterviews. Recruiters compare the actual applicants to their image of the ideal applicant.^36 Recruit-
ers base their image of the ideal applicant on applicants from the past, on their analysis of the job,
on their general impressions of good employees, and on their own image of themselves.^37 Recruiters
also compare applicants to the other applicants who have recently applied for the position.^38 A study
of 120 recruiters and 180 managers who watched video recordings of four applicants interviewing
for a management trainee position found that the performance of earlier applicants infl uenced the
evaluator’s assessment of subsequent applicants.^39 Similarly, a study of candidates interviewing for
medical school found that the performance of the two most recent candidates infl uenced the evalu-
ator’s assessment of the candidate they were currently evaluating.^40
Audiences may also use one person in a conversation as a benchmark with which to evaluate theother person in the conversation. In a study of viewers’ perceptions of interviewees, researchers pre-
sented nine videos portraying different interviewer/interviewee nonverbal behaviors to nine groups
of 25 viewers each. The viewers’ perceptions of the interviewees were infl uenced by their percep-
tions of the interviewers. Aggressive interviewers caused the viewers to evaluate interviewees more
positively. Obliging interviewers caused the viewers to evaluate interviewees more negatively.^41
When audiences receive new benchmark information during a person perception task, theirjudgments may exhibit the “change-of-standard effect.” In the change-of-standard effect, the new
benchmark information changes the audience’s initial impression of the person they are evaluating
as well as what the audience remembers about them.^42 For example, an audience might initially