The return of dispositionalism: On the linguistic consequences of dispositional suppression

Yzerbyt, Corneille, Dumont, and Hahn (2001) showed that the correction of dispositional inferences does not only involve a close examination of situational constraints but also the suppression of those dispositional inferences. Building on the literature of mental control (Wegner, 1994; Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000) and the Linguistic Category Model (Semin & Fiedler, 1988), we reasoned that participants induced to correct their dispositional attribution by being exposed to a forced speaker would subsequently use more abstract (i.e., dispositional) language to describe social behaviors than participants first confronted with a free speaker. We thus argue that dispositional suppression may result in a procedural rebound. As expected, participants selected more disposition-laden descriptors for pictorially presented behaviors after the suppression of dispositional thoughts (Experiment 1) or after having seen a forced rather than a free speaker (Experiment 2). These findings are discussed in the context of current theoretical accounts of the correspondence bias and suppressional rebound.