Jack Wright
My research on person perception occurs at the intersection of social and personality psychology. I am interested in the classic social psychological issues of impression formation and trait inference, but my work focuses on how these judgment processes are linked to the organization of social behavior in the natural environment. To study the relation between social knowledge and behavior, my colleagues and I first obtain extensive observations of people's behavior in natural social situations. We construct computer-driven simulated personalities that either closely resemble or violate to varying degrees the actual organization of people's behavior across situations. Subjects then interact with, observe, and form impressions about these computerized simulated people. By combining experimental control with degrees of ecological representativeness, this paradigm enables us to examine both the processes by which people make personality inferences and the factors that influence judgment accuracy.
Our work has identified the competencies of social judges under conditions that are ecologically representative and their judgment shortcomings under conditions that are not. One line of research has clarified differences between experts and novices in person perception accuracy. A second line of work examines the conditions under which lay and professional social observers can be trained to make more accurate inferences about social behavior. A third application of the paradigm examines developmental changes in children's social knowledge and judgment strategies.
Primary Interests:
- Interpersonal Processes
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Person Perception
- Personality, Individual Differences
Journal Articles:
- Dawson, V. L., Zeitz, C., & Wright, J. C. (1989). Expert-novice differences in person perception: Evidence of experts' sensitivities to the organization of social behavior. Social Cognition, 7, 1-30.
- Krueger, J. I., & Wright, J. C. (2006). On the assessment of national character: Comment on Terracciano et al. Science, 311, 776.
- Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1993). Links between personality judgments and contextualized behavior patterns: Situation-behavior profiles of personality prototypes. Social Cognition, 11, 399-429.
- Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1993). The role of situational demands and cognitive competencies in behavioral organization and personality coherence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1023-1035.
- Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1994). Intra-individual stability in the organization and patterning of behavior: Incorporating psychological situations into the idiographic analysis of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 674-687.
- Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1989). Intuitive interactionism and person perception: Effects of context-behavior relations on dispositional judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 41-53.
- Wright, J. C., & Dawson, V. L. (1988). Person perception and the bounded rationality of social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 780-794.
- Wright, J. C., & Drinkwater, M. (1997). Rationality vs. accuracy of social judgment. Social Cognition, 15, 245-273.
- Wright, J. C., & Zakriski, A. L. (2003). When syndromal similarity obscures functional dissimilarity: Distinctive evoked environments of externalizing and mixed syndrome children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, 516-527.
- Wright, J. C., & Zakriski, A. L. (2001). A contextual analysis of externalizing and mixed syndrome boys: When syndromal similarity obscures functional dissimilarity. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69, 457-470.
- Wright, J. C., Lindgren, K. P., & Zakriski, A. L. (2001). Syndromal versus contextualized assessment of childhood psychopathology: Differentiating environmental and dispositional determinants of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1176-1189.
- Wright, J. C., Zakriski, A. L., & Drinkwater, M. (1999). Developmental psychopathology and the reciprocal patterning of behavior and environment: Distinctive situational and behavioral signatures of “internalizing,” “externalizing,” and “mixed” syndrome children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67, 95-107.
- Wright, J. C., Zakriski, A. L., & Fisher, P. A. (1996). Age differences in the correlates of perceived dominance. Social Development, 5, 24-40.
- Zakriski, A. L., Wright, J. C., & Underwood, M. K. (2005). Gender similarities and differences in children’s social behavior: Finding personality in contextualized patterns of adaptation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 844-855.
Other Publications:
- Wright, J. C. (1990). An alternative paradigm for studying the accuracy of person perception: Simulated personalities. In D. Buss & N. Cantor (Eds.), Emerging issues in personality psychology. Springer-Verlag.
Courses Taught:
- Laboratory in Personality and Clinical Assessment
- Quantitative Methods in Psychology
Jack Wright
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences
Metcalf Research Laboratory
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island 02912
United States of America
- Phone: (401) 863-3974
- Fax: (401) 863-1300