What We Want to Know About Others
People are gossiping about a new colleague at the office. What would pique your interest more—hearing that this person is a bad parent or that they are vigilant to avoid catching colds? Obviously, the former. Why?
What information we attend to is shaped by our goals. We have different goals in different contexts. This work examines how context shapes social cognition and person perception.
What we want to know about other people depends on the other person's age.
Billet, M. I., Hohm, I., Dunn, R. M.*, Hofer, M. K., Sidloski, B., & Schaller, M. (under review). What Do people want to know about another person? The answer differs depending on whether that person is an adult or a child. Preprint available: osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/p3xf6
What we want to know about other people depends on the situation.
Billet, M. I., McCall, H. C., & Schaller, M. (2022). What motives do people most want to know about when meeting another person? An investigation into prioritization of information about seven fundamental motives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(4), 495–509. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211069468
Trusting Bad People
Relatedly, I conducted a study with Cynthia Fekken during my undergraduate training at Queen's University, Canada. We wanted to know why people still trust bad people with bad reputations. After all, people get hurt all the time by trusting the wrong person.
One idea is that we judge bad people to be proficient at doing bad things, and when you want a bad thing done right, you will be motivated to trust a bad person. We didn't find any evidence for that idea.
We did find that bad people who propose to do good things are judged to be more trustworthy than good people who propose to do bad things. Bad people might take advantage of this tendency.
We trust bad people when they say they are going to do good things.
Billet, M. I., & Fekken, G. C. (2020). The influence of instrumentality in trusting Dark Triad members. Personality and Individual Differences, 154, 109690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109690