Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

280 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making

spontaneous inferences they have made about others, the lateral, medial, and dorsomedial prefrontal

cortex, as well as the lateral parietal lobe, precuneus, and medial temporal lobe are all activated (see

Figures 3.4 and 3.5 , p. 108).^264

Activation of Role Schemata

One of the primary reasons audiences infer the traits of professionals is to determine how well they

fi t a particular occupational or leadership role. Does my new doctor exhibit the traits I expect in a

good doctor? Does our team’s new coach display the enthusiasm a good coach requires? To make

decisions of this nature, the audience must fi rst activate a role schema.

Particular role schemata may be activated through either a bottom-up or a top-down process.

Bottom-up activation may result from the audience’s perception of physical cues to the person’s

role such as their clothing (e.g., a clerical collar, a lab coat, or a chef ’s hat), their tools (e.g., a stetho-

scope, a dust mop, or a pitchfork), or the vehicle they drive (e.g., an ambulance, a delivery van, or

a backhoe).^265 Top-down activation of a role schema might result from any one of several causes,

including the recency of the schema’s prior activation or priming,^266 its frequency of activation,^267

or the audience’s goal or purpose for observing the individual.^268

Situational information can also activate role schemata. In a study of leadership schemata, two

groups of mock recruiters selected job candidates to manage either in a crisis or in a tranquil situ-

ation. Both groups received the same information about the candidates. But the recruiters who

expected the candidates they interviewed to manage in a crisis had a greater false recall of leadership

behaviors compared to the recruiters who expected the candidates to manage when everything was

going smoothly. The study argues that crisis scenarios activate recruiters’ leadership schemata.^269

The activation of voters’ leadership schemata may explain why presidential approval ratings consis-

tently increase after government-issued warnings of impending terrorist attacks.^270

In another study of the effects of role schema activation on audience perceptions, some viewers

were led to believe they would see a trial and other viewers to believe they would watch a social

interaction. Viewers who expected to watch a trial inferred that the target individual was a defen-

dant and decided the target was more responsible for a crime than viewers who thought they had

seen a social interaction.^271

Acquisition of Information About Behaviors, Traits, and Emotions

Audiences actively search for information about professionals’ behaviors, traits, and emotions once

they have activated a role schema. The activated role schema guides the audience to attend to the

behaviors, traits, and emotions that are relevant to that role. In a study of how different role sche-

mata lead viewers to observe different behaviors, two groups of viewers watched videos of couples

interacting with each other in ways that were rated as ambiguous in terms of their degree of

intimacy. One group of viewers was told they would see a couple just becoming acquainted. The

other group was told they would observe a married couple. The two groups of viewers, primed

with different role schemata, observed different nonverbal behaviors and made different types of

inferences when making judgments about the couple.^272

Depending on the role schema that has been activated, viewers also infer different meaningful

breaks in the same sequence of actions or interactions. In a study of perceived breakpoints, two

groups of viewers watched a video of an interaction between one large and two small geometric

fi gures that represented people of different sizes. The two groups were asked to press a button each

time they perceived a meaningful break in the action such as when the fi gures moved toward each